ON A KEROSENE NIGHT

 Rose Olabode

Kerosene finished the night before, with a few trickles left in the Bigi cola bottle you resumed with. It would not be enough to cook but it could fry eggs.

You embarked on your journey to Agbowo with the strength provided by bread and tea with eggs as breakfast and snacks as lunch to do the few things you ought to do before proper school work begins. At the top of that list was 'Buying kerosene at Keto' because it was cheaper.

Around 4:20 pm, you left your room.

You thought you would flag down a cab outside the QEH II hall but as you stood at the car park waiting endlessly; it occurred to you that there won't be cabs going to the gate for a while. So, you decided to trek in your uncomfortable sandals.

The middle part of the sandal that parted your big toe from the others had a hidden agenda of cutting your feet into two but you had no choice. The other shoe you’d have worn would make your plan flop. It was reckless, if not irresponsible, to look like a super-rich kid at a place where phones get repaired. But first, you had to withdraw some cash. For some reason, all other banks except for FCMB had no customers at their ATM stands. The queue was ridiculously long.

At a glance to your left after joining the queue, you saw two ATM points inside the bank, separated from the outside by a see-through white iron gate. Those points had a handful of people waiting to use them. So, you made for those exclusive ATM points but got stopped by the sun-darkened security man who looked at you as one would a criminal and locked the gate. You were aghast. If others have rejected an opportunity available for everyone, does that make you a criminal for wanting to make use of it?

“Two two,” He finally said, drawing you out of your bewilderment.

So, you waited patiently at the gate till you could withdraw your money. You walked away from the bank, your money in your purse and past the queue of people.

“They probably have not used any FCMB ATM before," You thought as you climbed the winding Shokem staircase and into a group of boys who stared at you from behind.

“Opoor,” One started saying in a sing-song tone, and you had to feign ignorance of what he was making at. You focused on walking without missing a step on the stairs that would cause you to fall. As you finished shopping, you stepped out, hoping those errant guys had left.

The next stop was the fruit sellers, and you got a good deal of dried dates. As you walked further, you saw that the second-hand bookman had restocked. The last time you bought some novels from him was during the strike and he was all too happy to sell them to you at ridiculous prices.

Well, he had to sell those off to restock, right?

You got to your screen guard plug and showed him your phone screen that was detaching from your phone. In his typical I-know-about-it Igbo voice, he pointed you to a phone and laptop repairs shop that you had never seen, even though you had spent more than a year living at

Agbowo.

“He is going to gum it around, and it is not going to take long.” He assured you.

“Sister, you will have to re-align your phone screen except you want your phone to be pressing on its own.” The phone technician replied tactfully when you expressed your ‘aahs’. He demanded two thousand naira to fix it. The phone had entered several kinds of water and gotten drunk like a fish. You had expected those to have no effects till you dumped it for another phone. At long last, he decided to fix it for 1,500 naira. Your budget had overshot automatically. You bought things you did not think would be so expensive at Shokem. And if you wanted to buy kerosene, you needed to withdraw more money.

You only hoped that the technician would hurry and hand you your phone. What you thought would not take time took up to forty-five minutes. You could not be so sure; you had no wristwatch with you and your phone was getting fixed. So you just looked around, checking different shades, shapes, and sizes of people that walked up and down the Agbowo road.

To be continued…