“…There is a popular Igbo riddle that goes this way; ‘gwa m gwa m gwa m, gwa m oti nwata na ihu nne ya?’
It loosely transcribes as, “tell me that, which beats a child in the presence of his mother?” The answer as many know, is hunger!
The ancient Igbos used that riddle to denote the extreme daring nature of hunger. English people will say that a hungry man is an angry man.
For most part of a man’s life on earth, his biggest battle is to maintain peace and tranquility below his diaphragm, and for this, neither his hands, his legs nor his brains will know no peace in a bid to keep the stomach full and ward off hunger.
Althrough my life, I had witnessed varying degrees disasters including being forced by cultists to drop out of the faculty president Elections which nearly wrecked my life, but never have I ever encountered anything worse than acute hunger, far from home.
By the time Mma left for Gombe, my Allawee of 19,800 was remaining just 3,600.
I started doing mathematics on how it would last the rest of the month for me. I never knew I was so good with mathematics. Hunger revealed the Prof. Chike Obi in me or is it even Philip Emeagwali.
I first subtracted sachet water from my expenditure. Choosing to drink tank water. After all, we use tank water to drink Garri and nothing has happened to us yet.
Talking about Garri. I bought 2 painters of Garri, 500 naira per painter. Then a packet of sugar to match. My money was then remaining #2,300.
My legs were to become my foot O 4 and legedis Benz henceforth. No more Okada or Keke to anywhere. If it’s not trekkable, I will stay at home.
No more wasting 50 naira to watch football. I will wait for online websites to give me the score and analysis of the game.
Then I will skip breakfast, drink Garri for dinner, then buy abacha or ji na agbụgbụ 150, 3 times a week, so there can be oil in my stomach and I won’t have kwashiorkor.
I will then be left with 950. That 950 will be in case of emergency. As for data, I will be begging around for hotspot.
Ladies and gentlemen, the following day, that emergency that I set 950 aside for occured.
This NEPA people were doing off and on until they burnt my original charger.
The problem was that getting a new charger costs 1,500. And I couldn’t beg other Corp members for money when I was just living like King of Awka Etiti few days ago, and mind you, it was still 8th of that month, so journey long no be small.
After several hours of thinking, a brilliant idea came to me.
I went to those people that usually stay at the park, selling fake phone accessories. Those ones that normally use a plastic table with a mega phone that sings something like this;
“Original Nokia battery, 200
Charger 200
Earpiece 200
Belgium battery 200
Memory card 500…”.
I knew it was all fake, but I need to manage it until next Allawee comes in. Hopefully, it won’t spoil my phone battery before then.
I bought it, and it worked well for 2 days. From the following day onwards, it only charged for as long as I was holding it in a particular position.
Once I leave it, it will start doing tolom, tolom. Charging, not charging, charging, not charging. Chai!
This one has passed half bread that is better than none. This one was the smell of bread alone, because I usually spent 3 hours holding the phone to charge, then use it for one our and then resume the phone holding duty. Ahụhụ ụwa.
I was living my patch patch life and doing just fine until 20th of the month. A big thanks to Oge who would bring food to my room to eat, claiming that the fan in her room was bad. So she would be eating and begging me to join her. I usually hesitate small before agreeing. Though I didn’t like it when she would spend more 4 hours in my room after eating. Though I enjoyed her hotspot.
On 21, typhoid struck. It was like all the tank water I have been drinking held a conference in my name and decided to pay me a visit.
It started like small headache, then graduated to acute headache and my stomach was like someone was turning Garri inside.
After I used the remaining 250 to buy medicine mixed by the chemist guy, the thing continued.
At that juncture, I had to call home. After series of questions on why I didn’t use my Allawee to treat myself and my dad lamenting how his salary was 16,000 naira when he got married and gave birth to us, he finally sent me 5000 naira.
That was like Deux ex machina. I didn’t know if it was appropriate to thank typhoid for coming to my rescue.
All the same, I trekked to the bank to make a withdrawal. Then went to a good pharmacy where they gave me appropriate medicine which cost 1,800.
It was inside the pharmacy as I was receiving AC that I looked at the life sized mirror and saw myself.
My broad shoulders were now like hangers and I had suddenly acquired the flat tommy I was working on for years.
Na so life be?
DUKE THE NIGERIAN
(ONE YEAR OF HARD LABOUR WITH MONTHLY ALLOWANCE, Season 5; Episode 7) was brought to you by Ugwuagbo Emmanuel Chizoba Daniel (Zoba De Great)