Chapter 13: Chapter 13

Monica spent a few lonely days in the hotel, thinking of how best to settle down and blend into the life of the strange city, and go about the business of hunting down her true lover. She sat in the hotel lobby, drinking a bottle of wine and watching a man smoke, his puffs in the air, forming flawless silver rings as he inhaled and exhaled. She stared at the man intently, and remembered the several times she had smoked shisha at home, and on her trips to London. London was a cold place, and smoking was quite a few ways to keep warm. She poured more wine into her tall glass and then placed the stopper back on the mouth of the red bottle. On the television, a song was showing, and another man sitting behind her was drinking a bottle of beer and humming the song tunelessly and bobbing his head flawlessly to the rhythm of the music.

Of course, the money to spend a lifetime in the hotel was not her problem. But Monica knew if she remained there, then she would fail utterly in her plan. She needed to venture out, to fraternize, to mix with the people out there, to live and feel everything they did and felt. But to do that, she needed to find a house to live in, and then a job. She needed a room not in one of the highbrow neighbourhoods, but a lowbrow one, at least in a livable neighbourhood or in one of the many sprawling shanties in town. A ‘face-me-I-face-you’ compound was the most fitting and idyllic.

The next day, Monica hired a tricycle driver and combed the city in search of the house to live in. After an exasperating and arduous search, she was fortunate to find one. A room that a newly married couple had evacuated a few days back.

‘You’re very fortunate,’ the pot-bellied landlord told her. ‘If you had not come today, I would have rented this room to a shoemaker down the road. Finding a room in Ibadan is as difficult as finding diamonds.’ Monica did not speak a word to him in response. Instead, she studied the house meticulously, and after that, she was certain in her heart the building was far older than she was. Its rusty zinc and unplastered walls were layered with green moulds and the creaky door was wobbly and unpainted. But she was left with a Hobson’s choice, she could either take it, or she would be left with nothing. She paid the cutthroat landlord, took her receipt and keys from him and returned to the hotel.

The next day, she moved into the small room. She bought foam, some cooking utensils, curtains and other necessities that would make her life livable at least. But the next morning, when she woke up to go to the toilet she was shell-shocked by the long queue that was waiting to use the same toilet and the single bathroom in the compound. The sight of that made her face furrow with strong irritation that the cutthroat landlord did not tell her the entire truth about the true condition of the toilet, and that it was only just one crappy and unhygienic toilet and bathroom that was available to the entire yard. But why would he? He was only interested in her money. The proverb her mother often used that a person who was asking for a bed would never disclose to the lender that he was a bed-wetter quickly came to her mind and made more sense to her. She quietly joined the queue as her stomach rumbled, with the excrement in her belly, pushing very hard to be released.

As the queue crawled, a lanky and sallow-faced man holding his trouser in one hand, and a bucket of dirty water in the other walked up to her and said: ‘Wo! Shebi you know say na for my shance you stand ni?’ His voice had a strong Yoruba accent, and Monica stared impatiently at him as he talked. The man’s mouth smelled of Seaman’s Aromatic Schnapps, popularly called Kai-kai and his yellowish teeth were filled with tartar. As he talked spittle oozed from the corners of his mouth. Monica was disgusted by his improperness. How could he just appear from the blues and claim he had been standing there all the while? Had he been invisible? Or was he a ghost? She ignored him and stood there, daring him to move or touch her. Then a hand tapped her lightly on the shoulder and she turned sharply, her eyes filled with fury, as she thought the man must have come to intimidate her. But she was surprised when a light-skinned woman, plain and nondescript, with a tan in her eyes smiled at her instead.

‘Did you move in yesterday?’ she asked her, smiling.

‘Yes, yesterday,’ she answered her calmly; relieved it was not that nuisance of a man.

‘I am Funke. I live two rooms away from yours. I plait hairs. Just in case,’ she said.

‘I am Monica. It’s my pleasure meeting you.’ They shook hands and Funke held her hand tightly, and shook it briskly.

‘Don’t mind that foolish bonga fish man. He is used to making trouble. It was why his wife ran away with his three children with another man who can feed and satisfy her properly in bed,’ Funke said, flashing her brownish teeth.

‘Oh, I see,’ Monica said, stifling her laughter, as Funke laughed loudly.

The last man that came out of the toilet before Monica’s turn was hurled with a thousand abuses as he hurried off, holding his faded jeans trouser in one hand. When he walked past Monica she scrunched up her nose as the man still smelt of shit. As Monica climbed the stairs and opened the wonky zinced door to enter the toilet, a swarm of giant flies rushed into her face and swirled all over the place. She shooed at the flies and stared at the remnants of the smelly excrements that patched the unsmoothed cement seat of the toilet, just as the toilet stank with a strong putrid smell that made the shit in her anus rush back into her rumbling stomach. The sight of the toilet filled her with revulsion and disgust. She spat thickly on the ground and hurried away to the consternation of the other tenants that stared at her awkwardly. She went into her room and slumped on the bed. And in that fleeting moment, she doubted herself and wondered if she was truly up to what she had come to do. The kind of life she was seeing here was unlivable and demeaning for a human being. Let alone for a person of her class and wealth. However, she came up with a solution as she did not only fear the unhygienic condition of the toilet, but the infections that were breeding in it. She bought a shitting bowl the next day, and whenever she felt pressed she did it in her room inside the bowl, and disposed it in the strong-smelling toilet when it was free.

The first time Monica lit the new kerosene stove and tried to cook jollof rice, she burnt her hand and was left with a sore red patch on her finger that made her writhe with pain all day. Worst still, she was ashamed the rice she cooked was too salty. It would have been better if the food was tasteless. She was frustrated and annoyed at herself for being such an awful cook. It made her think of how she had complained several times about the cooking of the chefs in her mansion, who were in fact, cordon bleu. And it made her wonder how she would have coped, cooking such awful and briny foods for her husband. She could admit she would have lost him. After all, don’t they say that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach and not through the other one that was performed on the bed? In fact, the fact she was also a gourmet made her resolve to learn how to cook and cook very well. But she was very famished that morning and it made her remember the honey roast chicken, the apple sauce plait, and the spicy jollof rice she always ate at her swish mansion and at five-star hotels. She dumped the rice in the dustbin and strolled down the dusty road to the foodseller to eat.

Bukkaterias was a frequent word she was hearing these days. In Lagos and all over Nigeria it was used to refer to roadside foodsellers. Iya Yetunde owned one, and hers was always filled with customers. Monica had heard that she was an extraordinary cook. That morning as she went there to eat, she was astounded at how the customers scrambled to wash their plates in the dirty water and took turns in the long queue to buy her food. She walked sluggishly and sat on one of the dirty benches and watched the free-for-all.

‘You siddon for there dey look? Shey you no wan shop? You no go wash your plate? You dey form ni?’ A brown-haired woman said to her, with a scoff and with her hands akimbo. Her Yoruba accent was strong. Monica stared at her as she swayed her plate in the air, to dry it of water. She did not know if the woman was urging her to get up and fight if she wanted to eat, or if she was irritated with her for sitting down and thinking that food will fall on her laps while the rest of them queued up for it. Her long list of questions was befuddling to her. However, she rose from the bench and walked to the washing bowl and asked, gently, that the oily and dirty water should be changed. But Iya Yetunde was too busy to even notice that someone was talking or standing there. It made Monica extremely furious. And it made her think too, of her imposing and fearful presence at her plush office and swish mansion. After the eerie silence she received from the pompous foodseller, she bought sachets of pure water and washed her own plate. Then she waited patiently for her turn, as her stomach made growling sounds. When she finally received her food, she ate it clumsily, and to her amazement, the food was not as scrumptious as Iya Yetunde’s food was rumoured to be.

The outside wall of makeshift bukka was darkened with black smokes, while inside was smeared with oil and dirt from the excessive rubbing of dirty hands. Monica watched the people that crammed inside with sheer amazement as they snarfed up the food in their plates, as her mind wandered to the dirty and obscene things she had heard about Bukkaterias. When she first heard a woman who was a bukka owner confessed she always washed her private part and used the water for cooking, in order to make customers fight for her food, she found it incredible and utterly disgusting. But that was even mild as compared to those who bathed dead bodies at the mortuaries and used the bathwater to cook their food just to make unbelievable sells. Oftentimes, she had wondered how a human being with a heart like hers could do such unforgivable and revulsive things. Yet even as she ate Iya Yetunde’s food, with some of the rice falling off her metallic spoon, she couldn’t help but imagine that IyaYetunde could be doing the same awful thing. It was the only way her high sells, the fighting and madness of the people in her bukka was rational. Yet she had the feeling that she still could be wrong in her judgment of her. Rationality in itself is shallow. She had always maintained that not everything must be rational before it should be believed. After all, what is the rationality in believing and worshipping the gods one cannot see?

Monica closed her eyes and the strong rush of vomiting came surging through her throat, she rose up sharply and ran to the nearby gutter and began to vomit, just as a woman walked up and poured watery excrement in her shitting bowl in the gutter and sent giant flies swirling around the place.