Chapter 25: Chapter 25

CHAPTER 22

Teju looked around furtively. It was quite disenchanting that there still was no sign of Sam. And it was a magical reality that Sam had been invited to the party, and Teju had a disturbing feeling that the night was going in the wrong direction, especially as Sam had refused to materialise. Sam was not in the habit of coming late to a social function, particularly a grand party hosted by the people in the class of the upper realm.

The sumptuousness of such party, the polished quality, the overabundance of champagne, or wine or rum, the healthy prospect of meeting a hotchpotch of loose ladies, who probably would be effortlessly charmed by his maleness, exchange phone contacts with him, and later give lilting sensation to their various pathetic lives through gratuitous carnal activities; Sam would rather quit his job than miss out on a party with numerous of such blinding opportunities. When Sam first told him about his being invited to Tiwa’s party, he was shocked. He was even more blown away when he told him Tiwa had invited him.

“Are you not worried that this girl had decided to invite you to her birthday party after what had happened between you two because I’m really worried sick?” Teju said to him.

“You are? Well, I’m not worried, I’m rather excited”

“Really, I think only idiots get excited when danger is upon them because their wits are so blunt that they can’t discern between menace and safety”

“And what about those whose minds have collapsed and now they lack the courage and the imagination to see opportunities in the narrowest and most unfriendly situations” Sam replied. Teju stood riveted on a spot for a moment and watched Sam with both dismay and antipathy written all over his face.

“You know what, just forget it,” Teju said, waving him off.

“Look, I know it’s weird that this girl is inviting me to her party after everything, but what am I suppose to do, reject her invitation?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, but it’s weird she invited you”

“And it’s would be weirder if I decline, don’t you see? Look, I know you’re trying to watch my back, but I’m telling you that I am fine. I’d go to that party and rock it right to the soil, okay?”

“You mean you’d go to that party and get to know the colour of the underwear every girl is wearing, including Tiwa, right?”

“Yeah, and excluding Simi, of course,” Sam said, laughing.

“Oh my goodness, you’re such a dog,” Teju said amidst the laughter.

The rains of April had just started to gain significant momentum with each day not passing by without a monsoon or group of days without a constant mizzle. It was the season succeeding the season of agbalumo, and the season that preceded the season of maize- the season of mangoes. It was the time when a clear sky was as sparse as the Nile in the Atacama. It was when the sun grew dim, and it slept through the day, and even at night, in its galaxy, and with pellicles of thick grey clouds blanketing it as the earth revolved around.

It was the time the rain fell without constraint, without respect for whom or where or how it fell. The time it had no regards for who was going out, or who was coming in. It fell dispassionately, on the poor and the rich alike, the bad and the good, on streams and on arid lands. It irrigated the weeds and the crops. It was the time when the bush mosquitoes scuttled into hiding, and the snails broke their hibernating cocoons. It was when the toads, in their baritone voices and in their swamped ditches, sang harmonious vocal concertos. It was on one of the rainy days in the month of July that Sam met Tiwa.

Teju and Sam went on a particular trip to Abeokuta. Sam, as a beneficiary, was supposed to attend a Biennial Leadership Summit hosted by one of the foremost charity foundations in the country. Teju was to attend a Marketing and Advertisement seminar as a guest expert. It was an exercise that would take two to three days. The summit Sam was to attend would take place in Obasanjo Presidential Library while Teju would be going to the Cultural Centre at Kuto. Since their places of interest were close to each other, they had decided to make the trip together and even lodge in the same hotel.

However, on the evening of the day they arrived, Sam suggested that they both visited the iconic and ancient Olumo Rock. Though Teju was a little tired from the journey and the mess he had to clean up in office before he embarked on the journey, he decided to join Sam. He had never been to the famous tourist centre. It was a revered place of traditional eminence. It presented a bloc of Yoruba roots to the whole world in a subtle attempt to idolise the Yoruba tradition rather than to dismiss it as barbaric.

It was quite disappointing to Sam and Teju, as first-time visitors, that the immediate road leading to the tourist centre was as bad any other road leading to an isolated, remote or unexplored area. Sam had at first suggested to Teju to turn the car around since it looked like they had mixed up the road. They were not sure if the road they were taking led to a village where they do human sacrifice or to Olumo Rock. Probably they had expected too much, perhaps a road that was tarred with gold. They had to stop by the road and ask if they were on the right route or not. After they had been told that their destination was few metres away, and they could see from afar-off the soaring heights of large grey-coloured rocks, with green trees among them and elevators as high as the fascia of the rock, they pressed on.

The inside of Olumo Rockwas magnificent, an incredible sight of cosmic structure standing right before them. According to the tourist guide assigned to them, the structure has a height of 137 metres above sea level. The trip to Olumo Rock began with the climbing of the man-made iron stairs carved into the rock. Teju was happy they did not have to use the elevators. For all he knew, he was willing to go through a cascade of troubles climbing up the rock with his legs than to use the elevators which were powered by electricity in a country were electricity was as inconsistent as the gait of a toddler.

As they climbed the red-coloured stairs, their tourist guide told them the historical significance of Olumo. The Egba people, who originally inhabited Abeokuta, found refuge at the Olumo Rock during the intertribal wars in the 19th-century. According to the tourist guide, the rock provided asylum to the people as well as a vantage point to keep an eye on the adversary’s advance, leading to eventual conquest in war. For some reason unknown to Teju himself, he felt the total essence of Olumo, the historical connotation of it had been somewhat compromised by the iron stairs.

He believed that tourists just like him would appreciate and respect the dignity of Olumo as much as the Egbas who abode among its crevices and caves if they were meant to climb the rock, just like the Egbas would have climbed it back then. No mountaineer or tourist would go to Mount Everest and would expect to meet stairs carved into the snow-drenched rocks so as to ease climbing.

As they climbed the stairs, he wondered if the ghosts of the Egbas who lived in the rocks during the intertribal war were floating around them in the unseen realm. He wondered how they would react to seeing people, black and white, old and young, climbing man-made stairs to the apex of the rocks where they reached without any stairs. He wondered if they would be laughing at them in naked scorn, or they would be furious, helplessly and fruitlessly trying to tear off the compromising stairs from their sacred abode. Or probably they were wishing they had a brilliant innovation such as stairs during their time to save them from all those troubles of climbing with great skill and care.

There were a lot of people at the top of Olumo, just as Teju had imagined, young and old, black and white, schooled and unschooled perhaps. They were laughing, pointing fingers, talking to each other and snapping pictures. They saw caves; at least, they saw their entrances. There was one cave that was forbidden for anyone to enter. If anyone does, it leads to some nameless misfortunes which were enough to put anyone in doubt of an attempt to enter, even if there lay in it an infinite measure of wealth.

From the top, they had a stance which overlooked the entire city of Abeokuta, and probably beyond it, though most of it remained indecipherable to the eyes. They could see the Ogun River. A mass of grey waterway stretched like a red carpet over the naked earth, shielding the different species of aquatic beings that have journeyed all the way from Oyo and are bound to the Lagoon, and receiving blessings from the munificent Yemoja. It was a brilliant sight that made Teju wished he could fly low over the river, drive his hand through its surface. He wanted to dive right into it and come out with probably a tilapia or catfish in his mouth.

“How far, are we done here?” Sam interrupted.

“What? We just got here.” Teju said sensing Sam was suggesting they should leave.

“Yeah, I know, I just want to go the restaurant down there”

“To do what”

“To sleep,” Sam said, but the sarcasm did not escape Teju.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there”

“Oh no, no, I have a very important appointment there, so don’t come and mess things up for me there”

“Appointment” Teju said with a quizzing undercurrent in his voice.

“Yeah, an appointment, a date, call it whatever you want”

“Oh, that’s what you call it now; you now call a date an appointment? And you left your wife over there in Ibadan to come and have a date with a lady in Abeokuta. Let me guess, you didn’t even come to Abeokuta for a leadership summit, you came here to cheat on....”

“Oh come on Teju, don’t be creepy, I’m only trying to kill two birds with a stone”

“Yeah, I forgot you’re David that killed Goliath with a stone. By the way,who is this girl, I thought all your girls are IB-based”

“Well, we met on a hook-up site, Fuckbook I think. I have not met her in person, but we have been chatting a lot, and we’ve even exchanged a couple of pictures. She said she would be here today, so we agreed to meet at the restaurant.”

“Wait, what are you doing on a hook-up site?”

“Well, I’m trying to do some foreign exchange trading there”

“Oh come on, you’re a married man for Christ’s sake”

“So, does that mean I should not enjoy the life I am meant to live once? Look, this girl I am talking about is hot and sexy, and the more important catch is this- she’s rich, and man must survive, or what do you think?”

“Great! I hope you’re not disappointed because you and this supposed hot girl have never met. And the more important catch is this- the country is crawling with different creative and fraught con men and women, and there is no clear evidence that your case will end differently. You remember the guy I told you about, who sent me a message that there’s a threat of death upon my BVN and the only way to salvage it was to give him my ATM card number and my pin. Who knows if the person you’re going to meet, whether a lady or not, is more pocket-empty than you could ever imagine”.

“Of course not, I told you I got her pictures. Here, take a look” Sam said, handing him his phone with a lady in an amethyst-coloured bikini all over its fascia. Her blonde-coloured hair draped over half of her face so that one of her eyes had disappeared. Her two hands were clamped around her waist in a striking pose. Her stare towards the camera was nothing less than an impish seductress’ stare.

“Wait, is this not Tiwa?”

“You know her? Is Tiwa her name?” Sam asked as he retrieved back his phone.

“Of course, I know her; she is a friend of Simi’s. How come you don’t know her name?”

“Because we met on a hook-up site, not on social media; well, hope you’re not interested in her?”

“I just told you she is Simi’s friend, why would I be interested in her”

“Well, that sounds great to me. I have to go, or I’ll keep her waiting which is a very bad omen for a first date”

“Whatever. Just make sure we do not bump into each other.”

“Well, I’ll try my best”

“I’m serious. I don’t want to meet her, at least not when you’re with her”.