Auchi, 16 September 2015.

‘That girl at the office is rude,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ the others echo, very certain.

‘Which girl?’ you wonder.

‘The new girl at the office,’ I say.

‘You no dey come office again naa,’ one say.

‘Engineer don get new secretary,’ another offer.

‘Why is it it’s mostly girls who are employed as secretaries?’ you wonder. ‘It’s injustice.’

‘When you get your own office, employ a guy.’

‘And sales girls?’ you continue. ‘Everywhere, every advert: Sales girl wanted. Why not leave it open for both guys and girls alike?’

‘Imagine all those Igbos wey dey sell building materials along Jattu Road employing boys as their sales persons,’ I try to make you see.

‘Haa,’ one laughs. ‘Na im be say business don spoil naa.’

‘But those businessmen get umu boy, boy apprentices.’ You’re the only Igbo here. ‘Why business never spoil?’

One faces his PC, the last vestiges of his laugh yet to fade from his countenance.

‘Nooo, you don’t understand,’ I try harder, in that my characteristic manner of dismissing any dissent with me as misunderstanding. ‘The point is: many girls have just enough education for those kinds of jobs. You don’t expect a guy with all his university education to become your secretary or sales man.’

‘But in my place girls are as educated. Yet the injustice is still there.’

‘Na for your place naa. Girls are investments there.’

‘Cheeiii!’ another exclaims. ‘To marry an Igbo girl no be here oo!’

But you’ve stopped listening, talking, to them. You’re thinking, instead, how you must be at the office tomorrow to swoop on the new girl. And in your place, you’re thinking too, these kinds of jobs are not lifelong jobs. They are jobs one does, mostly secondary school leavers, as one awaits a better thing, a university admission. So why can’t guys be considered, too? But maybe it’s only fair; hardly do girls go for ‘boy’.

Orlu, June – July 2015

His kpomo underlip falls open in wonder each time one of his ogas touch a strange girl and the girl doesn’t cringe, spit a curse, fling a (reckless) punch at the oga, eye him disdainfully, with burning hatred. They are usually in the back of one of the pickups, he and his ogas, on a mission to fix one or another fault, to ‘cut the light’ of debtor-customers; the girl mostly a pedestrian, occasionally an okada passenger. He finds it even more wonderful when the girl smiles at the trespassing palm(s), acknowledges the lewd comments.

‘Nne, i bu ya. Ngwongwo i bu n’azu ehika. Baby, baby!’

‘Give us light. We never get light since . . . We no get light. Una don dey go cut light.’

Of course he ogles girls, the girls, their waddling backsides, peeking thighs, heaving cleavages, God’s masterpieces. He smiles, too, at his ogas’ comments. Sometimes even he chips in lewder comments, causing everyone want to fall off the pickup with laughter, but never in any of the girls’ hearing. Maybe someday he would shout out his comments, like his ogas, in the girls’ hearing, he’s not sure.

But he’s sure he would never touch any girl. He just can’t, even when the girl would likely beam at him, as most actually beam at his ogas. To him, it’s abuse of the girl’s privacy, property. Plus he knows of a lecturer at school who trails any girl, like her shadow, he comes across, savouring ‘sour’ words.

‘Nne, give me this thing. We’ll use condom. Oh, you don’t want us to use condom!’

The story is: he, the lecturer, once abused a lady – a married lady, a nun, many variants of the same story – sexually so the lady cursed him.

Auchi, 14 September 2015.

Dogma

So B, one of my roommates, badges into the room.

‘Uzube,’ he mouths with that peculiar Yoruba accent, substituting the n for a u. ‘To be a man no easy oo.’ He just took a call from whoever. They spoke pidgin, with freckles of Yoruba.

I wonder at what might have prompted the comment. ‘Even to be a woman no easy.’ To be a woman may be harder sef, I want to add, but rethink.

‘Eem,’ he narrows his eyes, as if it were the sun, not my face, he’s looking at, obviously at a loss what to say. ‘Haa!’ – his eureka – ‘but a woman will get married, and her husband go don make am. Na we men wey dey suffer!’ Dogma!

 And you, man, no go get married? I want to say. And your wife no sabi make am? And dem women no dey suffer? And . . . But I’m learning not to argue (too much) again, especially when my ‘opponent’, like B, is a walking trunk without a head. Plus my stammering has become acute of late.

Auchi, 10 September 2015.