A Day Gone Wrong

It was a cold dark evening and Efe couldn’t wait to get home after a very hectic day at work. It had rained all day, making his already tedious job as a roadside 'vulcanizer' apprentice more frustrating. His boss was away that day and he’d had to share a very small shade with an old man who hawked organic medicine. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the man didn’t have an overly loud megaphone that he screamed into every five minutes. “Buy your herbal drug hia! E dey cure stomach ache, hair loss, bareness, cancer, and even high blood pressure. No be all those chemical wey oyibo them dey give us. Nothing wey this one no dey cure!” Efe was not a medical doctor but he was pretty sure that you couldn’t possibly treat all those with just one drug. He had never realized just how loud megaphones were until he was caught in the rain for what seemed like endless hours, standing right next to one. As if that was not enough of a nuisance, the old man reeked of some foul-smelling substance that Efe couldn’t quite put a name to. “I for just sit down for house today”, he thought.

When the heavy rain came down to a light shower, Efe immediately started packing up his equipment so he could go home. With the terrible day he was having, Efe’s only consolation was that he was going home to his mother’s fresh fish banga soup that she always cooked after a heavy rainfall like this one. His mother was a farmer and had a lot of palm trees on her farm. They lived close to a river whose banks overflowed with both water and fish whenever it rained heavily. Instead of the usually tedious task of fishing in the river, you could pick up a fish on the river bank. The thought of banga soup with fresh fish and snails simmering in his favorite ewere was almost enough to put him out of his foul mood.

After packing up all the equipment, he headed home. Remember when I said Efe lived next to a river that overflows? Well, I didn’t add that anytime this river overflows, the entire area becomes somewhat of a long, continuous mud bath. Efe was just over a hundred metres away from his door step when he lost his footing and tumbled into a pothole almost big enough to pass for a bath tub. He was so angry and embarrassed but, at that moment, he didn’t know who he was the angriest at. Was it the stupid local government chairman who used all the money meant for the construction of drainages to throw his dullard son an extravagant wedding? “The wife even worwor sef”, he thought. Or was he angrier at the clouds that had chosen that day of all days to weep over the many atrocities they are forced to watch all day, every day? Deep down though, Efe knew it was the little children at the side of the road who were laughing at him and chanting ‘Uncle ode’ that he was angriest at. Wasn’t it the Prophet Elisha who had called a lion – or was it a bear- to eat up the children who made fun of him? He wished he had the prophet’s power right then.

Efe finally got home looking like a swamp monster. His younger siblings received him at the door but they knew better than to laugh at him. They knew better than anyone how their brother was when he got angry. Afterall, he hadn’t gotten his nickname, ‘warri hulk’ only because of the ratty purple shorts that he wore almost all the time and refused to part with. After washing up, Efe made a beeline to the kitchen. “Tivere, I hope say una no touch my ewere”, he shouted from the kitchen, just before he spotted it in the left corner of the kitchen counter. He picked up the ewere and rushed excitedly to the stove top, only to find the pot empty. You know how they say “Hell has no greater fury than a woman scorned”? At that moment, hell had no greater fury than the very disappointed and hungry Efe. “Tivere”, he shouted, “Oghale, where the banga soup na?” “Brother, mama say make we chop your own join our own. She say no banga soup for you because get 82 for JAMB. No food for olodo”, Oghale replied in a jesting, singsong tone. She knew all the best ways to rile her brother up and she enjoyed doing so a bit too much. Her only saving grace was that she could run very fast and hide well. Her petite frame gave her a pretty good edge too.

As soon as she said this, she ran out of the house as fast as she could, but Efe was not even going after her. He hadn’t known that his mum had seen his JAMB result slip. He thought he had hidden it well. Efe sighed heavily. What a day he’d had! Did all these happen because he bumped his foot against his bed that morning? His eyelids had also been itching that morning. Maybe his grandmother was right about them being bad omens after all, and having two of them the same morning? What had he expected?