With Alan Kay
Kay, stop taunting me in the presence of my Cinderella. Who asked your own babe to disappoint you? Soon, we will be in ‘Cloud 9’, an exhilarating cloud; far beyond the cloud that caused downpour in Lagos last week and caused serious flooding.”
“Charles, what you have just said reminds me of what happened in my neighbourhood two weeks ago. An old drunk, who is being mocked with the sobriquet of ‘Prophet’ simply because he squats in a church yard, caused a stir.”
“Yan me sharp, sharp; I’m interested in the story…but in the meantime, let Jessica, the truculently built but mannerly chummy bar-lady, serve us a bottle each.”
“Yes, she should bring it criminally cold, mortuary standard…as I was saying, this old fella had drunk 15 bottles at three sittings and added a two-litre of local gin at about four sittings, and finally, he started tottering home at about 9:30 pm?”
“Whao! He must be a super-man, a gnome and a goblin, all combined. But did he get home safely, especially in this era of sweeping floods?”
“For where? Our friend tripped and fell into a gully some metres to his destination. Oh! He was lucky that night in that, there was no rainfall. Otherwise, the virulent flood that often rushes through the channel anytime it rains would have cascaded him into the nearby Ogun River, to serve as dinner for sharks and other hungry fishes.”
“Kay, you are a bad guy; so you live in a community that is a tributary to the merciless Ogun River, regardless of your status in the world of the drunk? Just continue the story…”
“Wait now…so where I am actually going is what happened the following morning. As a set of lazy men were sitting outside, playing Ludo near the portion where Prophet was stuck inside the gully, a strange shriek came from the bottom of the big pit. They heard in gutturally weak and fiendish voice, something like, ‘I dey here o, come bring me out o!’”
“So what happened, I can’t wait to hear? But let Jessica give my babe a plate of snail pepper-soup and a big bottle of her usual beer.”
“Yes, you are a caring womaniser…and so, upon hearing frightening sounds from the pit, the men, scared stiff, scampered, first, to safety, as they thought that an apparition or a goblin had arrived to attack them. They ran to the extent that some fell intermittently, some forgetting their shoes in the process. Others lost their caps to the winds too.”(Laughter)
“Cowards! Did they see what was chasing them before fleeing? So no man was man enough to demystify the mystery?”
“Wait now…hic…at a stage, one of the men summoned courage, and tip-toed towards the tip of the gully; heard the voice again, drew back, heard again, and then replied, ‘Oh, a human being has fallen into this pit.’ Eventually, the other men returned and they found that it was the mock prophet, the great drunk. He was already bloodied inside the gully anyway, and would require urgent medical attention.”
“Poor him, he must have drunk a lot of stuffs without a babe sitting with him, just as one is with me, to caution him against excessive drinking. So, how did they brink him out of the ‘bottomless pit’?”
“Well, the men followed the example of the Biblical Good Samaritan. They contributed their widow’s mite. Or do we now say widower’s mite? And rented a long, strong ladder, and pulled him out. Funnily, however, they helped treat his wounds with gin, the original ogogoro that smarts like hell.”
“Yes, your expression, ‘widow’s mite’, reminds me of the fact that some women are widows of circumstance. Their living husbands have sold their souls to the daily intake of ogogoro to the extent that they are virtually useless, barely living on borrowed time.”
“Hmmm…think you are right. It reminds me of this sobering story. In 2005 when a Bellview passenger’s plane carrying over 200 people crashed in Lisa, a village in Ogun State, I went there to cover the story as a journalist.”
“Yes, I remember, the one that all its passengers were entombed.”
“Yes Charles; after I returned from the crash site on the third day, I sat at a pub to cool my aching nerves with a bottle of beer. While there, the Mama de Mama, the beer parlour owner, was excited with the story that the family of each victim in the plane would be compensated with N14 million.”
“So how did she react to the morbid thing?”
“Oh, she jumped up in the fullness of her seductively obese body-package, and screamed, ‘Sho! A whole N14 million? Why dis ogogoro-drinking man wey call himsef my husband no come collect money for ticket from me and join dem die? Shebi I for use the N14 million take care of im children wey im don forget so teh.’”
“Too bad. I’m sure my babe here would not wish me dead for the sake of N14 million; and I only hope too that my wife wouldn’t think like your Mama de Mama.”
“We will never know. Charles, download your beer, and let’s go.”