A purple gown blended with Cinderella’s golden pair of shoes; perfectly dressed like a princess set for a ball, was how she appeared to work this Monday morning. I haven’t had the courage to tell her how I feel; what would she do when she knows that I sleep and wake with her on my mind? I just got to know that she is a pious Christian. She may get offended if I open up. Courage – someone once told me, “A man who has the courage to express his feeling to a beautiful woman, possesses the ability to amass untold wealth.” I wonder how true this is.
Whenever two or more male corpers are gathered in idle discussion, ‘woman’ is the topic of such gathering. Today I decided to indulge with Richard and Iyke in such conversation. “Na lie slim girls sweet pass, Richard charged at Iyke, as I walked pass the both of them on my way to the kitchen to keep my plate, grumbling to myself about the quantity of moi-moi that was served for breakfast, and the delay of allowance payment. I drew closer to them. Richard responded, “I don’t like slim or fat girls, I just like girls that I can easily raise in bed, and fire fire.” We all laughed as he demonstrated. The conversation continued animated for hours, as they narrated their sexual heroic tales after tales, mentioning names of girls I will never imagine could be involved in such kind of things. What got me more interested was when Richard said he does not spend money to achieve his conquest, I begged him to teach me what he does but he declined.
I have been enthusiastic about learning the Tiv language, so I decided to implement the advice given to me by my oga Mr. Chris, “look for one Tiv girl that will teach you Tiv language, you can marry her and settle down in Benue state after service.” So I decided to get close to the Tiv girl selling orange across the road of my house. This I paid dearly for. She made me buy her own oranges for her; she intentionally denies me of balance sometimes and always has a request to make. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the afternoon I trekked back from work under hot sun of Makurdi, I stopped by to greet her, she asked me to buy her cold fanta. Since then I have been making unending phone calls whenever I pass around her, in fact I don’t let her see me again. Then how did Richard do all he does without spending money?
The family house was filled with uproar, as everyone feared we will be ejected. A corp member was said to have beaten up a teacher in the school. “one of you, that tall one they call Joe went to the class when the CRK teacher was teaching and beat him up for seizing a female student’s phone,” old soldier, as we call him said to me as I trudged into the staff room after a long class. “He will always wear big chains, and move around this school looking for small girls, I watch him always, the girl is his girl friend; he is a cultist. He looked at me to get a response but I only shouted “wow.” You know that I like you corppers very much that is why I have defended you when they want to drive you people away, “thank you sir” I said to him feigning interest to his story. He continued “but this boy must leave this place we have taken up the matter to the Bishop…” I was very grateful when a man walked in and his attention drifted to him, immediately I fled the scene. There were different narrations of the event, but according to Joe, he only assisted a female student who walked up to him to beg her teacher, she said the phone belonged to her senior sister. Their parents do not know about the phone, so she asked him to beg on her behalf so it won’t get to the knowledge of her father.
“Yes! Yes! Stanley shouted as he ran out of the room, we all starred at wondering what could make him this excited. “Allowee don show,” he screamed. We all scampered for our phone to check for payment alert. The joy that this brought to the house made everyone forget about the lingering issue.
Monthly clearances are a do or die affairs for corps members. You spit on him, he doesn’t mind. Some of my friends that won’t go to work now leave for work very early to impress their employers. It is a Maxim that: “He who signs your clearance form signs the book of life.”
