Emmanuel Faith
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read
GREAT IFE!

AND SHE RAN MAD.

I.

Your name is Chinedu, you are the first born of five children, three boys and two girls. You finished from Federal Government College Ogbomosho. You were the best graduating student, carting away all the covetable prizes and won two cash prizes, one from the Chief of your village who gave you fifty thousand naira, and promised you double if you continued with the same performance at the university level the second from the PTA chairman who gave you a hundred thousand naira.

You had scored 289 in UTME and 72% in Post UTME thus your name came out on the merit list of Chemical Engineering. You had set lofty goals; finish your part one with 5.0, apply for MTN and NNPC scholarship in part two…..

You needed a scholarship, you know you did. Your Father was a farmer with seasonal income. Lately he had been faced with plethora of plight which varied from the continuous deforestation that affected his farmland, to the drastic fall in the price of cocoa globally, so things have been hard. Your mother hasn’t fared well either. Her tye and die business has been a roller-coaster, thanks to the incessant appetite for foreign outfit the village women now exhibited, the “imported” syndrome had eaten deep into a village that prided itself in it’s cultural creativity exhibited through beautifully weaved attire. Your immediate younger brother Nnamdi is now is SS3 and your parents would be paying a huge amount for WAEC soon, the third born, Ikechukwu has stopped school for fishing, he never did like school anyway, your twin sisters Chinasa and Chizaram haven’t started secondary school yet despite scoring 90% and 93% in their common entrance.

While your mother suggested that they wait for a year so that the some would be able to balance financially, your dad thought they were ripe for marriage and wanted bride-price.

“They would be reading the remaining in their husband’s kitchen” your dad jested the last time your mother raised this so you ned a scholarship and to get a scholarship, you need a 5.0

II.

Your room was angola, A105, right beside the excos room, directly opposite anglo-moz. It was a view , a lovely kaleidoscope to watch how life happen to people and people happen to life. You watched as innocence got kidnapped by brute as those “omo get-inside” now got outside fully. You saw the unseen and heard the unheard, from misleading melodies behind buses to smooching and kissing by the risky stand.

One night on your way back from your night study at white-house, you saw Martha, Martha was the Senior prefect then. She had always been beautiful, seductively beautiful. Despite the lowcut she wore back in high school, almost every “happening guy” had asked her out. You saw Martha step out of a new prado Jeep and gave a guy a warm hug, thanking him for the night. You wanted to call her, speak some sense into her, remind her about how her father is struggling back in the village to pay her school fees, but you didn’t. You didn’t have the time, you had physics the next day.

III.

Anglo moz was empty tonight, they had just released MTH, EGL and Philosophy. OAU had dropped their first dose of livid lashes. You shook your heard when you saw 20 at the department notice board where they pasted your test your scores, that was 20 out of 30, that means you needed 50 out of 70 to make an A. It wasn’t impossible given your tenacity, but it would have been easier if you had scored 25 or 26 and if not for the partial differentiation question you missed and the Venn diagram you didn’t attempt you would have scored 28.

“I must study hard for my exams, you murmured”.

As you turned, you saw Martha, you saw her with a forlorn face, she had been the talk of the department the previous week, thanks to the rumour of her unhidden limerence for the musical Artiste that performed at the Mr and Miss OAU.

Martha had participated but didn’t win. She had given the contest her time, her energy, her body and every other thing, so she was dejected. Winning a beauty pageant was much more than beauty, alas! Not a lot of ladies knew this, becoming a superstar came with prizes, but it carried painful prices the hidden beneath the glitz.

You greeted her and she responded briskly, you asked how she was doing, a question you knew its answer. How would a lady who was mocked for her failure last week and saw 06 out of 30 in a five-unit course feel.

“I’m fine” she responded.

You asked if you could pay her a visit, or if you could hang out sometime, she gave a wry smile, and said ok. She asked for your number and you typed it on her iphone7, one of those men had bought it for her, you thought. When she asked you for your phone, you were too ashamed to show her your tattered techno W2, so you asked her to flash your line because you left your phone in the hostel, thank your stars your phone was on silence.

IV.

Martha had called you a week later , and you talked briefly, she sounded tipsy. She skirted around nothing and everything, she told you that she scored 10 over 30 in chemistry and needed tutorials. You could hear the loud Nicki Minaj and Cardi-B buzzling from a speaker and her friends calling her names to join the frenzy. You couldn’t fathom how people sat down to listen to musicians with such cuss words. You asked her to come around for a group study, but she said she wanted a personal one, so you said you’d call her back, alas you didn’t!

You ran into her on the first day of lecture free week, she was wearing the outfit you saw on her whatsapp status updates two weeks ago where she announced that she just had her make-up from house of rheevo, her nails from scenami and her outfit from house of Annie-oti. She told you she was going for a friend’s birthday party and promised to call you the next day.

The next day was at ODLT 1, you had heard someone screaming, “This one too has run mad o”

You looked up and what you saw, no! who you saw, It was Martha, she was pulling off her wig and shaking her head vigorously, you couldn’t believe your eyes. You dashed out of your seat to the front of the hall where they had dragged her. She had put her off her blouse and wanted to tear her pinafore. You put off your cardigan and covered her.

“She has been taken coffee and coke since morning” another lady said.

You carried Martha on your back and ran to health centre speaking in tongues as you ran……..

V.

Martha opened her eyes at few minutes past twelve the next day, Thank God the exams was four pm. She had sobbed in your arms, narrating her ordeal in the past few months.

She told you about how she partied, smoked, and did all sorts just to keep herself together.

One of the lecturers in her faculty had threatened her because she didn’t give in to his lasciviousness and assured her of failing his course when she got to part two.

She had lived off her body and her friends because no one would believe she was broke, thanks to her fame that rose magnificently after she won miss TESA.

You took her to her hostel, she changed, and you did a two hours rush revision before going for the exams.

Yesterday, you parted for part one holidays, you were grateful for your results as you made three 2 As and One B, the B coming in a three unit course while Martha managed a B and 2 Cs, it might have been a torrid tale if not for divine intervention. You can now apply for MTN scholarship and your twin sisters now have a chance of going to school. Martha gave you a warm hug, and whispered a silent “thank you” as you parted, they were the best words to describe the state of her heart

To be continued.

Afterword: I was almost not writing the “V” part, at some point I wanted the story to end terribly but unlike my friend Inioluwa Michael, I love stories with happy endings, however you can cut that part out and write your own imagination…Martha might have run mad permanently , and Chinedu would have lived in guilt, Martha might have missed the exams and have an extra year….. Today marks exactly six months that I left school and it saddened my heart that people ran mad while reading, a lot of factors might have caused this and I might just make this a series…while I think about that option, please reach out to everyone around you, tell them how much you care about them, a smiling face doesn’t automatically indicate a smiling heart. Show some love.

Do you want me to make this a series?

Leave a comment.

Emmanuel Faith

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