My Best Friends Ran Away
Not me
The placatory pat-on-the-shoulder- theory of 'everything happens for a reason' aside, this is the reason why bad things happen to good people.
Scavenging for food
We refused to go home for the short inter-semester break. The year is 2018.
There was my very close friend Ekoja whom I called 'Esco', and who was in his third year studying Real Estate Management.
Then there was Daniel Bulus whom all of us called 'Sir Dan' because not only was he the eldest amongst us, he was a man of indisputable probity and jovial and avuncular (the cool uncle), so we came to respect him like that. He was a Theatre and Film Arts finalist.
And of course, there’s yours-truly — me — positively requiring more than one paragraph to describe, and that with a very delicate employment of dualistic terms, in my second year studying Integrated Science. Cheers!
We were three very good friends, each filled with respect for the others’ intellect and personality. I was, however, the youngest and least intelligent.
Esco ate the toughest Maths problems for his dessert menu and was completely unchallengeable in the Environmental Sciences department as a whole.
Sir Dan was too sincere to be a good actor, so he branched in 'theatre for societal development' and he knew his stuff as a pastor knows his word. Indeed he was the one who unfurled the intricacies of 'Feminism' to me with such careful preciseness that it was much more difficult not to understand.
And me? Well, it was difficult to point out what exactly I was good at and what I wasn't. What you'd call a 'Jack of all trades, master of none'. I read fiction, memoirs, Renaissance history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, physics, political science, medical journals, geology, biology, and geography, interned shortly at a radio station, attended play rehearsals at the theatre, engrossed in student union politicking and ignored class almost entirely.
This way, we used to stay up deep in the night debating a plethora of ideas and just passing knowledge around ourselves like the juice jug at the brunch table.
It was exactly what we were doing on this particular night too, before agreeing that we were all starving.
We rushed to the hostel gallery but every shop had closed.
The time was past 12 midnight. But we had to eat something. So we set out to stroll to another student hostel by the northern end of campus where a mutual associate of ours ran a kitchen.
We were certain he'd closed up as well and might have even hit the sack but we had every intention of dragging him out of bed to make us something.
It had rained in the day and the solar street lights were dim but we rolled, gist-ing and skipping from one topic to another.
We found some kind of a Pandora’s box
Literally, all the students had departed and the whole place was as cold and quiet as the gallows. It was dangerous, too, especially this northern end which was sandwiched in a community populated by Muslim extremist elements.
But this wasn't a problem. Three big guys, me and Esco are 6 '3, and though I looked sometimes like a strong breeze might knock me off, the fight is in the guts and in the head, this much I know.
But right on the steps of the entrance to the cafeteria, we hear a person cough and rustle between sheets and bags and pillows from among the trees.
I assumed my kung-fu pose instantaneously.
But "wait, hol' up", said Esco, "E be like say na person lie down for there oo.
Dan stretched his neck and scanned. "Somebody is lying there, Ken".
Sir Dan didn't speak the Nigerian street pidgin. He's too laid back for that.
"Okay, fine. Toh mek we d pass nau", I said, in a not-my-business manner, starting. Esco followed but Sir Dan hesitated.
What?
"But we can not just leave that person here. It's cold and dangerous out here."
"It's true", Esco agreed.
"No", I refused flat out.
"C'mon, Ken, think about it." I did.
"First we don't know is there in the first place," I pointed out.
"Let me find out", Sir Dan ventured. He took a few steps forward, craned his head, and informed us that the person was a she. There was a dim (although too dim) solar light beside the Mango tree.
"I don't like this," I said, matter-of-factly.
A lot of questions popped up in my head all at once.
What if this woman is armed?
What if she is concealing a bomb?
This place is far from safe, especially now that students aren't around. The locals never quite liked students that much.
Every single year a religious clash breaks out in the area and somehow at least a student who has nothing to do with their nonsense whatsoever manages to end up dead.
My opinion was let's go get something to eat and leave that woman the hell alone. The way I saw it, she wasn't doing too bad the way she was, covered in blankets and bags and all. Besides where are we going to take her?
I asked Sir Dan this question, to which he replied: "We'd find a room in one of the halls for her."
"But she saw all the halls too so why did she decide to sleep here?" I shot back.
I looked to Esco for his opinion. The man was completely expressionless. Esco, despite his imposing physique, was a coward. Not only did he usually stay on the fence in situations like this, he was capable of leaving a friend behind to perish. Also, he was bare-chested on this night.
I considered that too. If anything happened, would we strike the picture of a group of criminals or not? We would. As a matter of fact, we did.
"I will take her to my room," It was Dan who spoke.
What?
"Are you serious?"
Sir Dan nodded. I couldn't believe it. And was about to argue but I knew it would be fruitless with Dan, I had already almost stopped going to church by this time and Dan could sense that the Devil was already flirting with me.
There’s no way Dan nor Esco would go with my opinion in a situation like this since they were both devout Christians and I was — as they’d say — a canal man.
So I gave up.
"But I'm not in this with you. Go while I wait for you over there", I said firmly and pointed to another Mango tree thirty or forty paces away.
They went. One foot in front of the other, steadily. Sir Dan was small in stature and beside the big Esco, they looked like Tom and Jerry about to invoke mayhem.
And they surely did.
If it were a movie, this is where the high-pitched eerie-sounding music would begin.
Standing hands-akimbo beside the Mango tree, I heard Esco call out "Hello there, Ma!"
No response.
Sir Dan repeated the greeting in Hausa just in case the woman didn't communicate in English. Sir Dan spoke the local dialect very well.
Still no response.
They moved closer and repeated the routine of greeting.
Nothing.
Sir Dan then pushed to right where she was and stretched his hand to tap her feet when the woman jumped at once, brandishing a blade that shimmered in the dim light and screaming "Barawo! Barawo!"
Barawo is a Hausa term meaning thief, rapist and every other evil thing depending on the context.
Since I was already on ignition, I took off with a whiff. And so did Esco. And even though I had a 40-meter head start and was a good speedster myself, Esco soon overtook me.
It was a slope so we ran fast. Then it hit me.
Where's Sir Dan?
"Esco, where is Sir Dan?" I hollered.
Esco heard me alright but my man just kept going.
Panicking, I stopped. Then ran back against the slope, my heart beating fast.
I found Dan struggling in the grass. He'd tripped, fell, stood up, and tripped again, hitting his head against a rock. Blood was dripping but he seemed okay.
I carried him and we hid in tall bushes just close by.
Sir Dan was totally doing fine. Turns out it was just a small cut.
I peered.
A lone security officer threw his flashlight once or twice and went back into his shack.
Everything seemed quiet. So helping Sir Dan, we navigated a series of shortcuts through the bush back to our hostel.
Calm after the storm
It took some days to forgive Esco.
There were a lot of should-haves and could-haves that sored me.
What if the woman had sliced Sir Dan with that blade?
And she screamed "thieves" and "rapists", what if the area boys came out upon us. I still think the only reason it was quiet like that was probably because since it rained in the day, everyone was inside making babies.
But what if we had been caught? What defence did we have? None.
You say you are a student but school is on break, what are you doing here?
Where's your ID card? None of us had his ID with him
What are you doing out here by this time of the night?
Searching for food.
Really? By 1 am?
So what business did you have with the woman?
And Esco was bare-chested!
It will be difficult not to appear guilty to an unschooled, one-way-thinking mob.
The mob will lynch you for something less than that. This was an area where jungle justice often prevailed.
All these made me infinitely incensed. The potential danger we put ourselves in for no reason.
They should have listened to me.
But they weren't wrong either. They cannot be wrong for putting their empathy above reason. They just wanted to help.
But this is the reason why bad things happen to good people. And that day something really bad could have happened to both Esco and Sir Dan for just trying to be good.
Even to me, for not trying to be good.
Just a week or two later, the incident would become a regular fixture in our little banters. And I would taunt Esco and Dan that were the salvation of the world dependent on their sacrifice like Jesus, humanity would’ve been condemned because they ran away from Golgotha.
Not me.
I always wanted to grow to be a kind man, not a hero.
Never.
The idea of dying for another person is unintelligible to me.
Well, for now.
Golgotha, (Aramaic: “Skull”) also called Calvary, (from Latin calva: “bald head” or “skull”), skull-shaped hill in ancient Jerusalem, the site of Jesus' Crucifixion.
