Diary of a Philophobe (Chapter 1)

The Chronicles of the AGC

Wednesday, 31st March 2021 7:33 pm

Here I am sitting outside on my dad’s fold-able blue chair, typing with the light shining over the fence from my neighbor’s house. The night is clear and warm with slight winds drifting in between the trees, bringing with it blood-sucking mosquitoes. I must tell you, they are hellbent on finishing what little blood I have remained in my skinny yellow legs.

Today I bring to you a particular memory or shall I say a collection of memories from my childhood, because really what I’m about to tell was a staple during my childhood.

Somewhere between 1997 and 2001…..

The drums of the street troop grew louder and louder, that even the apartments on the topmost floor of the ten-story buildings lining the modest Vincent street had their doors shaking on its hinges. Most of the residents of Vincent street satisfied themselves with peeking through the cracks in their windows to watch the ongoing showdown below.

But not six-year-old Asake. Tiny feet hopped down the long stairs in twos and threes, out the copper-colored wooden door, and out into the bright graveled driveway of number 5, Vincent street.

Racing down the cobbled driveway, where one single trip on the uneven stones would have led to a bloodied split open forehead or perhaps knee or elbow- whichever was fortunate enough to kiss the ground first.

Grinding to a halt in front of the slightly rusted brown gate, separating the №5 from the rest of the street, Asake skids to a halt. With tiny hands, she presses her face between the cracks in the gate and stares in amazement at the colorful troop dancing towards the end of the street. She would have preferred being out in the streets to better catch a glimpse of the colorful arraignments on the dancers, and the beautiful trinkets dangling from the bottom of the drums slung across the shoulders of the drummers. It was as though those trinkets had a life of their own as they danced to the rhythm flowing from the fingertips of the drummers onto the leather skin of the drums.

Asake longed to be out in the street to better see the acrobats balanced precociously on each other’s shoulders, performing life-threatening stunts. She contemplated breaking out of this visual prison but resigned her cause to the gold and silver padlock effectively placed out of her reach. She contented herself with watching the troop through the bars in the gate, meticulously recording every detail to report back to her siblings and parents.

I considered it necessary to give detailed news about everything going on in the neighborhood to my family. I thought it important to tell them every single piece of information I gathered. Whether it be information on our neighbors who had fought the day before because the husband had finally found evidence of his wife’s infidelity or the latest candy the man in the kiosk down the street had just added to his tray of sweets.

I stayed with my face glued to the bars on the gate till the last shreds of the music and dancing troop had faded away in the distance and couldn’t be heard again. I came away with red streaks on my face both from the rust on the gate and the shoddy paint job that had been an attempt to cover the slowly dying gate.

Retracing the steps in the same twos and threes, I ran back up the stairs to report the latest findings from ‘AGC” (short for Asake Glory Coverage). AGC is a title I wear with pride, a name given to me by my siblings due to my news covering abilities. It was meant as a joke and a way of teasing my absolute love for poking my nose in everyone’s business. Even though they would call me AGC whenever I raced into the sitting room, panting and out of breath to deliver the latest news, they would still drop whatever it was they were doing to get a load of the new gist.

At that age, I already knew that even though they pretended like they were past minding other people’s business, they didn’t mind it been delivered to the right in the comfort of their own sitting room. So AGC or not, I had an audience who would listen to me so I took it upon myself to collect the most news I could gather.

I needed no further announcement for my siblings to know that I had brought in the news of the dancing troop. As I stood in front of our black twenty-four-inch Aiwa television, simultaneously blocking the view of my brother and sisters and putting a stop to whatever it was they were watching.

I think it was MTV. Who cares, AGC is here to deliver some quality news, so you all better listen up.

‘You’re not transparent you know, so please do us all a favor by packing your skinny bones from the front of the TV’.

That was my darling brother, Sammy, my one and only brother whose head I wanted to break half the time. The most noticeable thing about the said person is that he was just as skinny as I was.

I could confidently say that because I was currently in his T-shirt and shorts which was hanging just as loosely off my shoulders as it would have on his own shoulders.

‘She thinks because she looks like a mosquito, we would be able to see the TV through her skinny head and shoulders.

That my dear was one of my elder sisters, Shayo, aka noisemaker of the family. You would know whenever she walked into the room. It’s either she’s singing off-key to the song on the TV (even though she had a pretty nice voice and was capable of singing whatever song beautifully) or just generally shouting about something.

Whenever she fought with someone in the family, one would think she was never going to speak to the said person again, and if other members of the family are not careful they would get dragged into the fight as well. Needless to say, she was caring as she was loud. Shayo would worry about the most baseless of things that no one would care about.

If I break something in the house, she would worry in my place. We would often say:

‘If you have a headache, don’t worry. Shayo would take the headache relieving drugs for you’.

The AGC lead reporter didn’t care for all the words hurled her way as she had finally regained her breath and was about to launch into the latest cover story.

‘So you people heard all the singing and drumming right?’ I launch myself avidly into the story I’m about to tell.

‘The people singing and dancing are from that church at the T-junction, three streets away.

‘Which church, there are plenty churches there’. Abandoning all pretext of watching MTV base, my brother asks.

‘That church now, that one that has a brown and green roof and white windows. That one is opposite where they sell Moi-Moi and Eko’. I explain impatiently.

‘Ode, there are two churches there. Which one are you talking about gangan? Shayo quips in.

‘Oh, God! I’m talking about the one that is besides that upstairs house. You know that one that is like two upstairs inside one compound, that they first of all built one and then started building the other one last week’.

By now I’m really hoping they know which church I’m talking about.

‘Oh, that one that Mummy Kike goes to’.

Finally, Sammy spares me from further explanation. How he knows that that’s the church Mummy Kike goes to amuses me since I’m supposed to be the Amebo here.

‘Ehn ehn so, they’re from that church and they’re advertising their upcoming seven days revival. You remember Segun that lives in that yellow house across the street, he was the one drumming. I didn’t know he could drum so well’.

At this point, I had begun to hop from one leg to the other in excitement.

‘Some people were also dressed in colorful clothes, up and down like this. I think they were Atilogwu dancers. One of them carried like three people on his shoulders and they were jumping from the back to the front, one of them even…’

‘Fell and died?’.

I was suddenly interrupted by my brother, my skinny counterpart whose clothes I was currently wearing.

‘No, he jumped on my head and started dancing there, I pat my head to further drive home the intended sarcasm.

‘Actually what happened was that there was another boy at the back who was carrying a fire ring and then the other man carrying three people on his shoulder suddenly……’

‘Ah mummy is coming, mummy is coming’, my younger sister suddenly shouts from the balcony and I knew at that point that I was dead meat.

You see the initial reason why I had gone downstairs in the first place was to grind the beans intended for tonight’s supper. Neither had I taken the beans to the grinder’s house nor could I even remember where I placed the blue paint bucket holding the grains of beans.

Neither could a girl finish her interesting story nor could she foresee whether she would see the sunrise tomorrow.

Please remember to put a girl in your prayers tonight.

Thank you.

Appendix

Name pronunciation guide: Ah-sha-keh

Eko- cornmeal

Ode- akin to ‘fool’

Gangan- exactly

Ehn Ehn- generic sound made to express different emotions

Atilogwu dancers- a traditionally sprinted youth dance group from the ethnic group of Nigeria