Family-Matters

I woke up to five missed calls on my phone. I had felt, rather than heard its insistent buzz deep within lalaland but sheer tiredness had kept me from waking up. Instead, the phone’s chirpy ringtone somehow ended up blending itself in with the background to some weird dream I promptly forgot on waking. Of the five missed calls, three were from my mother, one from my father’s phone and one from a private number. This has more or less become her standard M.O. - when she feels I am intentionally refusing to answer her phone calls that is. That she’d called five times suggested it was important, so I groaned inwardly, punched in the numbers for my calling card and made the phone call to Nigeria. ...

The woman clutched my arm. The first wave of feeling that hit me - when my mind frozen for an instant by the brazen grab - was fear, and then confusion, as she peered intently into my face with not even the faintest hint of recollection bouncing about in my head. She wasn’t wearing the flowing robes of an aladura prophetess, thus ruling out a smash-and-grab prophesy as the reason for her intrusion. Something about the deeply lined face, the light grey hair peeking out from underneath her tight head wrap and her uber thick lenses left me positively unsettled. ...

In what must be a first for me, I get invited to a birthday party over WhatsApp. Truth be told, there were mitigating circumstances. Although the parent in question and I have some tenuous familial connection - my grand father and her grand mother somehow managed to get entangled in the far distant haze that is a few generations ago - she and I haven’t stayed much in touch, in spite of us living the the small matter of the length of Union Street apart. I suppose the invitation was one last hopeful punt in my direction. If it was, it worked, the twin attractions of something to do on a Saturday afternoon and proper Nigerian food proving too strong for even I the quintessential recluse. Izzy, the kid in question had just turned One, and her parents keen to celebrate the milestone were putting together a small get together for the guys; for that I was very much a willing eater. ...

The mini heat wave that was, threatened to leave nerves frayed and tempers flared all week in Room 3.26 before - like a duplicitous conman - it vanished as abruptly as it had arrived. It just so happened that the air conditioning - perhaps suddenly burdened by the heat load and the multiplied tinkering of the occupants of the various offices in our section - huffed and puffed to an untimely death; leaving us in varying degrees of grumpiness. I had taken half the Friday off, looking to spend the afternoon strolling leisurely up and down Union Street, binging on the copious amounts of skin that had suddenly appeared, coaxed out by the warmth from beneath the bland greys and austere blacks that had been the standard fare for the last few months. The flirty weather had other plans though, and Friday morning arrived with a chill in its wake putting the dampers on any thoughts of prancing about town. I promptly cancelled my holiday, resigning myself to a full day of number crunching and copious amounts of milky, weak tea. So much for an early return to warm, sunny days! ...

In that productivity black hole that is the half hour before lunch - where the energy and the gusto from an early start have been steadily eroded by the mundanity of work and the insistent prattle of phone calls, emails and the odd buzz-word infested meeting - I stroll for the umpteenth time into the restroom, almost colliding with a man who is fiddling with the zipper on his fly. I least expect to find someone just inside the door, even though this time of the day is one where the restroom shuffle, coffee room trips and huddles of two and three in the hallway are time honoured strategies for the keen time waster. ...

One Sunday in December of ‘76 as the dry, dusty harmattan winds dumped a fine layer of dust on a sleepy village, two best friends who had not seen each other for the better part of three years were meeting up under the shade of a kola nut tree, squarely placed in the centre of the court yard of the unpainted cement building that housed one of the ruling families in a little village nestled underneath the overhanging rocks of the Somorika mountains. ...

On the surface, I live a life that most people would envy - 5 years working for a Fortune 500 company in Nigeria, followed by a well recognized MSc and then a job working for one of the industry leaders in my sector of the Oil industry. On the family side, it would appear that I have it all sorted - the quintessential good son, with proud, loving and doting parents. The true picture couldn’t be further from the truth. ...

Against everything my head tells me, I pick up the phone and call my elder sister. Growing up, she and I at best had a tenuous relationship, at the worst of times we barely spoke to each other for long stretches. She always had this way of taking bluntness to illogical extremes in my opinion. Lately, Mother has put her on the job of hassling me. When my call connects, she is in the middle of mixing up some cereal for her youngest child. She puts my call on speaker phone mode as she juggles her child, the phone call and the bowls she is using. ...

For Gracie, who the genes took… You never saw the thirteenth summer through- before the genes claimed you. You always were - the sallow one, knuckle- kneed, paper thin, but - the lights in your jaundiced eyes shone: through pain and fear, and hope and tears. The strength in your voice never dimmed, never waned, until the genes - like a belligerent marabout’s curse - turned you, to a mound of red- dead earth ...

Free food is great, especially when you are a confirmed bachelor with an aversion for cooking. I’m sure if my pots and pans have a choice they would vote to have me back in their next ’lives’. Such is the ease of their lives! Providence must have decided to be kind to me though, as a few hours after complaining of feeling listless I got a phone call from my work buddy O to head off to the beach. He and I have an inside joke where I hail him as my mentor and he says I’m much too old to be mentored by him, and considering the boring lives we lead, hanging out is always a plus. Fast forward a few hours and we head off to the beach where we go to this Chinese buffet thingy at Jimmy Chung. Two huge cokes, lamb ribs, some curried rice and soup later, we could belch with satisfaction at a great days work - all for nine pounds. I should definitely do this again!