Diary Of an Ibadan Girl: Entry 2

At exactly 10:15 am, I woke up from my long undeserved sleep.

By that time, I figured I must have slept for a total of 13 hours and 15 minutes.

Usually, I sleep by 9 pm, latest. And I wake by 6 am, nearly all the time.

What was happening to me?

Am I having a near-death experience?

Am I going through another mid-life crisis?

But wait, the big question here is, have I even reached mid-life in my life? If yes, when was the first crisis? (When does one reach mid-life, really?)

Because I really do not understand how and why I would sleep for almost 13 hours straight up and not question everything and everyone.

Where was my mother when you needed her?

Iya Morenike, the advocate of “If you sleep for more than 8 hours, Wa kan ya didinrin” “You’ll just become dull”. What was she looking at while her daughter slept like a log of wood?

That was when I first noticed my surroundings.

Usually, at my house, I slept in the same room with my younger sister. We slept together on a big Mouka foam mattress that was used by my parents before they got a new one and passed it down the line. Some days, I’ve had sleepless night in that bed because I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not it was where I was conceived. I would not say I am an imaginative person but the picture just came and it was really disturbing that I ended up sleeping on the floor on those days. Better not to be in the presence of your parent’s copulation bed at all. Ever.

So the first thing I noticed was the bed. This is not Mouka, I said to myself. Don’t ask me how I knew. I’ve been sleeping on Mouka foams since I could hold in my pee. And that was only when I clocked 10. (I wet beds till I was 9). All I’m saying in essence is, I’ve been sleeping on this thing since I could understand my body and manage how it worked. Since I had sense. And shame!

So I knew.

I stood up in one quick movement and raised the sheets in that same movement to confirm my suspicion. Alas, there it was. Bode foam! We don’t sleep on Bode foam in my house. The bed my brothers slept on is Mouka. Even the new one that my parent got is Mouka. So something must be wrong somewhere!

I looked around and immediately knew I hadn’t slept in my house the night before. Because I obviously did not wake there. If I had not slept in my house, then where had I slept in?

Whose house was this?

Why was I still in my yesterday’s clothes? I was even still wearing my brassiere.

And more importantly, why was there humming in the room?

Have I been abducted? Is this how kidnappers used to do?

I didn’t have to wonder for long before a door in the room opened and the finest young man that I’ve ever seen in my entire life walked right through with a towel wrapped around his lower region.

Yeah, his chest was bare and wet.

I figured the room he just emerged from must be the bathroom.

“Oh. Look who’s awake! I hope it wasn’t my singing in the bathroom that woke you? I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to wake you.”, he said while smiling at me.

Who was this bathroom singer that looked so painfully handsome?

More importantly, why didn’t he really want to wake me?!

At the same time, a voice in my head answered and said:

“He’s an abductor and he wants to rape you before he kills you.”

I stood there and said to myself:

“It’s one thing that’d kill a man eventually. Better to die in the hands of Amitabh Bachan who sang in bathrooms than one Rasaki from Oja-oba.”

“What is that humming sound?” Those were the first words I managed to utter to my handsome abductor.

I’ll continue in my next diary entry. 🙂