Diary Of an Ibadan Girl: Entry 5

Dear diary,

I promised to fill you up with entries about the events of my life. But Alas, my performance has fallen below par.

Sigh.

I hope that my inadequacies shall be overlooked this time and I be allowed to continue to write in peace.

I’ve had the busiest past weeks ever! Two of my mother’s sister’s daughters got married and amazingly, it was my own life that shut down. Not my mother’s, not her sisters, not even the brides! Mine!

I don’t know what it is with Mothers and weddings.

Being the first daughter of my parents, I’ve had to deal with subtle jibes from Maami several times about boys, marriage and stuff. Especially since I graduated from Uni, the playlist of my day had began with ‘Marry me by falz feat. poe’ and ended with another equivalent ‘marry me context full’ song.

The tricky thing is, as at this time last year, my mother was telling me that I should place my focus on what matters and not follow boys o. And as an obedient child that wants her own children to heed to her own warnings too, like my mum would rightly phrase, I have since closed the boyfriend chapter of my life till I feel I can handle several things without placing more focus on one than the other.

So the thing now is, where does she wants me to go and find impromptu boyfriend now?

Just because Tiwalolu and Temilade are married now, my mother’s hints are no longer subtle again. I’ve been trying to tell this woman these past weeks, these your sister’s daughters, are we mates? are they not older than I am?

But no, my mother wants me to go and tell all the boys that she has been telling me to say ‘no’ to for the past 5 years that, “Ok o. Oya o. Mo ti ready o“.

Shioor.

I sha know that my mother will be fine eventually. She’ll be fine o.

Just incase you’re lost and wondering why and how I got here, kindly click here to check out my previous diary entries.

Dankies.

Okay, so I was talking about my gist with Sekky in my last entry but I haven’t quite explained how it went. This was how it went:

Sekky was at my house for close to two hours o. But guess what? Of everything she said, she only began to make sense to me with the information she provided in the final 5 mins. And this was even in the moment she was about to leave.

The thing is, it wasn’t even part of the conversation we had at all. She merely said it casually but then it became what mattered the most.

I am not going to bother going into all of the what we talked about right now because, damn, it’s been two whole weeks and I barely remember what happened last night. What, with all the many things happening in my life at this fast stretch. I can barely keep up.

But then, it was like this: You know how us girls are. We’d be going to Challenge from Mokola, but no, we’d first of, go and pass through Aleshinloye to Apata. Then from Apata to Abeokuta. Then, when we realise there’s not much exciting events on the journey to Olumo, we’d come back to Omi-adio, Ibadan and from there back to Apata where we’d been prior. Before we now make up our minds to pass through the Akinyemi-Mobil-IyanaAdeoyo road to where we are going gan-gan which is the almighty Challenge.

Sekky was just dillying-dallying. Instead of her to go straight to the point that kinikon kinikon o. But no, not my Sekky.

Eventually, the moment Sekky was going to dive into the real gist (When she was about to arrive at her own Challenge), was when her phone rang and her mum called talking about an impromptu errand that she was supposed to run. That was how our gist sha died untimely.

But before Sekky left. In only 5 minutes and few sentences, she literally turned my life around in ways that you’d soon be finding out about.

Before then, there’s a little important background information:

Sekky has an older brother, Idris. I could say we grew up right in his palms as per he was born like 200 years before we were. He’s way older. Like 7 good years way older and back then, age was kind of a big deal. He taught us so many stuffs, growing up. Idris was the most caring big brother one could ever wish for. Really. How I envied Sekky all those times he followed her to school, carrying her small backpack and everything. But the consoling part was, Idris was not only equally attentive to me, he was also equally doting. He did many silly things back then but I still think they were really cute anyway. Idris would come to our school everyday from his own school at closing hours just to buy ice-lolly for us.

There were so many things he did that I remember but one in particular stays green in my memory. It was the day I had a near-fight with Sekky in primary school. I had this fine water bottle that I hung over my neck every afternoon after school. I liked to show it off and I figured people would not see it if I kept it in my lunch basket. Hence, necklace.

Long story short, Sekky wanted water to drink from my bottle (hers had finished since morning as per Sekky can act like an empty well on some days). That was how I gave her water to drink from my own and then, the cover of my water bottle disappeared o. My trophy. My one in town, almighty water bottle. I could not even keep calm.

“Go and look for it o. Before I beat the hell out of you.”, I said to Sekky with tears dampening both of our eyes.  Often times, I played defender of the universe whenever either one of us was bullied. So, she knew I wasn’t bluffing. I could really beat the hell out of her.

We searched everywhere but couldn’t find the cover to my bottle. But when Idris arrived, Lool. One can easily guess the rest.

He not only found the cover to my bottle o, he found a way into my young heart as well.

I’ll continue in my next entry. 🙂