It was the coldest January she had
ever experienced in all her twenty years and seven months, and Dara usually
didn’t handle cold so well. As if it wasn’t hard enough to have to travel so
far from home only a day after the New Year to allow her settle in for a few days
before work resumed, the cold shocked her—puzzled her, even. It blew like wind,
numbing the face, fingers, every part of the body left uncovered, and
threatening to whirl one off to freezing point.
Dara’s plan the past four years
had been all about graduating top of her class. To do that, she had studied
hard, kept distractions at bay, mixed with like-minded people, and had had a
four-pointer CGPA in Biochemistry to show for it. Now school was over, real life had begun, and
her new plan was to live it. This meant staying strong. Strong enough to get
out of bed every morning no matter how tempting it was to just lie under the
duvet. Strong enough to endure the lousy accommodation her PPA had gotten her
in a nearby compound with poor drainage. Strong enough to face the school
children with a bright smile everyday because it was her duty for the next ten
months. Strong enough to protect herself from the extremely harsh weather with
the thickest clothing items she laid her hands on. Strong enough to enjoy Gombe,
no matter what, because she had had a chance to leave but had chosen to stay
and so had no right to utter a single word of complaint.
******************
“Good morning, fellow corps
members. Hope everyone had a fun holiday, especially those who travelled home
even though there was no official permission to do so”—there were mumbled jokes
and laughter—“To all batch A and B corpers, it’s a new year and CDS has fully
resumed. I urge us all to endeavour to make meaningful contributions to the
group this year for better results than ever. To the batch Cs that have newly
joined us, this is environmental sanitation community development service
group, where we try to enlighten ourselves and the community at large on how to
maintain proper hygiene in our surroundings. We hold our meetings every
Thursday between ten a.m. to twelve p.m. You are all very welcome, and your
contributions and full participation in this CDS will be highly appreciated.”
After the president’s speech, the
group secretary read out the minutes of the last meeting they had held, and
plans for batch C welcome party/batch A send forth party were discussed. Dara
observed quietly from the back row of the old building they used as classroom,
wanting to form an objective opinion as opposed to the ‘waste of time’ she had
heard CDS popularly being described as.
Before the close of the meeting, a
slim, fair guy that sat in front of Dara got up to speak. “I think it’s
important to let the new members introduce themselves briefly so we can at
least get to know their names, schools they graduated from, disciplines, PPAs,
etc.”
There were only two other new
guys, and after they had spoken, Dara got on her feet too. Smiling, she said,
“My name is Oluwasarasimi Adegbite—Dara, for short. I’m from Kwara State, I
studied Biochemistry at the University of Ilorin, and my PPA is Amazing Grace
Primary School.”
“Status?”
“What?”
The guy that had spoken earlier
turned to look at her, and repeated himself with a straight face, “Your marital
status. Single and seriously searching? Engaged without a ring? Married but
left ring at home?”
Everyone laughed. Dara replied
with a grin, “Single but not desperate.”
Later when he walked up to her
where she was waiting by the road for a bike to take her home, his opening line
was, “I’m not desperate either, but I think you might want to know me.”
“Really? Why?” she asked, amused.
He shrugged. “’Cause I’m cool and
you need someone to show you around town.”
“I’m settling in just fine,
thanks,” Dara smiled at him.
He sighed. “I’m trying to be
not-so-desperate here but you’re desperately trying to prove me desperate. Not
cool.”
“What’s your name?” she asked him,
squinting under the sun. It was amazing how the sun was up and yet the air was
cold.
“I’m Chika. And you have a lovely
name. Dara. Means something good, right?”
Dara nodded. “I’m sorry I have no
idea what yours means.”
“That’s alright. I was born and
bred in Lagos, so I probably speak better Yoruba than Igbo,” he told her,
smiling. He noticed she was shifting from one leg to the other, so he said, “I
realize I might have held you here for abit longer than I should have, so I’ll
just stop the next bike that comes around for you while I desperately ask for
your number.”
“Okay, that’s enough desperation
for one day,” she laughed as she punched her number on his phone before getting
on the bike.
************
The following Thursday, Dara woke
up with a headache. She had a pack of pain relievers, so she took two tablets
during breakfast, before she left for CDS. She got to the venue right on time,
but Chika had already saved her a seat next to his at the middle row.
“I would have given you a call
since last week, but I had to make an urgent trip oer the weekend and got back
last night,” he said, leaning towards her as she sat, after he had motioned her
over.
Dara nodded and smiled politely.
She had actually not given him any thought till she had seen him again. Writing
lecture plans and notes and marking assignments for two different subjects kept
her busier than she thought she’d be as a teaching corper. She liked it though,
how the days gradually passed without her realizing because she had been
absorbed with work.
She must have lost concentration
at some point, because suddenly there was a general laughter and she didn’t
know what it was about. What she felt instead was body pain and an impending
fever.
Chika leaned towards her again and
asked, “Are you alright?”
“I feel really hot.”
“You’re burning up,” he confirmed
by placing the back of his hand against her neck. “Did it just start?”
She winced in reply as the
headache returned.
“Damn mosquitoes,” he muttered.
Then he walked over to the front to have a word with the president, and soon
came back to tell her, “Maybe you should go home, Dara. You shouldn’t stress
yourself if you aren’t feeling well.”
She tried to argue, but the
headache intensified. He followed her when she got up to leave. “I-I’ll be
fine. I’ll just go and rest at home,” she said as they walked to the road.
“Alright. But you should see a
doctor or at least get drugs to take. I’m guessing it’s malaria. Has this ever
happened to you before?”
“Yeah. Curse of an AA. I’ll stop
at a pharmacy on my way home, I think there’s one on my street,” she replied,
trying not to alarm him any more than he already was, but actually feeling
worse.
“How about I come with you?” he
offered.
She managed a smile. “Thanks, but
that shouldn’t be necessary.”
“I want to. That way I’ll be sure
you’re going to be okay.”
“I will be—“ She stopped talking
and groaned, holding her head in her hands.
“I insist.”
He waited outside her one-room
apartment so she could change from the khaki uniform into something more
comfortable, then watched her take the physician’s prescription. She soon fell
asleep on her slim mattress, and when she woke up forty minutes later, he was
lying on the carpet with his head beside her legs on the mattress.
“You’re still here.”
She watched him, confused, as he
walked towards her hotplate to uncover the pot on it. Even with the delicious
aroma of noodles that filled the room, she still had to ask to be sure. “You’re
cooking?”
He shrugged, squatting to stir the
pot’s content with a fork. “I figured you might have to eat something when you
woke up. I wasn’t so sure you didn’t take the drugs on an empty stomach.”
“I ate before leaving home in the
morning. But it’s really thoughtful of you to do this. Thanks,” she told him,
touched.
He grinned. “Actually I’m not the
gentleman you’re thinking I am. I’m just a hungry man who discovered your
carton of noodles. Didn’t want you staring at my mouth so I made enough for
two. How’re you feeling by the way? Any better?”
“Yeah…fine. But you’re something
else, Chika,” she replied, trying not to laugh for fear of the headache
returning.
…Eating together on her carpeted
floor that early Thursday afternoon marked the beginning of a friendship,
without either of them realizing it.
*********************************************************************************
Morountodun is a writer and a microbiology graduate of University of Ilorin.
Twitter: @Morountosweet
*********************************************************************************
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