Caught Up In Few Minutes

“You need to hear the sound of the speaker am telling you about. It booms to high heavens. Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! Like thunder rumbling”

Emeka in his demonstrative way is telling us in the class one morning about new music speaker his uncle bought and how it transformed their neighborhood. He had missed class for three days in a row and when he showed up, it was apparent from what occupied his day while he was absent from class that long. No one pointed that out but it was clear. He was listening to music in his uncle’s new speaker.  

No one is doubting if he would have made a good comedian of any genre had our society evolved to what it is now then in late ‘80s we were in third year secondary school. But era one grows has this serious impact on his life especially financial one.

Today stand-up comedians don't realize that in the years gone, they had been silent stars in their field far better than them that wallow in poverty today while they with less talent is wallowing in wealth.

Emeka is that kind of people that once you pass them and had the privilege of seeing them talk, you recall the voice or the demeanor or the face or the laughter or…. Many ways their God made sure you will not easily forget them in decades after first contact.

 Classroom work?

He is average and using myself as an example, he would have been up there with the best but teachers are mostly level six and quality textbooks are nothing to write home about. 

He was among those that faded out after the junior West African examination council(WAEC) which had come out with the fail you repeat a year policy and many students especially male folks stopped education at that level after failing that exam. The government realizing that their male folks are abandoning education out of shame and money decided to cancel that policy.

I can't recall if most of my classmates faded after that exam in the late 80s as a result of failure, money or just switching to better schools. Emeka was among those that did not continue in my school.

When I ran into Emeka again after that year was four years later while I was taking an external exam for the same exam but this time, it was the senior equivalent meant to take me to college. His voice was familiar but his face?  something else at times. If he was not in his characteristic self joking and laughing mood that made me stop and looked, I would not have recognize him. He was even the one that came rushing to me in full recognition. After that, it was to be decades again. 

Meanwhile, life took me to another continent and another routes I never anticipated as a student. Prison. A day in it, I met one man from his town and when we started talking, he happened to be Emeka's cousin. Funny how life happens and attachments happens too. Twenty-one hours by air and in an unlike less of a place, Emeka the comedian stuck to me in his way. Not actually that he was my friend or what you call one, but like, comedians, he was everyone’s acquaintance then at that age. But there I kept meeting him in one way or the other in unexpected places Even in foreign prison. 

“You said he was selling electronics in one southern state the last time you heard from him?”

“ Yeah, and that would be around eight years ago. Now, I am here I don’t know anymore anything happening outside”

“Was he performing well then?”

“Ha!, a man feeding himself with family would say to be performing. If you are talking about throwing wealth about, I am not sure he has that kind of money”

“I mean if he has everything people expected a man to have financially wise at certain ages. Like building a house, having a healthy car, kids in better schools and a wife not disfigured by work trying to supplement”

“ No, there’s no sign of such in his life when I saw him last. He is okay, has house even if not a mansion, one fine “end of discussion” of a car, and medium beauty of a wife”

“He balanced then in my opinion” was my reply to the guy before I was moved two stories up to another cell. The guy later was changed prison.

Years later, when I regained my freedom, or what looked like it, I ran into another classmate from secondary level one day heading for one document from the Local Government secretariat we exchanged numbers, and when I later called I was told of the gathering of ex-set mates through WhatsApp set up for that. It sounds interesting. Almost everyone is there except a few and Emeka was among those Few and to think that even those from his town don’t know about his whereabouts was surprising to me. Few among that set have left this planet and some struggling like me and not seen or heard like me. 

Not easy to be among those ex-mates. It is like a live reunion and when you don't measure up, it is hard to be showing your face each week when they gather. I kept intentionally dodging those weekly reunions and some were even asking me how they will help me.

Shit, how they will help me do what? start a business, or help me get married Would they help me also feed the kids that would follow?

The government is in one of her indirect policies of trying to impoverish the masses or made themselves billionaires. They concluded that the color the country's bank notes are not attractive enough and decided to swap currency with new colored ones. The country was in chaos for almost four months in an attempt to exchange old with the new. Many died in that government move that never came to fruition and many businesses went out of existence.

  I was in one of my daily quests to get little amounts I had in the bank like others, a mission that was proving to be impossible one as days goes buy. New currency is not up to a quarter of the one deposited and moves there were turning out to be survival of the fittest move. I was rushing to the bank to join the queue as usual one cloudy morning when I heard that familiar laughter I heard last In early ‘The 90s from a man that just passed me, and I could not mistake its source. I stopped and as on cue, the laughter abruptly halted too. As I turned to be sure, the owner of that voice turned too, and what burst out of our mouths were our names at the same time.

I was little confused as he held my hand in a wrench like a grip. It is the face even though it has changed a bit but the voice was hundred percent intact. The thing is that he supposed to be dealing on electronics in one southern states, not, a bank manager in one of the first tier banks in Nigeria in eastern state. How come?

I was practically pushed into the bank and I spent the better part of that day meeting up on history.