Friendship Gone Kaput

Course mates are like wounds that leave their marks on your skin at times on your soul even years after being cured. Some of those wounds behaves as if they came into this planet with you, so it’s their right never privilege to lay claim of attachment if not that of ownership on you. You have no choice but to go along praying that mother nature will reason with you and restore your skin to it’s original position. 

That’s exactly what some course mates are. Wounds that refused to heal properly. If the course mates in question happened to be your friend, carpool or any one of those attachment that last years, it’s wounds were even more difficult to heal. The funny thing about this brand of wound is that naturally, you don’t pay critical attention to the scar even years after the wound had healed. This type can be referred to as Chickenpox that usually stamp it’s claim, authorities on the virtue of being a paddy to the victim. 

Nigbo was my guy before, yeah before for I don’t know what he is to me now. He was my paddy during our undergraduate years, I don’t even remember exactly how the friendship started, but I think it was one of those evaluation process some use to line themselves up with another person. I believe he found me trust worthy or something nearer to it. Many always read me from that angle first, reason I honestly don’t know.

We went up and down for four years together and after graduation, we went out different routes. He to his State, I to mine. When after years without any meaningful thing doing, I found my way out of the country.

A year abroad, he was one of those course mates I got in touch first from my base. We talked, exchange new numbers again but I noticed that the guy was struggling from the way he sounds, I myself was struggling to find my feet in foreign land too. So that made two of us. I wasn’t usually with spear change to call him and he don't either. I Know that I was better off than him.

Imagine his situation, I was struggling seriously then in foreign land and I was still better off than him. At times, when I save enough change to call those course mates, especially that my guy, I will be hearing children’s noise at the background. One day, I summoned courage to ask him about those background noises. Truly, I thought he was living in one of those “You face me, I face you” buildings that it’s occupants are one step ahead of classless. I said one step ahead, yeah because, it’s not equivalent of ghetto, ghetto is one step behind and those ‘you face' occupants gets offended when being referred to as ghetto people. They are 3rd class citizens.

Some Eastern Europeans that found their way into Africa looking for oil well at the back of the village government don’t know exist live in those 'You Face me' places when they couldn’t find oil and lost themselves too. Imagine living in a place with those mental drained and wretched white guys, they use the same public restroom with you, fuck around like you, carry Jerry can around morning and Evening and yet still being grouped as ghetto don’t sit pretty with some locals hence the nomenclatures.

I was told that the background noise belonged to his uncle’s kids that he was temporary clashing with them. That was when I realized that “There was fire on the mountain” in my guys life. Bad government had turned my guy into house maid just for oil to enter his mouth.

Shit!, This life can be something else within an twinkling of an eye. Boy, it’s not easy to be an adult in some third world countries. 

That call was the last time I called my guy Nigbo before I had problem and found myself inside for years. After about 12 years of severing communication, my term came to an end and I was deported. Months later when I finally got my own phone, I was trying all the old contact numbers and only two was still working and this my guy number was one of them.

“Hello, is that Nigbo?”

“Ah, are you who I believed you to be?”

“Yeah, I am who I am, don’t know who you believe it go be?”

“ Are you Philip, or ghost?”

“I am Philip, no ghost answers that name”

I narrated my ordeals to him and he was thanking heaven on my behalf which made me to start thinking whether he has became born again for he was not particularly Religious person since I know him. again, I heard those children background noise I heard last about 13 years ago. I was wondering if he is still living with his Uncle. This time, I didn’t enquire for I was seriously wondering if those his uncle’s kids don’t grow up. Surely, they can’t remain under five for 13 years. It was on his next call that he hinted that the kids were his. 

Married with two kids. He had joined real estate business and was acting as link between buyers and sellers. The first real money he made, he got married to one of his years gone sweet heart. In bad economy like that Nigeria, nothing is stable and so it was with his business. What I gleamed from what he was saying, his accounts were in red.

Believing me to be his chance of getting out of the red he usually found himself, my situation and conditions must have given his hope a mighty blow for who he was hoping on was emptier than him. Since he knew who knew my younger sister and her husband, knowing them to be relatively well off and believing logically that they will fix me up and the fixing up will get to him through me. He was in the same City with my sister and I in another city.

Meanwhile, almost a year I came into the country, I have not seen him life only in Facebook. I really don’t know again exactly who I am dealing with. My judgement of him was that of twenty- something years ago. From the story I heard, he travelled to my village years ago looking for me when he don’t know I was inside and one old man told him I was inside and he faced his life till I called months back. 

When his calculations weren’t materializing as he calculated, he stopped calling and when I call, he would tell me that he would call me back in an hour time that he was tied down then. When the incident repeated itself thrice, I relegated him to the second division and from look of things, it seems as if he did that before me for about four months now, I have not heard from him.