Must Read: Brother Wale - Season 1 - Episode 2

6 years ago

Must Read: Brother Wale - Season 1 - Episode 2

When I was told Maami couldn’t make it through surgery I was crippled for two days.
I wished so many things.

I wished she was alive to see me celebrate my 15th birthday, yes I wished it was she who prepared the bean cakes I and my friends eat at the birthday “bash” by the fire stand.

I wished she was alive to see me become 17th position in class leaving my usual 20th position.

I wish with tears in my eyes.

I wish with tears in my eyes that Maami was still alive to see Brother Wale beat her handsome Seyi bobo for no just cause; like when he beat me for asking him why he didn’t donate one of his kidneys to save Maami. Hmmmmmmm! Wicked Brother Wale. If a fifteen year old kidney was matured enough to be transplanted into a sick fifty year old, why not? I would have donated?
With tears in my eyes I woke up two days after we returned from the village after Maami’s burial with a question in mind.

“Brother Wale why have we been eating only beans since the burial?” That was the question.

A knock in my head was the response.
“eaaaaah! Wetin I do na?” I yelled as I heard the knock on my head echoed fourteen times and stars shone afterwards.

“Is that your greeting this morning?”
“Sorry brother, good afternoon!” I thought I saw the sun set.
“oooooh! It is afternoon abi?”
“yes………………… I mean No, good morning” I stammered, “I make mistake, I no know!”
“And how many times will I tell you that when speaking to me, you shouldn’t speak pidgin?”
“pegan! But brother I didn’t speak pegan na!”
“will you shut up! Did I say pegan? I said peeegiiin”
“peeegiiiin!” I tongue twisted, “brother what is peeegiin? Is it the language the pigeons in Yemi’s bird nest speak?”

And yet another knock landed on my head.
“aaaaah! Brother I have head ache oh!” I cried.
“oya sorry!” He served me sorry like fresh bitter leaf.
“sorry na, Seyi bobo! Okay pidgin means what you people call Broken” he explained.

“Oooooh! So na broken nahim be pidgin?” I had learned one.

Four the next few weeks we stopped eating beans so the two bags of beans Maami bought before she died wouldn’t finish; we started eating bitter leaf soup and “Iyan” for dinner and Akara and bread for breakfast. As for lunch, our food was tilling the ground to rid the bitter leaf farm off weeds. That was food meant to go through the mouth. For the Nose, the only food readily available between the hours of 1am to 3am is fart.

It wasn’t for my nose alone, but for my kidneys too. I remember a particular “battalion” of Brother Wale’s fart rendering my kidney useless and my stomach, it was running 100 metres. That night it rained and our leaking roof chase away my sleep. The first fart Brother Wale let out struck me like thunder and I faced the other way and covered by nose with my hands.

Then came another fart; what I would term the vibrating fart. At first I thought it was his phone vibrating, but when I put on the torchlight, I saw the truth.

The truth was that I would die if i don’t run for my dear life, and so I fled to the sitting room. As I was sleeping in the cushion in the sitting room, I felt my kidney moving around my solar plexus and so I assured myself I would never sleep in the same room with farting Brother Wale ever again, but again I was scared of sleeping alone in a room save the cockroach experience repeated itself.

The cockroach experience is an experience I will live to remember for the rest of my life and even in my after life. I was to travel with Brother Jimmy to the village the following day for Papa’s burial, Brother Wale and Maami was already in the village a day before.

That night, something happened that made me cursed Brother Jimmy for not coming to pass the night with me before we hit the road the following morning.

I had thought of going to pass the night with Yemi in his house but I feared I might not survive the next morning as his brothers might suffocate me with their pot bellies.

I pleaded with Yemi to come pass the night with me, but he refused sa