Iridescent Hope - A Short Story by Jola Naibi
- By Mojolaoluwa Caxton-Naibi (Jola Naibi)
- Published September 10, 2009
- Fiction
- Unrated
Mojolaoluwa Caxton-Naibi (Jola Naibi)
Mojolaoluwa Caxton-Naibi (Jola Naibi) was born and grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and currently resides in the USA. She has written several short stories some of which appear on her blog called La Racontrice. She is currently in the process of completing a compilation of short stories and is also working on a full-length novel. Ms Naibi writes primarily in English, is fluent in French and can read and understand Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Colorful World blog.
View all Entries by Mojolaoluwa Caxton-Naibi (Jola Naibi)
Iridescent Hope
- By Jola Naibi
She smelt it before she saw it and the large flies which were beginning to circle her head in the morning sun confirmed what it was as they led her in a procession towards it. At first she thought it was the corpse of some animal that had been knocked down by a careless driver but as she drew closer she realized what it was and gasped loudly instantly covering her mouth before one of the flies could decide to take a trip down her throat using her tongue as a surfing board.
The charred remains of a human being lay several feet away from her and as she walked rapidly past it, she had to fight the human curiosity not to gape at the remains of the dead person while at the same time trying as hard as possible not to gag as the putrid smell jolted her senses to life and threatened to eject the contents of her stomach
Without looking she tried to cross to the other side of the dirt road as thoughts whirled through her head and she confirmed to herself that the body that lay there now had not been there when she had walked down this same road several hours before the previous day on her way back from work. The loud honk of a horn startled her momentarily as she realized that she had stopped in the middle of the street. Tears stung her eyes as the okada driver and his passenger – a young man clutching a manilla file folder while balancing steadily on the back of the motorcycle – cursed at her simultaneously. Their voices faded into the morning air and as she approached the bus stop she realized that was sobbing loudly. Almost immediately she heard the steady stream of a familiar tune from one of the ramshackle stalls which dotted the bus stop, and she laughed out loud as she recognized the upbeat tune of Onyeka Onwenu’s One Love. She wondered whose corpse it was that she had seen lying so ordinarily on the street on a weekday morning, was it male or female. Probably male, probably an accused thief possibly a victim of the jungle justice meted out recklessly by young people in the city often catalyzed by the howls of ‘Ole o’ ‘Ole o’.
Several minutes later she boarded the staff bus which pulled up at the regular pick-up point to transport her and the other people she worked with to their place of work on the Island from the Mainland. She still could not get the image out of her mind and resolved to take the longer walk home to avoid seeing it all the while asking her Creator to rest the soul of whoever it was that had suffered such an indignity.
She began to focus her attention on the day that lay before her, she had a lot to be thankful for even though she knew that a number of people would do a number of things to be in the position that she held as the Personal Assistant (PA) to the Head of Human Resources at a well-established and successful commercial bank, she alone knew that she was nothing less than a glorified errand girl. Mrs Kalu was the Head of Human Resources and her boss. About a decade and a half earlier, Mrs Kalu had earned a degree in Microbiology from some obscure university located on the West Coast of the United States. During her time as her PA, Olawunmi would come to believe that she would probably be kinder to micro-organisms than to the human beings in her life. With a blend of egocentrism, haughtiness and the odd sprinkling of sarcasm, Mrs Kalu had a knack for meting out all forms of invectives to everyone she came in contact with in the workplace for a variety of reasons from the banal to the serious. It did not seem to matter what level of the echelons of the career ladder you were on, no one was immune.
During her first week on the job, Olawunmi had cringed as she listened to a telephone conversation between one of the branch managers in the Northern part of the country who was seeking reimbursement for medical expenses incurred when his wife had a complicated birth which required additional surgical interventions. Mrs Kalu, confirming from the man that this was their fifth child proceeded to give him a thorough lecture on family planning going as far as accusing him of being one of the many men who was overpopulating the country.
Following her initial experience during her first week on the job, Olawunmi would spend the next three years in her position acquiring a great deal of ambidexterity in her role as the PA to the Head of HR. It was a necessary skill combined with the patience and tact that was required to put out the conflagrations which were inevitably lit as a result of her boss’s obvious intolerance for people. Her boss’ nuances and quirks were given the summary title ‘Mrs Kalu’s wahala.’ Nobody was prepared to deal with this metaphorical wahala which was almost like a saber-toothed tiger tearing up everything in its way and leaving people with the lowest form of self-esteem imaginable all the while condemning them to an episode of nail-biting and teeth-gnashing. If possible it was avoided like a plague and most people eased themselves out of situations where they would have to confront it.
As images of the dead body she had seen early that morning managed to shadow her thoughts during most of the day, Olawunmi busied herself with her work which most days consisted of following instructions barked at her by her vixen of a boss and pacifying a number of people who had been rubbed the wrong way by Mrs Kalu and her wahala. It was a wide range from those who were in the headquarters with them to those who were in the branch offices and who would ceaselessly burn the phone lines with one story of infraction or the other. The only time she felt she could exhale unperturbed was when Mrs Kalu finally left the confines of the office suite which they shared to attend a management meeting. Then Olawunmi felt free to stretch all 34 inches of her legs under her desk.
She was summoned into Mrs Kalu’s office when the latter returned with the news that the fleet of staff buses – a well-received perk which was helped to assuage the commuting woes of a high percentage of the staff at the headquarters was being yanked away from the beneficiaries in the most sudden and unexpected manner.
The fact was the city of Lagos was undergoing a crippling petroleum crisis and it was becoming increasingly difficult for the bank to continue to justify buying fuel at exorbitant prices for the buses all of which were assigned to various routes on the mainland part of the city. It was for this reason that senior management had decided to pull the buses off the roads until such a time as when the fuel crisis had dissipated and things were back to normal. The staff buses would with immediate effect be parked on the premises of the bank and staff members (Olawunmi included) who relied on the staff bus for the commute back home would have to find other ways of commuting. Olawunmi had the unmerited pleasure of drafting the memo and also bearing the brunt of the insults meted out by her colleagues who demanded a more detailed explanation since none of the members of senior management were relinquishing the company cars which were assigned to them.
The truth was the senior management could care less, since they had little or nothing to do with the staff bus and if there was a member of that group who showed the slightest form of compassion to the plight of the people who relied on the staff bus to get to work, it was clear that he or she would have borne the full weight of Mrs Kalu’s wahala. The staff buses were parked on the company premises until further notice pending a time when things normalized in the city. The announcement was made on a Friday evening, everyone found their way home with whatever means they could that evening.
The following Monday when several colleagues met to swap stories of what they had to endure during their commute to work, Pius Anyiam a brilliant yet dull and unassuming character in the Accounting Department swore that he had seen one of the staff buses in his neighborhood early on a Sunday morning, with the banner of an evangelical church concealing the familiar acronyms of the Bank which had been emblazoned on the side of the bus. Standing a short distance away from the group, Olawunmi shook her head in disbelief. It was possible that she was the only one present that knew that Mrs Kalu and her husband were the Grand Patron and Patroness of that particular church and that only that past weekend, the church had held its Annual Prayer Meeting which involved people from all over the country to convene at the church’s headquarters which was located smack in the middle of a densely populated area of the mainland which just happened to be the neighborhood where Pius Anyiam livede. She was not wrong in her suspicions that Mrs Kalu had used the staff bus in order to convey people who were attending this Prayer Meeting to the destination especially when the perceptive Mr Anyiam described the vigorousness with which the occupants of the bus were belting out popular praise and worship hymns.
Olawunmi herself had had a grueling ordeal commuting to work that morning. There were fewer commuter buses plying the roads at this point of the fuel crisis. She had ambled to the bus stop this time taking the longer route in order to avoid having to encounter the body which she had heard from people who had walked down the road in recent days was still lying languidly on the side road where she had last seen it. Unlike previous days when she waited for her staff bus at a side of the makeshift bus stop that was far from the madness of the crowd, she had had to mingle with the throngs of people who waited for the commercial vehicles that would take them to their various destinations. The word chaos took on another meaning and dimension of its own. It became clear the extent to which the fuel crisis had reached when the familiar danfo buses were a rare sight as most of them ran on the fuel which had become a precious commodity in town. The only form of transportation that was visible that morning was the black and yellowed-hued mammoth-shaped bus which had been given the incomparable name – Molue.
There was nothing else like it in Lagos and for many commuters that morning it was a godsend because it ran on diesel. Although at that point of the fuel crisis, diesel had not fallen into the ranks of what was considered essential but scarce commodities, many cynics were quick to point out that it was just a question of time since word on the street was the scarcity was about to extend to diesel.
In the meantime, molues were the saving grace for Lagos commuters relying on public transportation. And if you were yet to master the art of jumping on a molue in motion, it was a good time to learn. Molue jumping was an art which a fair share of the commuting population in Lagos – old and young, male and female had mastered to an impeccable tee. And Olawunmi tried not to look too astounded as she watched a young mother with her infant strapped diligently to her back run quickly and catch a molue in motion and hold on for dear life squeezing herself through the throng of people who populated the entrance to the bus. She braced herself thinking that if that young woman could do it there was no reason why she could not. Well aware that in this crowd could be nestled one or two predatory pickpockets, she held her handbag and her other larger tote bag which contained her decent work shoes and a number of items which she knew she would need to freshen up when she got into work . As she followed the singsong voice that screamed the words CMS! CMS! she made her first futile attempt to board the molue. It was almost like magic, the crowd of people that had a moment ago been subdued suddenly came to life and everyone leapt towards the large behemoth of a vehicle. A rotund-shaped man with a tie sticking out of his shirt pocket shoved her aside as she tried to retain her equilibrium someone else pushed her and in the middle of this she saw the house slippers she had on slide off her feet in the opposite direction of the rush. Hopping on one foot she tried to go after her runaway slipper and as the crowd pushed and shoved her from one side to the other she did not lose sight of it and finally managed to put her one nude foot into the rubbery interior catching her breath and looking in the direction of the receding vehicle. Even as the vehicle was moving faster more and more people were trying to get into it, one young man reeled forward and jumped on only to be jettisoned off because he could not hold on tightly enough. And almost immediately it started, the madness was over and all that was left was the ebbing of the sing song voice of the conductor of the molue still calling on passengers to board for CMS even when it was obvious that the bus was full to capacity. In its wake the molue had added to litter on the busy street - a pair of matching Dunlop slippers, a baby’s well-used feeding bottle and several oranges which were now being snatched off the ground by children who seemed to appear from nowhere, were a reminder of what had just transpired. She resolved to get on the next molue to CMS even it meant she had to lose all the dignity that she had built up for herself in all her years of grooming as an adult. Two molues later, she found herself in one standing conscious of everyone around her while nursing a sharp pain on the toes of her left foot which she longed to caress but could not because there was standing room only in the space she occupied on the bus and if she even tried to bend she was sure that everyone else would lose their balance and curse her for it. A wide variety of smells on the molue made her feel sick - the interior of bus was reeking of some stench that was a combination of dampness and degradation.
- By Jola Naibi
She smelt it before she saw it and the large flies which were beginning to circle her head in the morning sun confirmed what it was as they led her in a procession towards it. At first she thought it was the corpse of some animal that had been knocked down by a careless driver but as she drew closer she realized what it was and gasped loudly instantly covering her mouth before one of the flies could decide to take a trip down her throat using her tongue as a surfing board.
The charred remains of a human being lay several feet away from her and as she walked rapidly past it, she had to fight the human curiosity not to gape at the remains of the dead person while at the same time trying as hard as possible not to gag as the putrid smell jolted her senses to life and threatened to eject the contents of her stomach
Without looking she tried to cross to the other side of the dirt road as thoughts whirled through her head and she confirmed to herself that the body that lay there now had not been there when she had walked down this same road several hours before the previous day on her way back from work. The loud honk of a horn startled her momentarily as she realized that she had stopped in the middle of the street. Tears stung her eyes as the okada driver and his passenger – a young man clutching a manilla file folder while balancing steadily on the back of the motorcycle – cursed at her simultaneously. Their voices faded into the morning air and as she approached the bus stop she realized that was sobbing loudly. Almost immediately she heard the steady stream of a familiar tune from one of the ramshackle stalls which dotted the bus stop, and she laughed out loud as she recognized the upbeat tune of Onyeka Onwenu’s One Love. She wondered whose corpse it was that she had seen lying so ordinarily on the street on a weekday morning, was it male or female. Probably male, probably an accused thief possibly a victim of the jungle justice meted out recklessly by young people in the city often catalyzed by the howls of ‘Ole o’ ‘Ole o’.
Several minutes later she boarded the staff bus which pulled up at the regular pick-up point to transport her and the other people she worked with to their place of work on the Island from the Mainland. She still could not get the image out of her mind and resolved to take the longer walk home to avoid seeing it all the while asking her Creator to rest the soul of whoever it was that had suffered such an indignity.
She began to focus her attention on the day that lay before her, she had a lot to be thankful for even though she knew that a number of people would do a number of things to be in the position that she held as the Personal Assistant (PA) to the Head of Human Resources at a well-established and successful commercial bank, she alone knew that she was nothing less than a glorified errand girl. Mrs Kalu was the Head of Human Resources and her boss. About a decade and a half earlier, Mrs Kalu had earned a degree in Microbiology from some obscure university located on the West Coast of the United States. During her time as her PA, Olawunmi would come to believe that she would probably be kinder to micro-organisms than to the human beings in her life. With a blend of egocentrism, haughtiness and the odd sprinkling of sarcasm, Mrs Kalu had a knack for meting out all forms of invectives to everyone she came in contact with in the workplace for a variety of reasons from the banal to the serious. It did not seem to matter what level of the echelons of the career ladder you were on, no one was immune.
During her first week on the job, Olawunmi had cringed as she listened to a telephone conversation between one of the branch managers in the Northern part of the country who was seeking reimbursement for medical expenses incurred when his wife had a complicated birth which required additional surgical interventions. Mrs Kalu, confirming from the man that this was their fifth child proceeded to give him a thorough lecture on family planning going as far as accusing him of being one of the many men who was overpopulating the country.
Following her initial experience during her first week on the job, Olawunmi would spend the next three years in her position acquiring a great deal of ambidexterity in her role as the PA to the Head of HR. It was a necessary skill combined with the patience and tact that was required to put out the conflagrations which were inevitably lit as a result of her boss’s obvious intolerance for people. Her boss’ nuances and quirks were given the summary title ‘Mrs Kalu’s wahala.’ Nobody was prepared to deal with this metaphorical wahala which was almost like a saber-toothed tiger tearing up everything in its way and leaving people with the lowest form of self-esteem imaginable all the while condemning them to an episode of nail-biting and teeth-gnashing. If possible it was avoided like a plague and most people eased themselves out of situations where they would have to confront it.
As images of the dead body she had seen early that morning managed to shadow her thoughts during most of the day, Olawunmi busied herself with her work which most days consisted of following instructions barked at her by her vixen of a boss and pacifying a number of people who had been rubbed the wrong way by Mrs Kalu and her wahala. It was a wide range from those who were in the headquarters with them to those who were in the branch offices and who would ceaselessly burn the phone lines with one story of infraction or the other. The only time she felt she could exhale unperturbed was when Mrs Kalu finally left the confines of the office suite which they shared to attend a management meeting. Then Olawunmi felt free to stretch all 34 inches of her legs under her desk.
She was summoned into Mrs Kalu’s office when the latter returned with the news that the fleet of staff buses – a well-received perk which was helped to assuage the commuting woes of a high percentage of the staff at the headquarters was being yanked away from the beneficiaries in the most sudden and unexpected manner.
The fact was the city of Lagos was undergoing a crippling petroleum crisis and it was becoming increasingly difficult for the bank to continue to justify buying fuel at exorbitant prices for the buses all of which were assigned to various routes on the mainland part of the city. It was for this reason that senior management had decided to pull the buses off the roads until such a time as when the fuel crisis had dissipated and things were back to normal. The staff buses would with immediate effect be parked on the premises of the bank and staff members (Olawunmi included) who relied on the staff bus for the commute back home would have to find other ways of commuting. Olawunmi had the unmerited pleasure of drafting the memo and also bearing the brunt of the insults meted out by her colleagues who demanded a more detailed explanation since none of the members of senior management were relinquishing the company cars which were assigned to them.
The truth was the senior management could care less, since they had little or nothing to do with the staff bus and if there was a member of that group who showed the slightest form of compassion to the plight of the people who relied on the staff bus to get to work, it was clear that he or she would have borne the full weight of Mrs Kalu’s wahala. The staff buses were parked on the company premises until further notice pending a time when things normalized in the city. The announcement was made on a Friday evening, everyone found their way home with whatever means they could that evening.
The following Monday when several colleagues met to swap stories of what they had to endure during their commute to work, Pius Anyiam a brilliant yet dull and unassuming character in the Accounting Department swore that he had seen one of the staff buses in his neighborhood early on a Sunday morning, with the banner of an evangelical church concealing the familiar acronyms of the Bank which had been emblazoned on the side of the bus. Standing a short distance away from the group, Olawunmi shook her head in disbelief. It was possible that she was the only one present that knew that Mrs Kalu and her husband were the Grand Patron and Patroness of that particular church and that only that past weekend, the church had held its Annual Prayer Meeting which involved people from all over the country to convene at the church’s headquarters which was located smack in the middle of a densely populated area of the mainland which just happened to be the neighborhood where Pius Anyiam livede. She was not wrong in her suspicions that Mrs Kalu had used the staff bus in order to convey people who were attending this Prayer Meeting to the destination especially when the perceptive Mr Anyiam described the vigorousness with which the occupants of the bus were belting out popular praise and worship hymns.
Olawunmi herself had had a grueling ordeal commuting to work that morning. There were fewer commuter buses plying the roads at this point of the fuel crisis. She had ambled to the bus stop this time taking the longer route in order to avoid having to encounter the body which she had heard from people who had walked down the road in recent days was still lying languidly on the side road where she had last seen it. Unlike previous days when she waited for her staff bus at a side of the makeshift bus stop that was far from the madness of the crowd, she had had to mingle with the throngs of people who waited for the commercial vehicles that would take them to their various destinations. The word chaos took on another meaning and dimension of its own. It became clear the extent to which the fuel crisis had reached when the familiar danfo buses were a rare sight as most of them ran on the fuel which had become a precious commodity in town. The only form of transportation that was visible that morning was the black and yellowed-hued mammoth-shaped bus which had been given the incomparable name – Molue.
There was nothing else like it in Lagos and for many commuters that morning it was a godsend because it ran on diesel. Although at that point of the fuel crisis, diesel had not fallen into the ranks of what was considered essential but scarce commodities, many cynics were quick to point out that it was just a question of time since word on the street was the scarcity was about to extend to diesel.
In the meantime, molues were the saving grace for Lagos commuters relying on public transportation. And if you were yet to master the art of jumping on a molue in motion, it was a good time to learn. Molue jumping was an art which a fair share of the commuting population in Lagos – old and young, male and female had mastered to an impeccable tee. And Olawunmi tried not to look too astounded as she watched a young mother with her infant strapped diligently to her back run quickly and catch a molue in motion and hold on for dear life squeezing herself through the throng of people who populated the entrance to the bus. She braced herself thinking that if that young woman could do it there was no reason why she could not. Well aware that in this crowd could be nestled one or two predatory pickpockets, she held her handbag and her other larger tote bag which contained her decent work shoes and a number of items which she knew she would need to freshen up when she got into work . As she followed the singsong voice that screamed the words CMS! CMS! she made her first futile attempt to board the molue. It was almost like magic, the crowd of people that had a moment ago been subdued suddenly came to life and everyone leapt towards the large behemoth of a vehicle. A rotund-shaped man with a tie sticking out of his shirt pocket shoved her aside as she tried to retain her equilibrium someone else pushed her and in the middle of this she saw the house slippers she had on slide off her feet in the opposite direction of the rush. Hopping on one foot she tried to go after her runaway slipper and as the crowd pushed and shoved her from one side to the other she did not lose sight of it and finally managed to put her one nude foot into the rubbery interior catching her breath and looking in the direction of the receding vehicle. Even as the vehicle was moving faster more and more people were trying to get into it, one young man reeled forward and jumped on only to be jettisoned off because he could not hold on tightly enough. And almost immediately it started, the madness was over and all that was left was the ebbing of the sing song voice of the conductor of the molue still calling on passengers to board for CMS even when it was obvious that the bus was full to capacity. In its wake the molue had added to litter on the busy street - a pair of matching Dunlop slippers, a baby’s well-used feeding bottle and several oranges which were now being snatched off the ground by children who seemed to appear from nowhere, were a reminder of what had just transpired. She resolved to get on the next molue to CMS even it meant she had to lose all the dignity that she had built up for herself in all her years of grooming as an adult. Two molues later, she found herself in one standing conscious of everyone around her while nursing a sharp pain on the toes of her left foot which she longed to caress but could not because there was standing room only in the space she occupied on the bus and if she even tried to bend she was sure that everyone else would lose their balance and curse her for it. A wide variety of smells on the molue made her feel sick - the interior of bus was reeking of some stench that was a combination of dampness and degradation.