The Crazy Nigerian

She was Russian and her name was Vodka

Before Facebook ruled the social world, normal people were expected to make friends the old-fashioned way. Instead of sending friend requests, I had to engage in some small talk. Thank goodness for the crappy Plymouth weather; it was always a perfect conversation starter. ‘Miserable day, isn’t it?’ That was my martial arts combo for breaking the ice, and it worked almost every time, although sometimes the only response I got was an abrupt ‘Yeah,’ and then we’d just stare at each other as the awkward silence set in. It was the follow-up statements that were usually the trickiest, but if I was fortunate enough the other person would go into a long rant about how he or she got splashed and drenched by a passing car.

I quickly learnt that the best place for conversation wasn’t in a lecture theatre but in a local pub—thanks to my first outing to a pub with my Ghanaian friend K.D. and his housemates. Yes, I was introduced to pub culture, which meant buying beer by the pint, enduring the sound of men belching, and watching in horror as everyone showed off their pot bellies. K.D.’s housemates were veterans in the drinking business. I was still getting used to things like owning my first mobile phone when all of a sudden I also had to get used to the bitter taste of beer. I resorted to having a shandy (beer mixed with lemonade), which was frowned upon by onlookers, including the barmaid who served me. It seemed that in England, if you didn’t drink beer, you couldn’t be classified as a real man.

Speaking of classifications, the beer parlours back in Lagos did not have the sophistication or finesse of the British pubs. For example, the Brits put a lot of thought into giving their pubs unique names. Some of my favourite names include The Drunken Duck (sounds like animal abuse to me!), The Quiet Woman (is that even possible?), The Cat & Custard Pot (I’m betting the pot is empty . . . with traces of fur), Mad Dog at Odell (makes you look at the foam on your beer a whole lot differently), and The Jolly Taxpayer (that’s like saying Heavenly Hell), just to mention a few. In Lagos, there were less ambitious names like Mama’s Place, which is fine, and sometimes darker names like The Den and The Cave . . . creepy.

Beers in London were pumped from kegs directly into your pint glass, while in Lagos the beers were served mainly in one-litre bottles. There was usually a conventional structure to where pubs were situated: at the corner of a street. In Lagos, a beer parlour could be situated anywhere. You could practically take some chairs and tables out into your backyard, mount a sign on your front gate saying, ‘Cold beer served here,’ and you’d soon have the hoodlums trooping in.

An alternative to beer, which wasn’t available in British bars, was palm wine. It looked milky in colour and had a slight tang to it. I remember one time when one of my cousins took me to a joint called The Shrine (yet another dark title), where I had a one-litre bottle of ice-cold palm wine. When I was done, I noticed that my cousin’s identical twin had joined us for drinks (although my cousin was definitely the only boy in his family!). In Britain, the drink that came closest to it in taste was dry cider, which I soon took a liking to.

If I wasn’t hanging out with KD and his housemates, then I was hanging out with MY housemates—and boy were they an amusing bunch. I had a total of five housemates in the three-storey private accommodation:
three were quirky and two were even quirkier. On the ground floor, there was the Introvert. He must have been a genius because he was studying mathematics (though he looked more like someone who should have been teaching it). He was very economical with water; he never cooked, and nor did he bathe. Whenever I walked past his room and his door was ajar, I would get a whiff of a musky, earthy smell. Poor guy—it was the only bedroom in the house without any windows.

Then there was the Tomboy. Her room was next door to the Introvert, and she was wary of him. She thought he could easily be a serial killer with a past he was hiding from us. She never wore a skirt during her entire stay at Plymouth—not even in summer. Come to think of it, she didn’t strike me as someone who would wear thongs or have periods—those were way too girly. More interestingly, she was fascinated by black people, and she would keep telling me how she knew someone from Nigeria. ‘Good for you!’ I thought. She didn’t cook much, but making tea was her thing.

It got stranger on the first floor where the Drama Queen ruled. She was noisier than any generator I’ve ever used in Nigeria. There was always a reason for her to throw an unnecessary tantrum; either someone drank her semi-skimmed milk or someone didn’t flush the toilet (okay, those were genuine reasons, but I wouldn’t bring the roof down). There was a communal living room, kitchen and bathroom on the first floor, but the one thing she couldn’t stand was the communal landline in the corridor next to her bedroom. You see, whenever the phone rang, she would be the one to go answer it for proximity reasons. Now imagine that phone ringing about twenty times on average (and mobile phones were not yet common among students at the time).

On the second floor, where my cubicle was also located, there were two guys who were the complete opposite of each other. One was a bit of a bully, macho and eccentric while the other was quiet, sensitive and a bit posh. They seemed to get along, but I saw a lot of plastic-smile exchanges between them. Posh boy was from a rich family and dressed like he was straight out of a GQ magazine. I never dared to do my grocery shopping where he did his—I went to Tesco (where I was sure to find the economy/low-budget variety) while he went to Marks and Spencer (where everything was astronomically priced). Posh boy was curious about Nigerian life and I was curious about the posh life, so the bonding began. I would try a bit of his Earl Grey tea and he would try a bit of my corn beef stew. He would listen to my Afro beat and I would learn to dance to his techno. But the most memorable experience was when I tasted vodka for the first time (if only I had local kai kai/schnapps to offer him). I took a little sip, and every inch of my brain told me that what I was drinking was meant to be going into an open wound and not into my mouth. Having ignored that first warning, I proceeded to mix my vodka shot with cola, after which I got into the dancing and karaoke mood with some of the other housemates.

By the time I mixed another vodka shot, this time with orange juice, I was oblivious to the fact that I had lost partial control of my running mouth: I offered posh boy’s friend an unwarranted compliment—I told her that I liked her moustache. Well, truth be told, it sounded worse than that. My actual words were, ‘What’s that stuff there? They look like whiskers . . . cool!’ It was posh boy who hinted that a certain someone wasn’t going to put up with my behaviour, so I put down the vodka bottle. That night was definitely one of her lowest moments (and sadly one of mine). When I sobered up, I learnt that not only had I offended her but I had done so in the presence of posh boy, whom she had a crush on—double humiliation. She never spoke to me again.

It didn’t end there though. My post-vodka consumption antics included dancing on stage in a nightclub to Backstreet Boys’ ‘Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)’, making moves on girls I’d never dream of approaching if I was sober, and stuffing my face with Cheesy Chips at 2 a.m. If that wasn’t bad enough, a year later there was a new cocktail bar that opened by the seaside offering two for the price of one. These were monster jugs at student-friendly prices. I was one of their ‘loyal’ customers, and they gave me the chance to explore some more deadly concoctions as well as some crazy cocktail names: Screwdriver, Slippery Nipple, Sex on the Beach, etc.

It was also during my university years that I learnt the phrase, ‘Wine after beer is queer, but beer after wine is fine’. Experience has taught me not to mix, especially on an empty stomach. The year I celebrated my nineteenth birthday, I went overboard: I started off with vodka, moved on to red wine and then finished off with a bucket in front of me as I hurled my guts out. Needless to say, I fell unconscious only an hour into my own birthday party and then I jumped into my single bed . . . and missed. Hitting the floor didn’t feel as bad I would’ve imagined. All through the night, I heard echoes of Cher singing ‘Do you believe in life after love?’ but what she should have been singing was ‘Do you believe in life after liquor?’ I had to ask myself if there was any point to this insanity. The resounding headache that greeted me the following day and the embarrassing photos taken by one of my housemates went a long way towards curbing my ‘vodkraze’. My next craze was blue, had a message box and a small antenna . . .