TÓDÙN

34

                      ~TÓDÙN~

I looked around the neighborhood expecting one of the women tending to their children to hand me any key my Mum left before going out, but come to think of it, I talked to her some few hours ago and she didn't tell me that she wasn't at home, I muttered and stretched my hand above my head. I dragged my box along with me as I walked to the house beside ours not minding the attention it called with the noises it made. I couldn't leave it at our door because of thieves that are always lurking around somewhere. As I got nearer to the neighbour's house, I could hear music booming from  the radio that never seem to go off. I placed my hands gently on the door and knocked it, I waited for about twenty minutes before Aunty Romoke, the daughter of our neighbour who was already married to a tailor turned farmer opened the door.

"Todun! Na you be dis? O ku ojo meta."(it's being ages) She greeted me in both pidgin and Yoruba language.

"Ojo kan pelu ma." I replied in Yoruba to someone I used to consider as an elder sister. We grew up together even though she was six years older than I am. We went to public taps to fetch water together, visited the public toilet together, we both walked to school and when I wasn't old enough to follow my Mum to hawk oranges, she was the one I stayed with. Things changed when she finished secondary school, we were expecting her to go to the university and read a course of her choice since that had been her dream but all of a sudden, her parents came up with the option of getting married to a young guy of her age who by then just finished learning tailoring and never thought of getting educated. Right after the wedding it dawned on the couple that the husband wasn't even good enough in the trade he learnt so he became a full fledged farmer.

The wedding was a big one in a "type of way" it wasn't as big as what people who are well to do will organize for their children or for themselves but in a society like the one I live in, it was big. At least, almost everyone in the neighborhood eat a plate of rice and the grooms family distributed plastic hand fan as souvenir. Compared to other weddings where it was just a family matter and nothing more, if you should go there uninvited then you should be aware of "OYO lo wa" meaning "On Your Own.

"Aunty Romoke, it has been a while." I flashed a smile at her as I stared at her face that was now a shadow of what it used to be. She returned the smile but her face wasn't as fresh as it used to be, her skin was now a combination of light and dark complexion which I guess is as a result of the cheap lighten cream she has been using. On the blue colour Tee-shirt she wore was the picture of an old man and "adieu baba" written on it, she had a similar colour of wrapper tied around her waist.

"Mummy..." A girl of about five years  called, came out of the room and pulled her mum's cloth from behind, she used her hand to wipe off sweat on her sleepy face and behind her a baby of one year crawled holding unto a banana peel. Aunty Romoke smiled at me as she used her Tee-shirt to wipe off the mucus that was in her daughter's nose, she picked up the baby from the floor, took the banana pill from her, threw it at a corner  and looked back at me.

"Come inside, how is school going?" She asked me as she led the way into the house. Even though she had left the school environment for a while, her grammar and pronunciation are still in place. The cushion chairs placed in the living room already had their cloths tearing off them, the center table had several things displayed on them which includes a torn bible, comb and a dirty rag.

"It's is going well aunty, what about Mummy and Daddy?" I asked her after realizing that her parents who were always saying something or the other in their loud Ebira voices were not around.

"They have gone to our friends’place, there is an occasion coming up this weekend." She replied as she turned the knob of the radio to reduce the booming volume.