“I don’t know what you’ve done to me but since I met you, my day is only completer when I hear your voice,” Obi speaks into his phone.
“Awwwww, the feeling is mutual,” Rahila, replies.
“What’s that?” Obi asks.
“What’s ‘what’?” Rahila asks too.
“’the feeling is mutual’, are you suffering from mumps?”
Rahila feigns anger and refuses to respond to Obi for well over 45 seconds. When she will not respond to his “I’m sorry”, “are you there?”, “please, talk to me”, he resorts to flattery.
“Omalicha’nwa! Omaa!” Obi teases. “My tomato Jos, my ego oyinbo”
Rahila bursts out laughing. “This guy has sweet mouth,” she says to herself and he just knows the right words to use. What makes her laugh, though, is “ego oyinbo” (my foreign currency). How an Igbo man can conveniently slip money into a love talk and still sound sweet, is what she cannot comprehend.
“You know I love you too, Obim. You are my muse. My heart skips a beat each time your name appears on my phone screen. You make me. . .”
“E don do, my ego oyinbo”, Obi cuts in. “I know that. I just want to hear you say it. The magic your voice does to me, I can’t explain”.
Rahila giggles and confesses to feigning anger just to hear him beg.
“Go joor,” Obi replies, half-laughing and just loving the fact that his feelings, no, not feelings, devotion. Yes, the right word is devotion, mixed with commitment, laced with a pinch of love and respect for her, is growing by the day.
He met her when he came for the National Union of Journalist, NUJ, national convention in Jos. Theirs isn’t love at first sight. She sat across from him during the two-day convention. What struck him about her is her intelligence, ability to think outside the box and most importantly, her receptiveness. She’s the most unassuming person he has ever met. They continued talking after the convention and after a visit back to Jos, their love story blossomed.
“Have a great day Oma and be a blessing to someone today, okay,” Obi finally says.
“Alright Obim, I will. I’ll make sure Henry, Ben, O.J, Abdul and Kaynoe get blessed by me today”.
“Yes o, make sure John your cubicle neighbor, his father, grand-father, grand uncle, paternal great grand-father and. . .”
By now, Rahila is laughing hysterically. Obi’s dry humor, mixed with sarcasm, doled out in a calm way, is one of the things that makes her look forward to his phone calls. There is never a drab moment talking with Obi.
A loud crashing noise interrupts her laughter. The sound came from Obi’s end.
“What’s that noise?” Rahila asks Obi. “Hello! Hello!! Obi are you there?”
In a far-away voice, Obi assures her that he’s alright and will call her as soon as possible.
“Alright, be careful and stay safe,” she says to a dead line because he had dropped the call as soon as he was done speaking. “Please keep him safe, Lord,” Rahila prays.
____________
Rushing out, Obi could not believe his eyes. The source of the sound is that of two armored tanks, crashing (deliberately, he can’t say) into Nnayi Emma high stocked crates of drinks that were delivered early morning for his bar business. To crown it all, these armored tanks are not the conventional ones he is familiar with. They look like something out of a Stephen Spielberg’s film.
Obi walks towards his friend, Chekwuebe, who’s discussing with some “yard” boys.
“Nna, wetin dey happen?” Obi asks in pidgin as is normal with how he converses with Chekwuebe.
“Nna mehn, as you see am so, I no get idea.”
“What kind of car is this?” Nneoma, a ‘slay queen’ asks. Everyone turns to look at her. She’s putting on a bum shorts under and an orange tank top that is barely covering her heavy cleavage. Her face, with traces make-up, is dull as she looks like she just woke up from sleep. On a normal day, her question would have sent Obi and his friends rolling on bare ground with laughter but, today is far from a normal day.
“It’s called an armored tank” Obi manages to rely her.
“Armored tank kwa, what is it for and what are those long sticks on top of it?” she ask further.
The question thoroughly irritates Obi who is trying to get the full gist of the “invasion”. But come to think of it, didn’t Nneoma claim to be a third year student of Bio-chemistry in the State University? Confirming that is for another day. Just then, he heard a familiar sound- Robin Thicke’s “Lost without you” is competing with the noise around it. Of course it’s his sweet heart.
“Hello”
____________
Hello? Am I hearing right, Rahila asks herself. Obi salutes her so, if they have a misunderstanding. He always responds with “Oma”, “ego oyinbo” or “my tomato Jos.”
She’ll let it slide today.
“Are you there?” she hears Obi’s impatient voice through the receiver. She snaps back and responds.
“Yes love, what’s happening up there? Are you alright? What made that noise?” she asks in one breath.
Obi realizes how he answered and tries to make it up.
“It’s some army armored tanks, Oma, with countless army trucks passing through our street.”
“What made that sound then?”
“It’s my neighbor’s drinks that was stocked up outside his bar. I don’t know how some of the tanks ran into it.”
“Was that deliberate or what?”
“Obviously it is”
“Anyway be careful and talk to you later”
“I love you, Oma”
“I love you too dear” Rahila replies and clicks the end button. She dresses up and heads out to work.
In the bus, Rahila keeps hearing some Igbo people talking repeatedly about “Python dance.” As she walks the remaining distance between the bus stop and her office, she chuckles as she thinks of the incredulity of a python dancing. To what now? “Come to think of it, does a python dance?” she asks out loud to no one in particular.
“Good morning ma,” Jemimah the receptionists greets Rahila as she walks into their station’s complex.
“Morning Mima, hope you slept well?”
“Yes ma”
“Good. By the way Mima, have you ever seen a python dancing?”
“Ma” Mima responds with a wide-eyed blank look.
“Never mind,” Rahila says and marches on to her cubicle.
As she sits to take out some of her personal effects from her hand bag to put on the table, Kaynoe walks up to her corner and after exchanging pleasantries, he asks.
“Ever seen a python dancing?”
“You took the question out of my mouth,” Rahila replies. “What’s with all that? I kept hearing that from some Igbo men in the bus I boarded to work today.” Just then, her phone beeps to notify her of a new message on Facebook. She quickly checks as she listens to Kaynoe talk of his experience in the bus too. Obi’s status on Facebook reads, “Egwu Eke”
“Kaynoe,” she calls after him as he makes to leave her cubicle. “What’s the meaning of ‘Egwu Eke’?”
“Roughly translated, it means snake dance,” Kaynoe responds. “Wait, are you sure it’s not related to this python dance thing?”
Being a born investigator, Rahila dials Obi’s line. After five rings, he picks the call and tells her that he’d call back and drops the call. Somehow, this action did not bother her because her mind is already working -trying to connect the dots. Armored tanks in Uahia. Igbo’s angry conversation in the bus about Python Dance. Obi’s status that means snake dance.
She begins to dial another number.
_____________________
This is one week since the “invasion” of the army in Uahia and surrounding. The army’s operation, code named Python dance, is meant to quell down the Secessionist activities of the BOPE- Bonafide People of the East.
Obi’s anger and frustration knows no bounds as he recounts the events of the past six hours
“Sir, kindly give me back my tablet,” Obi tells the army officer with the badge name reading Ghaddafi Umar. “I was not covering anything. You saw it on the table so you can’t say I was video-covering you.”
In a split second, Ghaddafi throws the Samsung Galaxy tablet to the ground and smashes it with his Jackboot. The crushing sound, is one Obi will not forget in a hurry-not because of the tab, but because of the twisted anger and pain that accompanied the crushing sound as the show of ignorance and “power” continues. Obi looks at Ghaddafi’s guns and what remains of his tab and walked away to his cubicle.
That tab is worth more than half of his one-year savings from the meagre pay he receives as a reporter for Maple Press.
“Bring out your phones and electronic gadgets,” barks another army officer with a badge name reading Dantata Aliyu.
Obi watches on as his colleagues’ phones and tabs met the same fate as his. Even their midgets were not spared.
“What’s the meaning of this madness?” asks Chekwuebe.
“What?” Dantata asks in feigned shock. “You dare to question me?” He asks as he moves towards Chekwuebe to butt him with his gun but is stopped by Babawo Ganja, his colleague.
“This is what you get for sending out false, unconfirmed reports to the gullible Public.” Babawo announces to all the teeming Journalists present in the Uahia NUJ centre. “You incite the locals and paint us black before the international community, this is what you get for being unprofessional.”
The army officers begin to troop into their vans.
“Hey you, will you keep rolling,” Braimah, Obi’s torturer brings him out of his woolgathering. Obi rolls over in the cold mud. He thanks God that the rain is now in drizzles as his mind lulls back to the previous hours’ events.
As the army van drives out of the National Union of Journalists’ Centre, the chairman drives in with his entourage. His fit of anger is obvious as the veins in his necking are visible and his eyes, red.
“What effrontery!” he begins. “What effrontery!!” he continues. “What effrontery!!!” he ends. There’s a chaotic uproar as..

continue:https://akukom.com/love-in-the-time-of-secession/

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