Houses and castles.

chapter 4

I live in a spacious three bedroom apartment with three of my friends, our apartment is called "The sprinter's lodge" by our funny neighbours since we the occupant are all single unmarried ladies living together.

You must be thinking we all contribute to pay the rent but that's not true, the house originally belongs to Tife, her father gifted it to her after she graduated from med school with honours, the rest of us are merely squatting with her but over time it has become "our house" and not "Tife's house" because she never throw it in our faces, no one apart from us knows the house solely belongs to her.

The four of us met and became friends at the university.
Tife, Lara and Abasi were in the same hostel room and I was in the room opposite their's so the three of them became fast friends before I joined the clique by pure chance.

Tife was in her third year of med school while the rest of us were freshers but we all clicked, she wasn't snobbish like the rest of the girls in higher level who felt freshers are way beneath them, they treated us like JJC's ( johny just come) and love nothing else but to assert dominance and seniority but fortunately we have Lara, a true Ibadan girl by heart who can fight anybody regardless of who they might be, she doesn't take trash from anyone whether senior colleague or not plus she's not one to mince her words..... She is the freedom fighter of the group

I first became friend with Lara since we were both in the same department (Accounting), I won't say we were friends per say but our parts kept crossing after we met for the first time during screening and then finding out we were of the same tribe made it easy for us to flow.
I started going to her room to escape the madness of the girls in my room who love playing loud musics all the time making it hard for me to concentrate and that was how I became a part of the friendship.

Abasi is a quiet Calabar girl, she got admission to study Law but she preferred going for theatre art, unfortunately her parents won't hear of it, they wanted a lawyer daughter at all cost and that pushed her to do something really drastic in her second year.... She's loves designing in her spare time and she's also the cook of the group, always making local delicacies for us all the time, thanks to her we didn't all die of hunger due to our laziness to cook.

Tife.... Hmmm, there is a lot to say about her and I can just go on for days none stop because she such and amazing person, she's the best and realest friend anyone can ever hope to have.
She's a very happy and fun loving person, an only child who is dotted on by her parents and the whole extended family, she's kind hearted, simple and a cheerful giver and people often take advantage of it.

After we graduated, I couldn't go back to stay with my parents, school was my biggest distraction from the sorry state of the affair in my family, Abasi and Lara found themselves in similar situations.
Abasi changed her course to theater art in her second year without informing her parents, they didn't find out about it until during graduation as she was always making up fake result to show them at the end of every semester, to cut the long story short her father disowned her for being a "disgrace" to the family.
In lara's case, her parents stay in a small room in their family house with four others of her siblings, she couldn't go back to their "rat hole" as she describes it.

We were all still delibrating on getting a one room self contain apartment together when out prayer got answered in from of Tife.... Her father gifted her an apartment in a very nice Estate and she immediately asked us to move in with her, it was the permanent solution to our problem and now we have been living together for two years and the half now.