Dabira's Diary

16

Monday 6th January

Dear Diary,

Happy New Year!!!

I didn’t really update during the holidays because I was too busy enjoying myself

This Christmas holiday was the best
Daddy was on leave so he had time to take us on a lot of family outings
I ate so much junk food until my stomach couldn’t take it.
Mummy didn’t like the fact that I was taking a lot of junk but daddy was on my side and he was able to persuade her to allow me

I got sick from the sugar and Mummy got angry with me, she still got me medicine but that was after much scolding and lecturing on the disadvantages of too much sugar.

The weeks went by fast and today i resumed for the second term of my first year at Bright minds academy, I can’t even explain how I was feeling about the resumption

I was not sad or scared because I knew there’s no one threatening to make me miserable, I no longer need to be scared of the devil sisters
But I was not happy either, I felt uneasy about resuming. I had no idea what this term has in store for me and that was a bit scary
**********************

Getting to school was really stressful. There was a lot of traffic and then the tire of our car deflated
We spent about 3 hours on the road for a journey that was just supposed to be 45 minutes

When I finally got to school, I was tired and frustrated
I still had to get my things checked and I had to submit my cleaning tools and then I had to the health center for the compulsory health check

At the health center I met Honour, I haven’t had any reason to stay in the same space with her after what happened between us

It was really awkward, we just stared at each other at first neither of us wanted to break the stare
After about 30 seconds the nurse called her name and she had to go in for her check up. While she was in there I looked at a poster on the door to the nurses office, it said something about a kind of vaccination,

I didn’t think much about it at first but then it finally dawned on me that a vaccination required getting an injection and I remembered Honour telling us how scared she was of injections

She told Feyi and I about the nurse that gave her elder brother the wrong injection causing him to permanently loose feeling from his waist down which also means he had to use a wheel chair
Her parents sued the hospital and it had to be closed down permanently but that didn’t mean her brother was going to be able to walk again
She got scared that every nurse would make such a mistake and that she would also end up crippled or worse

I was pulled out of my thoughts when I heard a loud scream, I didn’t need anyone to tell me that it came from Honour

The nurses door opened immediately and Honour ran out screaming hysterically
The nurse was about to send the security to chase her and bring her back but I stopped her before she could call him
“Please allow me to go and call her ma”
“Are you sure you can bring her back to take this injection”
“Yes ma”
“Be very fast, you know that you can’t enter the hostel without getting the pass from me and without this vaccination I won’t give you the pass”
“Yes ma, I’ll be very fast”

I ran after Honour, it took me a while to find her because she has a really small stature making it really easy for her to hide
I found her hiding in between the tables inside one the SS3 classes. She was crying silently, I felt really sorry for her and I almost cried with her but if I did that she wouldn’t come back with me so I just approached her quietly

“What are you looking for?” she said when she noticed me coming towards her
“I was wondering where you ran off to, so I came to look for you” I was trying to sound as nonchalant as possible because I didn’t want her to believe that I had forgiven her for what she did to Feyi and I last term
I was still angry with her for that but what she was going through at the moment was more important

“So you didn’t come because the nurse asked you to bring me back to take the injection”
“Well you’re not wrong about that but I was actually wondering where you ran off to”
She didn’t respond to that
“You need to be vaccinated to enter the hostel, you know that right?”
She still didn’t answer me
“Okay, if not because of the hostel why don’t you think about the sickness that you’re supposed to be vaccinated against”

I finally got her attention with that because as soon as I mentioned that, she rose her head to look at me
“You are scared to get the injection because you don’t want history to repeat itself”
“You remembered that?”
“I pay attention sometimes” I was still trying to sound nonchalant
“So you know why I’m scared and you still want me to take the injection”
“It’ll be fine, it won’t have any adverse effect on you”
“How are you so sure?”
“You’re not the first person to take it and none of the others had any complain”
“What if it doesn’t affect them now but it the effects show later on”
“Then at least you won’t be the only one” I tried to joke but she didn’t find it funny
“Okay let’s do this”
“What?” She turned to face me
“Let’s take it together”
“Will the nurse allow us”
“I’ll beg her”

That finally got her to follow me back to the health center and after much begging and convincing the nurse called another nurse to assist her and we took the shot together

I won’t lie, I was scared of taking the shot too not because of any complication but because I was scared of the pain but I didn’t want Honour to know that so I put on my strong face and took it

After the shot we got our clearance and we went back to the hostel,
Mummy asked why I took so long, I just told her that there was a long line

When we got to the check point, my things were checked. I managed to sneak in half pack of lollipop and a box of chocolates, they are contraband in my school

After saying bye to mummy I carried my box and was about to go in when Mummy K called Honour and I
“The both of you are the last people to enter the dorms and some changes were made with the bunkmates so you’ll have to be bunkmates for this term”
“Ma?!!!” We exclaimed at the same time

The fact that I stayed with her to get the injection didn’t mean I was ready to live with her. What if she tried something similar to what she did last term

“Mummy, I can’t even stay with her in the same room, how would we now be live as bunkmates”
“Yes ma, I don’t want to stay with her”
At least we agreed on something

“Would either of you rather stay in a dorm filled with only Jss2 students and be the only junior there?”

That was definitely not an option, being the only junior in a dorm meant you’ll be doing majority of the work and you’ll also be the servant for every senior in the dorm

Suddenly the idea of living with Honour seemed more appealing
“We’ll take the bunk ma”
“That’s better”
We wrote our names on the list, we were in Block 2 dorm 1 meaning Senior Uju was going to be our dorm head

She was really nice so I knew that I wasn’t going to have any issue and I guess I could manage to live with Honour
I was finally feeling good about this new term
****************

When we got to the dorm, the other occupants of the dorm just stared at us like we were aliens or something

I realized that I wasn’t going to be in the same dorm with Feyi but I knew that our friendship was stronger than that so we would be fine
I also noticed that senior Hauwa’s bunk was right beside mine
Interesting…

We had not even settled down and Honour and I already argued twice
The first time was about which bed to take, after about 5 minutes of arguing senior Hauwa scolded us and I was tired of arguing so I let her have the up bunk

The second argument was because she kept stepping on my bed to make hers. I felt like she was doing it on purpose because she could’ve easily stepped on the ladder but she wanted to annoy me

I pushed her leg off my bed about three times, it was the fourth time that she came down and wanted to cause trouble
Thankfully Senior Uju had been watching the whole time and she intervened

She told Honour to step on the ladder if she wanted to lay her bed
She also warned that if she heard any arguments or fights from us we would lie down flat under our bunk throughout the night

That got us to finally calm down with each other
The fight might have stopped for today but I had a feeling that there were many more to come