TOMMOROW AWAITS

Episode 9- Uche

I stare at her,a bemused expression on my face. I can see how smitten she is with Mohammed, half the girls in the camp are. Seems they must have forgotten that we were in a war and all these things didn't matter.  My patient had dozed off a few minutes ago,so i had all the time in the world to analyse,compare and contrast as much as i wanted. Osas was two beds before mine while Mohammed was close to the door,a few beds ahead of ours.  Ada was all the way across from all of us,on the other side of the makeshift hospital ward.

I think to myself, if Osas keeps staring at Mohammed, she'd bore a hole in his back and mess up the bandage she was applying. Finally understanding the puzzle,i chuckled a little to myself.  The one you love is always the one who'd love someone else who wouldn't give them the time of day. Understand this,although they might not know,Osas was in love or in crush or whatever it is girls are for boys like Mohammed.  Mohammed on the other hand,was captivated by Ada who obviously hated his guts because he was Muslim.  Secretly, i thought she blamed him for everything that had happened and of course,I'm in no position to blame her for such discrimination because it had happened to me too. Nigeria was a peaceful country until some mallams decided to make bombs instead of suya,roasted strips of cow meat garnished with dry pepper,onions and a host of other raw vegetables.

Unlike all these children i had met just yesterday, i was a ghetto kid. I like to call them children because in the ways of the world, they were unexposed,born with a silver spoon,probably drank tea with sugar and milk. I smiled a little pained smile to myself, where i grew up,milk was just a luxury we could never afford. All the money we had went as quickly as it came,fees to be paid,house rent, vigilante dues and nothing as trivial as milk- yes! Trivial is what Dad called it. We grinded our own soya bean powder and you drank it with your daily cube of sugar and two slices of bread,on a day when life was good enough to give you bread,that is. There was no room for complaining, if you weren't satisfied, you sorted yourself out. This life made me.It hardened me,that when they invaded our area that night and took away my only sister who was barely nine,i felt only a dull ache in my heart. When i came home the next morning from my regular wanderings to nowhere and saw my parents dead in the living room,i couldn't shed a tear. When you grow up in the ghetto,you become ghetto. You're though, thick skin and all,nothing gets to you. You were born for disaster, you lived everyday expecting it. Happy endings were not for you,rather,for kids who drank tea with milk and sugar. You were the scum of the earth,nobody notices if you lived or died.

The streets are not one known to take anything lying down. The morning after the carnage, it dawned on us what had happened. With the anger and unshed tears burning in our hearts,we rounded up the known Muslims in the area and took our revenge. The rest is history.

My eyes are now turned to Osas. Her eyes are following Mohammed as he headed to Ada's, devouring him like a starved dog. He's standing at Ada's bedside, staring at her for that split second,the second it took for Osas to reach his side in time for both of them to unintentionally chorus.

"Hello,Mohammed! "

Ouch!

They all stood there,Ada sitting, staring stupidly at each other until Ben entered the ward and motioned to us with a come hither expression. Minutes later, we were huddled in the small office, spaced out on the bench. I could tell he was agitated, his face etched with lines as he paced. We waited.

  He swirled around suddenly and burst out.

"Those..."

He struggled for adjectives to qualify whoever he wanted to describe to us. I knew the word,bastards was at the tip of his tongue.

"Extremists,those hopeless killjoy militants are at it again. We are in trouble, all of us"

His loud voice and wild gesticulations made him appear slightly crazy. Osas furrowed her eyebrows.

"What are you talking about?"

He started at us for a full three minutes, deciding whether to tell us what was on his mind or not before thrusting his blackberry mobile in our faces,a video was playing and we huddled over it to watch.

  A man, approximately thirty years of age was kneeling on the ground,in a grassy mass of land. He announced his rank and a lot of  his military particulars before he was pushed to the ground by the terrorist standing behind him. His head was actually chopped off with an axe. My blood ran cold. What did i just watch? I wondered to myself. Few minutes ago,there was a full blooded male,somebody's son,somebody's husband, probably someone's father too,now a headless body. I felt the righteous anger course through my veins. This was it,this was the height of the evil this people could do,to the extent of brutally chopping heads off innocent people in a fashion similar to a popular Middle Eastern terrorist group.  So much for originality. Ada was talking now.

"No way! I refuse to believe it. Hell to the no,this is one of their people.  This is a trap,they just want to cause panic."

I smiled to myself.  In times like this,it was very easy for people to tell themselves lies,what they wanted to believe over truth.  I had seen a lot of it,ghetto mothers disbelieving that their precious sons were cultists and have been killed by the police,even when the truth was glaring in their faces. Denial was in fact one of the ways people expressed grief. Something told me that the video we watched wouldn't be the last. One thing with these people, they love attention, once they get it,they never let go. This video was trending.

"I think y'all should also see this"

Ben said,scrolling through his phone and playing another video. In this one,women and children were lined up like slaves in a single file and shot one after the other with military rifles that properly chopped the bodies,blood splashing everywhere while the terrorists rejoiced in the background, chanting and singing in Arabic. I shivered.  It just got real. We stared up at Ben for an explanation or rather, a confirmation of what we had just watched.

"It's real. We can't exactly tell when and where this happened, the experts in Abuja are working on it this minute.  Truth be told,this is a full blown war,they could be anywhere,we are in trouble if they decide to attack relief camps anytime soon- you can't put anything across them. We have two military personnel's in camp with us and over the next few days,they will train all of us on what to do when the war comes,most especially, how to handle a rifle, if push comes to shove..."

Ada shot up as if she had been stung by an insect.

"No way! No way! I said,no way"

She punctuated every statement with force, shouting it so that we understood.

"No way I'm touching a gun. What the hell are you guys thinking?  Are all the soldiers in the barracks dead? Do we look like soldiers?  See what they did to a soldier with military experience, what do you think they'll do to us without experience. You want to end this carnage?  Take all these Muslims away, every single one of them. They caused it,they won't get an education, yet they make bombs. This is the height of illiteracy, to kill a human being for what he believes in. I don't believe we still let Muslims around us. They are the cause of our..."

"Ada,you have to calm down! They're killing Muslims too,it's a national problem."

Mohammed was saying softly, bowing his head. I felt pity for him,he had to bear the brunt,take the fall for what was done in the name of his religion. Ada wasn't taking it.

"You shut the hell up there! They kill Muslims because they stupid and no amount of Muslims they kill can make up for the Christians they been killing since 2009. Don't sit down there and tell me to calm down when you practice a religion that tells you to kill. This is the jihad all again,the exception is that we will win"

"Ada,that's enough.  We can't win if we keep pointing fingers at ourselves. Yes, we know this is an Islamic thing,that doesn't exclude the fact that there are innocent Muslims who want all this over,as much as we do. We are going to work as a team- the salvation army,under the canopy of the living God. Please rise up let us pray"

Ben said and raised his hand to his forehead.  We followed suit,Mohammed stared blankly, imitating us as much as he could.

"In the name of the father,the son and the Holy spirit. Come holy spirit,fill the hearts of the faithful... "