COMING FROM AFRICA [Completed]

MERRY CHRISTMAS

One more day till Christmas, yay! The past few days have been awesome, with my three best friends by my side. We've talked and laughed and teased each other. Mandy told me about our teacher, Mr. Chubis who was chasing the students round the classroom. She told me about the students and teachers, even my classmates back at home. It just made me miss home more. Sigh.
     Maur and I have been laughing our butts off because of how Lee behaves around Mandy. He has been blushing and making weird husky giggle sounds. I swear, its the funniest thing ever.
Today, we are going shopping! At this time of the year, the shops are almost sold out. I know it's stupid of us to shop on Christmas Eve, but it's not our fault. She had a LOT of catching up to do. Chinelo and Mizpah are joining Mandy, Maur, and I today. Lee is our designated driver. He drops us off and picks us up. He said he's gonna be hanging out with some of his 'dude' friends, whoever those are.
"Ey yo! Lady and dudettes can we go now?" Lee yelled for us again. This time though, we are all wondering who the lady is.
"Who're you calling lady and who're you calling dudettes?" I raised my head slightly, voicing my thoughts. He rolled his eyes as if it were the most obvious thing ever.
"Obviously, Mands is the lady and the rest of you are the dudettes, duh!" When he said this, he had a cocky look on his face, but not without the pink color on the top of his ears. All of us started talking at the same time while Mandy laughed.
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" From Mizpah
"See your big head!" From Chinelo
"Kwasia!" From Maureen
"Mumu!" From me.
I dragged Lee out the house after smacking him for not calling us ladies. We all piled up in Lee's car, ready to do some last minute shopping. Just to annoy Lee further, I started whistling to the tune of Jingle bells. Mandy, sensing my mischief, started singing to it.
"Jingle bells, Jingle bells; jingle all the waaaaaaay! Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh! Hay!!!"
"Jingle bells, Jingle bells; jingle all the waaaaaay! Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh! Hay!!!" Maur added.
"Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh; o'er the fed we go! Laughing all the way!" Chinelo continued.
"Hahaha!" Mizpah laughed. Lee's jaw was ticking. He was getting irritated.
"Oooooo—"
"Shut the hell up! You guys are so annoying geez! You all have horrible voices, except Mands of course." Lee interrupted my singing. I think I saw steam leave his head. Ah well!
"You are just simply horrible mister." The rest of the drive was filled with our horrible singing. When Lee finally arrived in front of the mall, he locked the door to prevent us from getting out. He then walked round, a yanked us from the car.
"Out you go!" He yanked Chinelo and Mizpah out.
"Get out!" Maureen followed suit.
"Let me help you out." Of course, he gently brought Mandy out.
"As for you!" He yanked me so hard, I'm pretty sure I tore a ligament. I scowled and stuck my tongue out at him.
"Let's go ladies. Apparently he doesn't appreciate our fine singing. Humph!" We all stomped away from the ungrateful dude and into the mall full of last minute shoppers, like ourselves.
Since almost everything in the shops were sold out, we had to roam all over the mall to find the perfect gifts. After two hours of searching and roaming, we all agreed to eat at mall restaurants.
"Whoa! This place is sweet." Mandy exclaimed. There was almost everything here to eat. We grabbed a table at the far end of the restaurant, away from prying eyes. There's a really cute guy who comes over to take our order and I see him making flirting eyes at Maureen. I nudged Mandy to have a look at the encounter. She raised her brows at me as though asking 'what?'. I made eye contact to the flirting and she immediately got the hint.
   "Eh hem!" Mandy clears her throat to grab his attention. After a while, he shifted his gaze to Mandy and sent her a million dollar smile. To be honest, Mandy didn't look impressed. She didn't smile back at the dude and placed her order which was a funny sight to behold. Mandy has always been a sucker for Asian boys so she's already hooked to Lee even though she doesn't wanna admit it. I felt bad for the boy and wanted to save his dignity so I made small talk with him.
    "Hi. Do you go to Ridge High?" Ridge High is our school.
   "Yeah, I do. Are you guys perhaps the Africans that just joined recently?"
    "Uhh...yeah. I just joined with my sister but my friend has been there for a while now." I said, gesturing to Maureen.
    "Cool. I've heard a lot about you guys. I just moved here some weeks ago so I'm new as well." He beamed.
    "That's nice. What's your name?"
    "Santiago."
    "Well, it's nice meeting you Santiago. I'm Ijeoma and theses are my friends."
   "I'm Maureen." I think his smile just got wider. Cute.
   "I'm Chinelo, Ijeoma's sister."
   "I'm Mizpah, Chinelo's bestie and their friend."
   "And I'm Amanda, Maureen and IJ's best friend. I'm visiting from Nigeria."
    "Nice to meet y'all." We all nodded.
    "So are we gonna eat or what?" Chinelo said out of the blue which made us laugh. We'd forgotten that we came to eat. We all placed our orders and he left to get our food.
   "He was totally digging you!" Mandy squealed at Maur.
   "Yeah you should totally leave your number on the cup or something." Mizpah added.
   "Great idea." Chinelo agreed with her bestie. Maureen was trying her best not to look concerned but I could see the gleam in her eyes.
   "But I—"
    "What do we have here? It's jungle girl and her lame friends." Tiffany's annoying voice interrupted what Maureen was about to say. I turned in my seat to take a good look at Tiffany and groaned. She was here with her crone of witches.
   "Not now Tiffany." Mandy stood up all of a sudden.
   "So you're Tiffany huh!"
   "And you're another dweeb."
   "I've heard you've been giving my girl a hard time."
   "And you are?"
   "Chiamanda, from Nigeria."
   "Oh! Another jungle girl!" Mandy laughed at the comment and we were all looking at her like she was crazy.
   "This is what's gonna happen sugar. Where I come from, we have something called juju. Y'all call it voodoo or black magic or something. I don't care whatever fancy name you give to it. You wanna know the nicest part about juju? I could always chant your name and you'd turn into a potato then I get money from you. You're name's Tiffany right? Well Tiffany, if you don't wanna be a dirty potato for the rest of your life, I'd suggest you leave Ijeoma alone. I'm in dire need of cash sef so I won't hesitate to turn you." After she was done, she smiled sweetly at her then turned to attack her food which arrived sometime during the encounter. I have never seen Tiffany so shaken. It was hilarious because her mouth was opening and closing like a fish but nothing was coming out of her mouth. Her dummies had to drag her away from us and when they left, we all burst out into laughter. Even Santiago who looked a little shaken was laughing.
   "Chineke! Hahahahaha—my heart—hahahaha! What was that for? You've obviously given her a fright for life." I laughed so hard I almost chocked.
   "Remind me to never piss off African babes." We all turned to look at Santiago, then burst into laughter again. When we all calmed down, Santiago left us to serve other tables and we ate our food while talking and laughing about random stuff. Maureen decided to leave her number on a tissue paper after much persuasion. When Lee came to pick us up, we narrated to whole incident to him while laughing. We couldn't make it halfway through the story without laughing so Mandy ended up telling him herself. When she was done, Lee was speechless.
   "Can you really do that?"
   "Do what?"
   "Turn someone into random stuff?"
   "Well, I can't do it but there are some people who do it. I've heard stories about people who touched random stuff on the streets and they turned into yam or plantain. It happens."
   "Whoa! That's serious."
   "Yes it is. Can we go now? I'm stuffed and tired and sleepy."
     This Christmas is coming together perfectly. It's the best Christmas present I could ever ask for.

I'm sorry for not updating in a really long while. I've just been feeling lazy to update on this story for some reason. But, I started a new book and it's a werewolf story. It's called SHUTDOWN MATE. Read the next A/N chapter for a lil peek about the book.

Glossary:
Chineke: It means God in Igbo.

This book is almost ending. Maybe three more chapters then we can kiss Coming From Africa goodbye🥺 Thanks for reading y'all🥺❤️
   Peace✌🏽flowersandbooks16