Today’s story is about the weapons that saved our lives! I never believed the saying that “a hungry man is an angry man” until the day Hunger showed me pepper….not just ordinary pepper I’m talking raw, hot and chilly atarodo pepper.
My roommates and I were extremely broke one fateful weekend and had not eaten anything since morning, and the time was heading to 4pm.
The weekend was the worst time to be broke as a student because even if you had any uncle/aunt willing to help you, banks were usually closed during those periods.
It was then after hours of brainstorming I came up with a fantastic plan capable of winning me a Nobel Prize award for hunger eradication.
The idea hit me the way Tom always hit Jerry any time Jerry falls into his trap. The idea fell on me with full force.
I stood up, and told my guys in the room of my brilliant plan to save our crying stomachs from hunger. When I finished narrating the plan the whole room was speechless for about a minute before Leke or Oga Leke as we called him broke the silence and said; “Oya nah make una dress up make we dey go (let us dress up and leave)”
We all dressed up looking like we were going on a date with Miss Unilag and Miss Nigeria combined. The whole “extra” dressing was just to execute my well thought out plan. We were 5 broke, grown ass men who took the walk. Oga Leke, Boss Peezy, Alien and Johnny Walker were the names of my hungry counterparts and roommates.
Before we could get any further, I confirmed from my guys if they were armed for the mission. All of them looked at me with the eyes of a criminal, waving their weapons before me. I smiled knowing despite the fact that I was the youngest of them all, I was still the leader. Especially for this mission.
When we got to our destination, close to Unilag second gate, all of us sat down like Kings on one table and began ordering our food one by one.
Oga Leke shouted his order like, “Mama Lasisi, put 2 roundabouts, 1 shaki and 1 pomo with 1 fish for my ewedu o!”
I looked at him very well eyeball to eyeball so he can still remember our mission.
About an hour later when we were done demolishing our feast and our brains and body were now functioning well, one of mama Lasisi’s girls came to give us our bill.
“Your money for all your food is N1600”
“Okay, go and call your madam for us 1st” I replied.
As her madam came out, Boss Peezy who had the sweetest mouth among us continued with our plan as he started speaking in Yoruba to the woman where I blanked out (my Yoruba is not strong).
The conversation reached the point where he turned and gave us a sign that made all of us bring out our weapons. She opened her mouth wide in shock as she looked at us.
Our weapons were sponge, morning fresh, bar soap, duster, etc which we all brought out from our pockets with shameful faces faced down as the darkness of the night made nobody see us.
With one angry look she insulted our lives in Yoruba and commanded her muscular son, lasisi to go and monitor us in the kitchen as we washed plates with our ‘weapons’ and helped with kitchen work.
That day, I washed plate and pot until my whole body smelled of morning fresh mixed with palm oil.
When we all got to the Kitchen we laughed and smiled that my crazy plan had eventually put food in our bellies.
PS: Don’t try this at home!!!
This post first appeared in Kamdora.com
