I'm alone in my room with Tuface; now I'm in my grandmother's house in Olusoji. I can see a 6 year old on Kiko, rainbow shimi, without yellow cowboy pants, legs spread open. The lady before them bit her lips as if solving a difficult algebra question. The men giggling as the pain in her voice vibrate the room. The lady scratch the efiri leaves on her coitus and they both watch as the water runs down the bed to the floor. She doesn't have protruding belly, no fold in all the places on her skin yet. She also hasn't started bleeding, from her coitus, from her ventricles. All the colors on her reminds me of happiness.
The pots and plates have their place on the floor. That's where my grandmother cooks. What's that smell ? Oh, I see; she is smudging something that makes my eyes burn. Shit! Who rubs aboliki on their wrinkled skin?.
My uncles are singing to Tuface's Grass to Grace. It's the new jam in town; as the album dropped few months ago.
In the coming year, P-square will make rave with their Game Over album. They are what Burna boy's Love,Damini and Ayra Starr's Rhythm and Blues are to you.
The golden light bulb is warming the room in the chilly night. The streets are also lighted-up with beer parlors blasting Danfo Driver and Oruka. It is not noise but fine beat and orchestrated notes.
There is commotion in Aso Rock;as President Obasanjo has just sack his Vice-Atiku Abubakar on claims of corruption. Deputy President Atiku insist he is still in office. Fathers sit in circle discussing this tale from the African Giant.
"How do you even sack your own vice", one father says.
"I hope we can see how united a party PDP is?", They all laugh.
"But we can’t deny the fact that Atiku's corruption has gone the roof. Enough is enough!",another father with tribal marks on his temple retort
Bottles of Henekien are scattered on a wobbling plastic table and nobody cares if they will shatter the earth. Atiku will defect to Action Congress- the opposition, calling his party-PDP, a 'dying' party.
I can hear the lady-my mum shouting at me and my siblings to find our slippers. I think it's time to go home; since the clocks says 11pm. Grandma is putting something in our pocket, that must be a N20 notes to buy lot of sweets. Talk about when N5 can you buy two speedy or five bubble gums.
These songs I hear from the streets, It is a forbidden sin in my father's house. In the morning, the cassettes in what is like a mp3 player that you can carry with your two hands greets us with the voice of a religious preacher. In the afternoon, we're reading our books. In the evening, we're watching postcard from Mount Zion films.
Music, the clothes your late mum last wore, a person, a picture, a place and anything that can hold memory. It is extraordinary how they can take us to the time that it belongs to.
It is songs from early 2000s that drive me to when life was actually without worries and when the clocks runs.
Standing there in my our house from 2006, I want to lie down on the rough foam, run round the streets with only pants on, licking the dust on my face and play paper soccer with the boys. I know I am selfish but I also want to hold the future in my right hands. I want to live in the past and know the future;so when I miss the kdramas, Burna boy, the petrichor from luth, my 17years old,our three-bedroom flat in Mowe, I can go back and forth between the two times.
My battery is dead. Tuface no longer sings. I'm back in OPH. I am alone with darkness, silence and nostalgia.