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ROOM 24, GRACE HOSTEL
Escapades of the lxgents…….
Episode 7
THE POOR RICH BOYS
The hols were approaching and you could practically feel the excitement in the air as higher institutional students were not immune to the thrills of any kind of holiday. This holiday was in fact a short one as all first semester breaks were but that did not dampen the excitement one bit.
As for the gang, we decided to have a final get-together to mark the end of another semester and the beginning of the holidays. The date was set on the last day of our exams and it was agreed we would all leave the next morning. Everyone was good with that and anticipated the day. Then Jboy told us he had to leave immediately after the last paper and that something had come up. Drake also excused himself.
The last paper was tough but we all scaled through and did it as fast as we could without actually skipping questions as our minds were already outside the exam halls. After I finished the paper, I went to the school hostel which was supposed to be my house to pack some things out of the stuff I had left there while hoping my roommates had not helped themselves to my belongings.
After that, I first visited the ATM and withdrew a little money hoping to withdraw my transport fare the next day. I then hit the market as I was in charge of the cooking.
After hours of finding the right ingredients and spending over twice the amount my mum would have done, I carried on to the room to start dinner. I don’t claim to be on the levels of the professional cooks but I believe in my exceptional culinary skills. And it was brought to play that night as every drop of my fish stew and rice mysteriously disappeared with me barely eating enough. Eze was in charge of drinks and as usual didn’t disappoint (if u like water). After dinner we watched some films like Sherlock Holmes 2 and Ip man 2. Then we retired for the night with thoughts of going home foremost on our minds.
Morning met all of us rushing to get ready to go to Lagos. We had our baths, dressed up, took our bags and left the house. Tycoon said he had to get his things from his house and since he was not going to Lagos with us as he stayed at Ibadan, he bade us goodbye and left. Only Rydberg was left among us that was not going to Lagos as he had a family house in Abeokuta. And so we all walked to the ATM to withdraw money for our transport fare. I inserted my card and chose the amount and an error message was brought back to me. I tried it again and got the same result. Then I noticed that all of us had the same problems. We reported the case to the security guard there and he told us that the problem was all over town and that our type of card could not withdraw and that we would have to wait till Monday to resolve the issue.
Since we were bent on going home that day, we tried other avenues to raise the transport fare all to no avail. Then Rydberg who only escorted us told us that he really had to go and off he went. Then I called my parents and told them the problem and they told me to go stay at my uncle’s house at Abk and he’ll give me the fare, but I thought about it and knew I couldn’t abandon my guys just like that. At this time it was just me, Eze and Pariz who had money in the bank but couldn’t get it and this was more like not having anything at all.
Then we went to the woman at the buttery near the hostel to lend some money, This we regretted as her behavior towards us changed with her talking haughtily to us but Impromptu beggars can’t be choosers right?. She said she was going to try other ATMs in town and that she also had no cash in hand too. And so we waited and waited and waited. In fact I slept and woke up about three good times before we realized it was already getting late and that we would have to wait till Monday before going home. So we went home and I put beans on fire and Eze went to sleep while Pariz was lounging around.
Then I saw Eze jump out of his sleep and run downstairs saying someone was calling me. It turned out to be a guy telling us the buttery woman was calling me and so I went and she gave us half the money we needed to get home. Adding this to #400 with Pariz and #200 with I and Eze, we decided to risk travelling home that evening. By then it was already past five.
I quickly turned the semihard beans into a cooler, sprinkled some salt, maggi and oil, shook it and covered it and we ran to the bus stop. As we got there we saw a very good friend of ours Chinky who’s in Computer science dept. with her friend who was also one of my good friends and we greeted them and let them know that if they were looking for us, they should check the Lagos Ibadan expressway maybe we were stranded. As usual God takes care of his own and this was evident in that from the room till the taxi stand, no money was collected and this helped our resources a lot.
We got to the garage, found a bus paid the due and started calculating how we would get home from our individual drop points in Lagos. Eze called his sister who told him to take a bike home, Pariz said he was gonna go to his mum’s shop and we agreed that I should use the remaining cash to get home. Seeing that we barely paid our way home, snacks were out of the question, then I remembered the beans I had packed and I brought it out, found a spoon and we started passing the cooler around taking two two spoons. Who knew semi hard beans could taste so good? Well maybe because I cooked it.
Eventually we got to Lagos and I got to my house at some minutes to nine and thankfully my parents were not around. I settled in and started unpacking when my brother came in asking me to give him money to buy airtime. I just looked at him and started laughing…..
By prodigy(@prodeegee)
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