By John Okonkwo
In the months preceding my youth service days, things were so tough that I did not have a decent pair of shoes of my own. I had to borrow from friends. I have two experiences of borrowed shoes, for today though, I will tell just one.
I applied for Covenant University’s Young Academicians Training Programme, which was meant to recruit best graduating students of various Nigerian universities from different disciplines into the teaching staff of Covenant University. The idea was to give them the best of training, sponsor them for further studies and employ them as Covenant University’s lecturers. Fortunately, I was shortlisted and invited for interviews at the main campus of the University in Otta, Ogun State. Very good news. I was excited and looked forward to the big day. The only snag: I had no good pair of shoes for the all-important interview.
So, I borrowed a pair of shoes from my friend and ex-university room-mate, Chimezie Chukwu. Chimezie did not attach any conditions but the words of my ancestors rang in my ears all through: one who attends a party with borrowed cloth must not dance proudly.
One who attends a party with borrowed cloth must not dance proudly.
I had to use the late afternoon bus to Lagos to minimise the transportation cost. I don’t know what obtains now but in those days, there were usually so many passengers in the morning, which made transporters to charge exorbitant rates. Wait till eleven in the morning when the passengers had thinned down and you get generous transport rates. With fewer passengers, transporters would resort to begging and dragging of passengers to be able to secure enough people to make their trips. That was when we would come out and make some ‘inyanga’ before boarding at relatively cheaper rates. The disadvantage of that approach, which did not matter to us then, was that you would end up getting to Lagos around midnight.
And that was what happened on this fateful day. We got to the first bus stop at Berger at about 11.30pm. The shout of Berger, Berger, from the driver, woke me from a deep sleep. Half-asleep-half-awake, I opened the side door (I sat beside the door so the responsibility of opening the door fell on me). I had removed my (did I say my, no, my friend’s) shoes from my legs so I could relax before the sleep. When I opened the door, one leg of the shoes fell out without my knowledge. The journey continued after a few people disembarked at Berger. A few kilometres away from Ojota, which was the last bus stop, I decided to dress up in readiness for the mass dis-embarkment at Ojota. Lo and behold, I saw only one leg of the borrowed shoes. I searched the whole bus without success. It then occurred to me that I may have lost the other leg when some passengers disembarked at Ojota. Wow! It was a few minutes to midnight and the night was as dark as you can imagine, but I told the driver to stop so I could go back to Berger to search for the lost shoe. The entire passenger population protested warning me that it was too dangerous to stop on the lonely Lagos-Ibadan expressway at that ungodly hour. The driver begged me to get to Ojota and take a taxi back to Berger. They were unanimous in their view that it was not advisable to stop in the middle of the bush because of ‘ordinary shoe’. Of course, they did not know the whole story. The shoe was borrowed. How on earth would I approach Chimezie to tell him that I shot a young bird and the mother escaped? With all the strength left in my body, I yelled like the legendary Chuba Okadigbo during his trying days as Senate President (democracy on trial): stop me here and now, I don’t need anybody’s advice.
So, the driver stopped and I went down from the bus with my little bag and the other leg of the shoe. I stood at a place for a while, stretched my body very well and convinced myself yet again that I would walk down to Berger. The next step was to identify a landmark, a NEPA pole inside the bush, where I dropped my bag and the other leg of the shoe. And the long walk to Berger commenced. Somewhere down the road as I half jogged and half ran, some policemen pointed their torchlight on my face and shouted: who goes there? Stop there! Don’t move an inch! Where to? From where? I raised my hands above my head and stopped. I told them I was not a criminal but an innocent citizen in search of his shoes. They asked why I could not wait till the following morning and I explained that I could not risk losing the shoe. They sympathised with me, warned me of the dangers of continuing on the lonely road at that time and waived me bye. Of course, I continued the journey.
To cut this long story short, I got to Berger and co-opted some bread sellers into a frantic search for the shoe. At last, we found the shoe already red with dust. I expressed my gratitude to the bread sellers and zoomed off happily.
I will leave the long story of how I made it to Otta for the interview as well as the second story of shoe borrowing for a KPMG interview for another day. Until we meet again same time next month, keep reading HH People.
I am off.
