We are at Metroville tonight. Mallam Hassan and Mr. Cele are here earliest. We typically wait for Mallam Hassan to join us much later, and even today he didn’t particularly come earlier than his usual time. Yet his arrival preceded Eddie and Tokunbo’s.
(Because I like free food, I almost always arrive first.)
While we are waiting for the quorum to form we try to catch up on the latest happenings in the country. Mr. Cele is complaining acrimoniously about the recent fuel scarcity and the resulting traffic jam the queues at the filling station have caused.
Mallam Hassan remarks that it’s true, and points out how the traffic jam has made proximity to town very hard for people who may not live in areas where there’s a proximity to necessities.
We’re right in this conversation when Eddie walks into the lounge. Even though he’s looking a little chubbier than he was when I last saw him, he’s also looking scruffy and a little disoriented. I ask him what happened, and he says he’s had a terrific Saturday.
He goes ahead to explain how his cross-city sojourns have been frustrated by the fuel scarcity and how he needed to get basic necessities over to his friend at the other side of town who lived in a part of the city that had no easy marketplace access.
Mallam Hassan asks him why the said friend couldn’t just use a courier service to transport whatever it is they want. Eddie declares that Mallam Hassan doesn’t understand.
I press for more explanation. Eddie says that there are certain things that a courier service would not be able to deliver to certain places; especially if it includes something that he has between his legs.
Mallam Hassan tells us that no condition will ever be strenuous enough to prevent Eddie from fornicating.
Tokunbo arrives in Metroville wearing a sunglass as wide as a windshield. Eddie teases her about it, and suggests to her that she could as well get wipers and side mirrors since she has decided to become a walking tokunbo car.
Tokunbo says she bought the sunglasses while in traffic earlier in the day. That when you’re caught in a traffic jam long enough, you might start to have an itch to buy things you don’t need.
I can personally relate to this because I once bought a wall clock that I didn’t need from traffic hawkers.
Eddie says that back in Lagos he met his soulmate in a traffic jam. We’re all shocked. Mallam Hassan asks about what happened to the soul mate and where she is now. Eddie says he no longer recollects how things ended with her since he has met about 6 other soul mates since then.
Mr. Cele’s head drops to his palms.
We ask Tokunbo how the fuel situation has affected her so far.
She says that she’s not feeling the heat a lot, since she lives in Lokogoma, which is currently the fast-growing neighborhood in the city.
She says that she has access to the market and even leisure spots, and so she didn’t need to drive long distances to get her immediate needs met during the weekend.
She explains that the numbers of new estates sprawling around her also mean that there are more human activities going on than ever before, and because of that there has been a plethora of businesses scrambling to meet up with growing demands.
Eddie asks her if the “growing human activities” involved young women who like to take evening walks around the estate.
Mr. Cele tries to raise an objection but Mallam Hassan stops him, explaining that if Eddie has more young women in his part of the city then maybe he wouldn’t need to drive across the city to dispatch his manhood to a woman living at the other end of the city.
Eddie salutes Mallam Hassan’s wisdom and declares that the country needs more old men like him.
Our orders are finally being taken, and Mallam Hassan starts to explain to us the importance of living in places with easy access to immediate needs.
He says people often take for granted how important it is to have low-cost commodities like foodstuff and consumables in places that are easily accessible from your home.
He says that when making a choice for a home location it is important to consider the logistics involved in getting out to meet sudden immediate needs, and it works best for everyone to reduce the hassle involved.
While he’s speaking about this, I’m just sitting across from him wondering if it was the right time to speak about our available houses at the Copa Cabana Estate at Lokogoma or I should wait till Eddie leaves; because I do not want to spend the rest of the week answering questions about if or not there would be thick girls jogging in the estate every morning.
