As at then the house was a 3 bedroom flat, the last room was the size of a store, it was the room my younger brother used as his refuge being the only boy, but now in 2017,the room would pass as a store room for foodstuffs or probably junks and stuffs not needed in the house, still it was a 3 bedroom flat.
We had our 'room divider' , I bet most of you will wonder what that was, well we gave it that name when we didn't know what to call it, it was placed in the sitting room, it had compartments where we placed the 'blaupunkt' television and the old heavy Video player we brought from Kaduna.
The 'room divider' was carved in different shapes so that when arranged together it formed a long sitting room cabinet, it was painted cream in color.
One day something bad happened to our 'blaupunkt' television
,we were watching a programme and my dad also placed his phone beside the television, all of a sudden dad's Sony Ericsson mobile phone rang, the phone had this yellowish lemon light and before we knew what was happening the television went off, on switching it back on, the radiation from his phone had affected the TV and our color TV became a monotone color of Yellowish lemon, all the channels showed just that color, it was a disaster, we all bursted into laughter and at the same time resigned to fate.
Unless we hit the TV by the side or on the head, several times o, that's when the old color TV regains it's sanity. This went on for a while until my dad surprised us with a Sharp Television, a sharp VHS player and a sharp Cassette reminder that sings, oh my God, we felt like kings in the compound.
Mind you, all these memoirs happened mainly within our own 8 blocks of flats, ours was the craziest and funkiest. The other neighbours at the adjoining flats were cool headed.
So as I was saying, some of our neighbours would bring their cassettes to remind and just to listen to the reminder sing afterwards, it was amazing.
Our landlord liked money, oh my God, he liked anything that fetched him money not minding who gets inconvenient or whose ox is gorged.
Just one day we woke up and found construction going on in front of our gate, we kept wondering what was about to happen until we saw welders come into the compound to remove a part of our gate, that was the same gate we opened for those who had cars to park inside the compound. He didn't even consult anyone before removing it, he said his first son's wife needed a shop and since all the shop he built had been occupied already the only option he had was to remove our gate and render us 'gateless' leaving only the small one for entry and exit.
Within days, the shop had been built, it looked awkward having a shop in front of the house especially where the gate used to be. I could remember a day I was coming from school and I had forgotten the gate had been removed, when I got to the street, I was searching for the house, in short I had passed our own compound and already going to the next compound before I went back again like, this is our compound now, I couldn't help but laugh.
In all these happenings, we were never depressed or lived below our expectations, you dare not anyway because my sister Herbehoe Odi kept setting the pace and we had to follow.
The day my dad came down to ibadan, there was no where to park his car, he had to drive into the next compound to park his car, he was very furious but kept his cool. That was how the next compound became the new parking lot for everyone and whenever anyone wants to drive out, if there are 6 cars behind him, we would have to go and knock on all their doors to move their cars out just
for one person to drive out. It was a community in Crisis .
To be continued
Aisha Ajekigbe is a lawyer, social commentator and businesswoman based in Ibadan. She can be reached on alabiaisha86@gmail.com
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