The Groans Behind Curtain.

PARROT

WRITTEN BY ISAAC ODUGBEMI

The Groans Behind  Curtain

Every morning I was tormented with the noise of something. The sounds were always different but similar. The invisible neighbour came out to the backyard opposite my window at 7:00am but the time gradually came back to 6:00am on dot. I covered the toilet entrance with a thick brown wrapper to avoid seeing the abominations of Adam and Eve or Being seen and creating a platform for temptation. I felt embarrassed when I wanted to use the lavatory and find any of them washing plates in front of the toilet. And inside the buckets they use in the toilet. They lived in a different world. They neither go out nor had any cause to go in since they don't go out. They hardly had visitors. They stayed in doors all the time except for one who had a spirit of an entrepreneur who meets the carnal needs of school children.

Unfortunately, I was the only male tenant-occupant occupying the first floor in between the indigenous families perhaps maybe I would have had a listening ear. The orange painted one storey building is a masquerade of what it really is inside. 

When I first packed in and discovered the restrooms had no doors, two things came to mind. Firstly, I am a man amidst these two invisible neighbours in case I embarked on the natural cause of bathing action and while scrubbing and watching the necessarily necessities and one of them sees me, wouldn't it be a temptation to them. The Holy scriptures admonishes us to watch and pray, lest any enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. I had no idea how my stay will look like until I came on board. Secondly, the sight of a naked female figure in a bathing position was what brought curse, disunity and death into the family and kingdom of David. 

Travor Noah agrees that shitting is a powerful experience that has some element of magic.When we shit we forget our airs, graces, fame and riches, all of that goes away. I had once imagined a life without shitting. The experience humbles us and reminds us that we are still human irrespective of how high and lofty you are in the society. The most beautiful shits like any other person. The rich shit and the poor shit, no difference. The thin and fat shit. The Governors and Commissioners shit too. 

One morning, as I was doing my early morning prayer, I heard someone gain entrance into the lavatory, and then a kind of groaning that surpasses my imagination started, I continued praying but occasionally got interrupted by the groans that later sounded like someone in desperacy of delivery. The sound was horrible, terrific and terrible. Fifteen minutes past, the candidate was still groaning. Abah! And then like a thunder bomb a loud long farting, a drop of something, a sigh, another sigh, a spit, a splash of water and finally an exit. The early morning odour was unbearable. 

Afterwards, I began to observe. What was I observing, I wanted to really find out what causes the long groanings all the time in the toilet. The answer was not far fatched. I wish I could make them read this write up, I discovered that they ate too much late into the night. Many Nigeria families are use to eating late. This family would have saved themselves the regular rigor of groans if they had eaten earlier than 10:00, 9:00 or 8:00pm. By and large, they eat too much. When a person consumes a portion of three persons on the ideology of satisfying hunger, an  ox shits  more  than  a  hundred  mosquitoes. The quantity of our dinner should be light and simple. Eating heavily into the night is not healthy enough. The heavy meals like a bowl of Eba, Fufu, Amala, Tuwo, Semo and I could go on and on, should be in moderate quantity. The major meal is the breakfast, all others are subsidiaries. 

I remember eating two plates of beans at 8:00pm. I was their guest and this family had cooked a palatable porridge-beans since afternoon for me and another guest. The guest disappointed them but I came but late in the night because of the traffic jam in Lagos. And then I played the role of a good Samaritan and ate two plates (I ate mine and for the unseen guest) so that the beans would not waste, I regretted that action, Ehh! Chinekeme!! Ahh!!! That night I traveled to hell and came back. I could not sleep, I rolled from the right side of the bed to the left side through out the night. I was sweating. I became a clock watcher, checking the time. My stomach acted strangely. I visited the toilet five times between the hours of 12:00am and 3:00am, it was a compulsory and necessary night vigil. My dear reader eat little at night and drink a little amount of water and the journey back to life the next day will be smooth like boarding the Qatar flight.

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