Las las, I will leave this Lagos for you all. I mean, am I the only one whose brain dreads stepping out of the house? Everywhere, noise! It is killing.
Remember that time honourable minister Fashola, then state governor, ordered horn-obsessed Lagosians to behave themselves for one day for the sake of all humanity’s sanity? I wonder how that even worked. Seriously, our generation needs to banish that demon for good. I’m sure it’s those bàbá bàbá people that infected us with their impatience. And those trailer drivers are the worst. And the religious organisations with insane megaphones and speakers… *side eye*.
See, the road curses, I can endure. But the incessant honking, mba.
In my area, we have security guards whose only job is to protect us. Do you want to know how innovative they are at doing that job? They walk around and beat freaking aluminium water drums every damn night! Like, I can hardly understand. Is that to warn the thief of their superman presence and scare him away or the criminal is expected to just fall down and die as he hears the grossly disturbing sound? I honestly would confront them to ask but…
It was such God forsaken noise that gave me temporary insomnia at midnight some days ago, despite that I had to be up early to prepare for the day’s Ramadan fast.
So, through the anger and plenty hisses, I remembered this not-so-amusing incident from my time at Lagos State University, Epe Campus. You know, in LASU, a separate campus is provided for all Engineering students. The students are usually moved to Epe after spending their first year at the main campus in Ojo. Whew! How much we dreaded moving to that dungeon after our first year of seeing pretty chicks at Ojo.
We had been in Epe for three years and were already at home (like we had a choice) when one day in 400L, myself and my block mates were awoken by a chicken’s crow around 2 a.m. One crow, two crows, three crows, four crows… 17 crows, and it wouldn’t stop. We were mad! It stopped crowing eventually, maybe around 5:30 a.m. And we all went out of our different rooms at day break to complain about the noisy chicken.
But, guess what? It did same the following day, and a few days after that!
So, the boys, unbeknownst to me, set out on a mission. They had identified the chicken, tracked it, cornered it and killed it (I didn’t get to know about this until much later by the way). About a week after we experienced the first disturbance by this chicken, I walked in on some of my block mates munching on fried chicken. I was lucky to get a small share. It was deeply fried so I loved it. They didn’t need to explain where the chicken was from and I had assumed that they bought it.
A few days later, I wondered where the noisy chicken had been as it had not disturbed our sleep as usual. But I moved on.
Then, one very bright sunny afternoon as I returned from lecture hall, a woman who usually wandered about our campus (one of the locals) stood in front of our block and cursed loudly – about her missing chicken. Serious curse. The boys, at the same time, stood at the entrance of their rooms and snapped their fingers over their heads. That was when it dawned on me that I had eaten her chicken. The confusion was overwhelming. On one hand, I felt pity for her and on the other hand, I felt relief that the annoyingly noisy chicken was gone forever, never to be heard again.
Suddenly, the woman did the unthinkable. She started to strip to her underwear. In broad daylight. That was the moment all the boys knew it was time to gbe já for real and go into hiding. And no, this woman wasn’t mad… well, not that type of mad. A valuable lesson I learnt that day? Never take anyone’s major means of survival away from them and not expect a fierce fight.
She eventually left when the boys were out of sight; Though she wasn’t really out of their sight where they hid. We later heard that she reported to our Dean of Student Affairs, but nothing came of it. That was how we managed to overcome the overbearing noise from the chicken that wouldn’t stop crowing.
So, please guys, noise is super uncomfortable, particularly when you’re trying to get a much needed night sleep. And since I can’t organise a gang of friends to steal your vehicles, you people should please chill with the honking, biko. Tainks!