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THE UNLUCKY ONE


THE UNLUCKY ONE

Boy-girl relationships are so unpredictable…one is never sure whether it would last or not. I remember back in high school during most Tuesday afternoons we had our G&C sessions that would go till late in the evening, whenever the session was on boy-girl relationships.
Madam Aduma, our single CU teacher, being the 'expert' in relationships, will make us sit and listen to her as she explains how boys are despicable beings that should not be trusted as they would make us pregnant and make us forget our studies. Then immediately she is done with the condemnation she asks, “l know you all have many questions to ask, so who has a question?” It’s completely silent, no hand up…but immediately she says you can write on a piece of paper, almost all heads are bowed and all you can hear is a scribbling noise of pens on paper. l also join the circus with a question, ‘Can a boy and girl just be friends?’

Finally, she goes around and collects the papers ready to answer our questions. She read out loud our questions as she answers them to the best of her knowledge. The answers she gave were often something we expected to hear, a NO NO…but we just loved to see the shock on her face whenever she reads out some of our questions.  As we graduate High School, this Chapter of our life comes to an end with some of us getting into relationships and even get married while others may prefer celibacy or just become the unlucky ones.

This story is about the unlucky ones and in particular my friend Gift. Gift often reminds me of Odili in the ‘A man of the People’ by Chinua Achebe, always on the forefront ready to attack or as in the sympathetic nervous system ‘fight’…when the food in the mess is little, Cindy told him to shut up during class presentation, his roommate mixed out and drunk his remaining Quencher juice or even when the Lecturer gave him a 59% instead of 60%...you never know what or who would cause him to chomp at the bit.
 Maybe instead of using his name Gift let me just acclimatize to Odili. Odili started dating this girl when we were in first year, Yolanda ‘something’, l barely remember her since their relationship did not last for more than a month. A month! I know it is shocking but it was all him to blame since he was seeing another girl and Yolanda found out, then dumped his sorry ass.
The new girl, Divinah, was everything Odili wasn’t;a staunch Christian Union member, sat in the school mentorship group, a peer counsellor, a respecter of person and was loved by all. Every guy in school hated him for being the one dating the most desired girl in school and the girls felt he didn’t deserve her. On Sundays Divinah went to church to lead the choir in singing songs of praises while Odili stayed in the ‘jobless corner’ with his boys, leading the discussions on various topics from football, politics to women.
 One fateful day Odili and Divinah broke up, but everyone saw it coming as their relationship had been doomed to fail from the beginning. Odili cried and blamed the church people for advising his girlfriend to leave him and he got so mad and began spreading bad rumors about our beloved Divinah. Divinah never looked back and started dating some guy in church and those rumors were dispel off, as everyone felt she had the right and ideal guy for her.
It didn’t take long for Odili to go out there and start dating again. He moved to Laura ‘bendover’ known for tweaking and boos. Their dating life was characterized with; partying, boos, smoking, humping and hangovers, always in that order. Laura started cheating on him with Baba Junior who lived just behind the school hostels and so Odili was left yet again. Since then he was in many on- off relationships which always reached to a point they stayed off, while others point blank never wanted to date him. We are now in our final year and Odili has never been in a stable relationship again but he is always still pursuing and never giving up. He is still single and you will always find him in the ‘jobless corner’ which is just beside the gate as you enter the Jacaranda hostels leading a discussion. Gift ‘Odili’ a name that should be a blessing to him and mother earth but is unfortunate in love.
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