By Lechi Eke
Early 21st century Aba is a visitor’s nightmare with multiple bad roads full of potholes as big and deep as ditches. The European Quarters is now renamed Government Reserved Area (GRA). Poorly paid civil servants lived there. The nouveaux riches lived in the Brass Street area with its surrounding crescents and cul-de-sacs. Residents were held in high suspicion of how they made their money. Some of them were suspected to be fronting for government officials in exchange for such favours as licences to gain monopoly in the importation of rice, textile materials, stockfish etc. Others had been fingered as men of the occult who made money through diabolic rituals. The most concentrated living area in Aba at the time J visited was the Ama Mmong, an exclusive sprawling suburb of the very poor. It is a high-density slum still. The petty bourgeois live in the part of the city called Town. This is the inner city. And this was where Ulari lived.
Ulari’s father’s house was on Asa Road which also is the location of the city’s major Motor Park. It is a very long road. The beginning of Asa Road is very rowdy and very busy twenty-four hours a day while the middle is slightly less busy but busy all the same for it has some pockets of mini-markets located here and there, having been the location of a great market, the city’s former major market until 1980 called the Old Market. When a new international market, Ariaria Market, was built and stalls were allocated to traders and the old market was pulled down, some handful of traders stayed back in defiance but the majority went to Ariaria.
The tail end of Asa Road is quiet being separated from the noisy part by the over two hectares of CKC Catholic premises. This end is clean and free from the anarchy of the upper part of the road. Commercial buses are prohibited from plying this part of the road. This is where many of the successful merchants live. They are usually titleholders and live in their own houses and are known for a particular trade. All are renowned traders. This part of the road is constantly swept and the houses receive regular fresh paints and their windows often cleaned.
J’s hired airport cab drove past Ulari’s father’s house, a moderate one-storey family house painted cream and brown with two big shops in front: one, her father’s paint shop; the other Ulari’s mother’s beauty salon called GRACE BEAUTY PALOUR. Ulari had told him that she worked there during the hols to earn extra pocket money for use in school. Her father was a major distributor for a major paint company in Eastern Nigeria.
Over-filled refuse bins, pot holes, badly planned houses made Aba a sorry sight to behold. J’s driver explained that local government councillors did not take the job of refuse management seriously. The teeming city-dwellers generate refuse faster than the LG people could dispose.
Jamin’s hotel, the Terminus Hotel was located off East Road. Its suites windows overlooked the stream Aba indigenes called Waterside. He showered and changed then spent some time in prayer lifting the object of his mission in the city before God; he and Ulari were on a fast.
The hotel front office staff got him another cab. It was cleaner and more comfortable than the airport cab but the driver spoke bad English, and minded not his own business. He knew the Ugorjis. He avoided all the unpleasant roads meandering in and out of few good roads then drove through a short street that he called Asa Triangle right behind Ulari’s house. He pointed out a small back gate leading to the Ugorjis’ house to Jamin telling him how the Ugorji boys used it when they broke the family curfew.
“They don’t have girls?” Jamin asked ashamed of sniffing info.
“They do,” he said his voice gleeful. “Beautiful beautiful gals, men no dey give them chance to grow up. Fiam, they snatch them. They no dey do boyfriend- na only for marriage dem dey.”
“They must be good girls,” Jamin said.
“The bestest. But you must get something for pocket to go near there- o. You wan negotiate for paint?”
“No, I’m on another business.”
“This is the house,” the driver said with pride. “If I go through Ngwa Road roundabout we for no make it in time. I know say you dey in a haste.”
“Yes, thank you!”
Grace Beauty Parlour advertised on its signboard a range of services from bridal make-up, manicure, and pedicure to hair-setting and hot braids. J talked to one of the beauticians and ‘Madam’ was contacted through an intercom. Then, he was ushered into an inner room that looked like a doctor’s consulting room with an examining couch. Soon a tall slightly stout woman with striking resemblance to Ulari walked into the office through an inner door. She had two wrappers firmly tied around her waist, wearing a beautiful white cotton lace blouse that matched her wrapper with matching earrings that set off her extremely pretty face. She looked taller than she really was for when Jamin stood in reverence to her, he towered over her.
Jamin was excited at the sight of her, he felt like hugging her and yelling, ‘I’m a part of your family, I’m your son!’ But he knew such behaviour was unacceptable anywhere so he smiled and allowed her to invite him to sit down after her.
Her lips were slightly turned up at the edges like Ulari’s and her eyes were slanted, almond shaped. She had a beauty mole on her upper lip area. Ulari had none. J failed to see that liquid brown eyes of Ulari’s with the whites swimming like diamonds in her mother’s eyes. Anyway, she was Ulari’s mother all right, soft-spoken and gentle although darker and wore a weave, the type that hair stylists matted at the scalp with hairpieces and leave to drop mingled with real human hair called pick and drop.
“What can I do for you?” she asked Jamin in English with Ulari’s voice.
His accent must have given him away that he was a foreigner. Suddenly, he wished he could say, “I came for pedicure.” She was such a pleasant woman and he did not want to ruin her day. Ulari had warned him that what he came for might not be music in her ears. However, he observed with some satisfaction that she was impressed with him whoever he may be.
“I’m Major Benjamin Nguuma Torkula of the Department of Military Intelligence in the Nigerian Army,” he announced a bit theatrically having never been as proud as he was now in her presence about his family name.
He saw that the name meant nothing to her but the title frightened her.
“Any problem, officer?” she asked betraying fear. Perhaps her children were in trouble.
“I live and work in Lagos,” he began and saw her breathed down and then cut in, “We don’t have any vacant rooms here, it’s a family house.”
He smiled- a real wide smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him more attractive. He had been told that he had a charming smile and he really wanted to charm her. It did not work. She frowned.
“No, I don’t need an accommodation. I came for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Her brows went up in surprise and her frown deepened.
Continue from next week.
Culled from The Girls Are Not To Blame by Lechi Eke