Sunday, November 27, 2011

PaCoLiSo...Chapter 3

Life moved on pretty smoothly afterwards. There werent much students in the estate and for some odd reason people seemed to keep to themselves. Samurai mentioned to Shimon that the estate bore a close similarity to a mini fiefdom. The standard mode of greeting was a perfunctory nod of the head or a twitch of the eyebrows as people walked by. There were little cliques and from all appearances the cliques were as isolated as Palestinians and Israelis on the Gaza Strip. After the Kandi incident, Samurai was wary of making any new 'friends". His back still hurt from the trauma of cleaning up Kandi's room, it had taken a grand total of almost 3 hours from start to finish. He and Shimon had worked as if they were in a trance and the only positive experience he could recall from the incident was that Kandi could sing. She hadn't offered them breakfast afterwards, that was another issue they had grumbled about when they finally retired to their room.

A couple of days afterwards, Shimon noticed that the garbage heap that was inconveniently located behind their block, had started creeping towards the front of their room. Repeated appeals to "Oga Sam", the caretaker to do something about it was always met with a gap toothed grin and a prompt response of "I go do am, no worry". So the next weekend, Shimon and Samurai took matters into their own hands and decided to clean and push back the garbage heap. It was going to be backbreaking work but it had to be done. So that bright saturday morning, the 2 young men changed into work shorts and began the task of reclaiming their territory from overflowing garbage. After about an hour or two of serious work, Samurai sensed a pair of eyes watching them, so he looked up and that was how they met Tweety.

"She was waif like, an ebony colored Kate Moss, petite with deep eyes and a quizzical smile on her face, twas easy to detect the cogs in her brain clicking as she tried to figure out what the 2 young men were doing. Clad in a blue wrapper that
was tied securely around her slender frame, she had her hands in a knot underneath her chin and it seemed for a moment that she was lost in thought..."


"What are you guys doing?" She finally muttered.

Dripping with sweat, with aching joints, Samurai thought it was the most ridiculous question that he had ever been asked. In his mind he responded, "What does it look like? We were so bored and decided to play with garbage!" Shimon came to the rescue and explained that they had just moved in and that the garbage heap was encroaching on their territory so they were doing their best to tidy the place. He had just finished explaining and Tweety just turned and ran back into her room yelling at the top of her voice..."Pocahontas o! Pocahontas o! come and see o!" Shimon turned and looked at Samurai in confusion. By that point Samurai had come to the conclusion that all the tenants of Pacoliso were from a different planet, beautiful but as dysfunctional as Looney Tunes. A minute afterwards, Tweety ran back outside closely followed by Pocahontas, they were both giggling as if the idea of 2 bespectacled men battling against a heap of garbage was the most hilarious thing since the whiteman told Okonkwo that God had a son (Things Fall Apart).

Pocahontas was clad in a wrapper too, pearl shaped face with slight Oriental features
. To Samurai's bewilderment she asked "What are you guys doing?"
As if that wasnt enough, Shimon explained all over again (Shimon wasn't just a diplomat, he took it as a responsibility to explain the most little details a thousand times over without getting upset). Samurai on the other hand was seething with anger, first Cubana, then Kandi, now Tweety and Pocahontas, what next he thought to himself, Pacoliso was already shaping up to be a mini Alcatraz.
After Shimon's explanation, Pocahontas asked "Are they paying you guys?". "No", Shimon replied, and launched into the merits of taking a proactive step to get Oga Sam to act, Tweety stood behind Pocahontas with the same quizzical smile on her face and an arched eyebrow. "Perhaps she is wondering if we are mad people, instead of her to just say thank you and offer us breakfast", Samurai muttered to himself... (Oga Sam did finally take notice as Shimon had mentioned and finished up the rest of the job).

Now there were 2 things that were striking about Pacoliso back in those days. The first was that Oga Sam had a few turkeys that roamed around the estate, they were notorious for their noise and droppings. The damned turkeys shat all over the whole place and made a ridiculous amount of noise. The temptation to murder one of those turkeys at night was hard to resist, but out of respect for Oga Sam, they were never harmed. The other crazy feature was that Pacoliso had only 1 water storage tank, and to compound issues, the water tank was being used by laborers who were building what seemed like the Tower of Babel at the entrance to the estate. It didn't make any logical sense because for some odd reason water supply in the estate was controlled by only one electric powered water pump, so if NEPA struck (which was a regular feature), water went with it also. So the only source of water left in the event of a blackout was the sole storage tank. It was just an example of how inept Looney Tunes was in his thinking. To worsen matters, the water tank wasn't big, so the water was always finished at the speed of light. One thing you ought to remember is that Pacoliso's tenants were 90% female, and most women do NOT like to fetch water, especially when it involves trekking a long distance with a bucket. Gone were the days of "Eze goes to school" where Eze had to go to the stream 3 times in the morning before heading to school, Pacoliso ladies were beautiful and classy chicks, not village trained. But a few of them realized that survival entailed flexing their biceps to carry the buckets of water. Nevertheless, the water in the storage tank was never enough.

One beautiful Wednesday morning, NEPA had struck as usual the night before and the water in the storage tank had run out. Back then, there was an undisputed "Queen" of Pacoliso, some said she was the prettiest chick in Pacoliso then, she was light-skinned and tall and was the leader of one of the key cliques in Pacoliso. Sometime around 9am, she and her entourage made their way to the water tank to fetch water, about 7 of them in number. It was a sight to behold, pretty women in wrapper, cat-walking to the water tank (I never understood
the love for wrappers back then, maybe it was fashionable but all the chicks rocked their wrappers in the morning). On getting to the storage tank, Queen Bee turned the tap on and a little trickle of water came out, the water dripped like tear drops, surprisingly the ladies didnt seem to be flustered, instead they lined up their buckets and began the morning session of gist there. 30 minutes later, queen bee had only about a cupful of water, the gist had run out by this time and was slowly replaced with anger, to worsen matters, visitors had started coming into the estate. Now, there are beautiful women and there are pretty women, the difference is in the make-up, not all women like being seen without a touch of make-up, it takes a certain type of confidence to feel beautiful in your natural skin.

After 45minutes, the queue at the water tanker had grown to about 12 or 14 chicks, by that time no one was smiling. The next move was swift, they took their buckets to the front of the estate and sat in a line in front of the gate, angry expressions etched on their faces, waiting for Oga Landlord a.k.a. Looney Tunes to show up. Oga Sam the caretaker was smart enough to have evaporated from his command post to avoid lynching. So when Looney T arrived in the morning as usual to commence his day at the office, the gate opened to reveal a barricade of angry women clad in wrappers, sitting on top of empty buckets. He got down from his car and before he could open his mouth, the wave of angry voices shut him down, it was a furious onslaught of verbal warfare...a day later, 2 brand new water storage tanks arrived in Pacoliso...

As for that eventful day, letz just say that the riddle "How many bags of pure water does it take to fill a bucket?" was solved


To be continued...

Due to privacy concerns, the series will be discontinued...Sorry guys!

4 comments:

  1. Its not like we know who these people are! Pweety pwease continue. Your description of events is so vivid. I'm not half as good a writer as you.

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  2. @man_eater: Chapter 5 will be coming out soon :) due to public demand.

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  3. Now dancing alanta. Lol. Followed ur blog from Chimezie's. U guys put d 'f' in funny.

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