When two hearts collide - Episode 1

 

           CHAPTER  ONE 

      My return back to the country can in one word be referred to as ‘epic’, as it was the one event that I don’t think I will be forgetting in a long time.  After living in the UK for seven years, I guess I just got used to their way of life and blended in with their standard of living. But now, standing in a bus stop in Lagos and waiting for a bus to take me to my rented apartment which has now become my temporary home, I can’t help but  miss Manchester where I left sometime last month.
     I came back to my home country Nigeria, to prove to my family and myself, but mostly my family, that I can make it anywhere in the world . Though I had heard of how terrible the Nigerian economy was even before embarking on my journey back home, I still wanted to see it for myself, test it and try to make a living in the now tough nation. ‘madam, na where you dey go?’, I turned after hearing the strained voice of the person I assumed to be the conductor of the danfo bus that I had been waiting to board for the last seven to nine minutes, but before I knew it several people started rushing to board the same bus that I now had little chances of entering.
      Inside the bus, the man sitting next to me possessed a powerful odour that I now had to endure, I looked at my android phone to check for new notifications, I noticed the time was already 6:34pm, it was going to take a while to get home, I sighed and closed my eyes to sleep for a bit because I knew the traffic would delay me since I stay on the mainland.

Read " Kenny's Story " by the same author ( Ijeoma Okorie )

. Arghh, I needed my own car

All episodes of this story can be found here >> https://www.ebonystory.com/story/when-two-hearts-collide

. I go through the stress of waking up as early as 5am everyday just to get to work early. I got a job as the editor of one of the nation’s frontline newspapers, ‘The gateway’, about two weeks after I returned from the UK, and so far so good it has been a great experience working for them, my bosses are good people and my co-workers seem cooperative. It’s just been three weeks and everything was working for me except the distance problem.
    I alighted from the bus to take a tricycle popularly known as the ‘ keke napep’, which would take me to my final destination, the front of my apartment, only for me to look at my now discoloured skin and remember feeling the piercing burns of the scorching sun on my skin. I could never get used to the hot weather here in Nigeria. Finally I had arrived at my apartment, the area which the compound was situated was too noisy and rather uncomfortable. The power supply was terribly bad and I knew that by this time of the night there would be nowhere to buy petrol to fuel my generator, so I prepared myself for sleeping with my rechargeable lamp and praying for the power company to have mercy on me just for this night and allow me to make use of the electricity which I paid for to avoid my skin from being the prey of the ‘ever-hungry mosquitoes’, that go about at night looking for their next victims.
   After taking a cold shower and eating a dinner of roasted plantain with fish and stew locally called ‘bole’, I settled to write my new profound goals, my no1- was to move out of this god forsaken apartment and the second was to get myself a car to move me around because I had already grown tired of moving from one bus to the other and this was the raining season, I couldn’t walk around jumping from centre to post under the rain. I prepared myself to sleep just before my phone beeped indicating I had received an email, I checked and it was from my mum. The message read, 
‘Ify, hope you enjoyed your day at work, and have you eaten??, I hope the mosquitoes do not disturb you much, I have told you to leave that your apartment and come to live with us in Enugu, but you do not want to listen to the plea of your dearest mother, hmm, your former room is still intact and just the way you left it, please at least come visit us, it’s been seven years and two months……, your Dad and I miss you and also Chike and Ebere,  you need to see Ebere’s baby, she is so big and  beautiful, and Chike will soon be married, I am also waiting to see my grandchildren from you, you know you are my first child, ‘Ada beke’, please come home. Would love to hear from you soon. 
     I cleaned a tear drop that had already betrayed my eyes by falling to my cheek. I thought about my family, I missed them too, in fact I planned on visiting them, that was one of the major reasons for my return but I didn’t want to see Him, as he was the major reason for my departure in the first place, he who shattered my heart beyond repair, I didn’t want to see ikem, now known as Charles Phillips.

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Thank you for reading this chapter.  Hope you liked it! More coming up.