The Lens Magazine Aug. 2017 | Page 25

The Soft Issue August 2017 Stories from Within Salty By: Umar-Al-Faruq Ahmed J together with the security men in blue uniforms, as a student, you are expected to comply with the orders of a fellow student, because he dons a khaki shirt with CADET written on it, and acts like a furious puppy. ust when I thought that I had seen it all, I got to the class area only to find out that the class was filled. I was furious. How did all of these students magically transport themselves down here so fast? I had seen almost half of them at the microfinance bank just minutes earlier. Eventually I had to stand for remainder of the lecture. At the end, I was glad that it was all over. I could barely wait to get out of the school. As if my day hadn’t been torturous enough, as I stood on the spot waiting patiently for another Tanke bound cab to come by, gently keeping my anger to myself and downing the chilled bottle water I had bought nearby, one young gentleman crept up my rear. He wore an oversized varsity jacket, with a cheap dark shade on his ugly fat face that was almost half covered with a dirty baseball cap. I hadn’t bothered to look down at the rest of his clothing. When he came closer and smiled, he unleashed an enormous amount of odour from his mouth as he spoke. *** Perhaps it was as a result of the way my day had gone, or maybe it was just me, but as I walked down to the car park, the campus environment looked to me nothing like the serene and beautiful environment I had seen four months ago when I had made that trip with my mum. I could hardly wait to get out the campus. “Excuse me, my name is Wale, can I talk to you for a minute?” I was beyond mad. I closed my eyes and hoped that he’d be gone by the time I opened it, but there he was. All of my anger, frustrations, and disappointments were folded into one. “Please just shut up and go” I prayed silently. At the park, I was met with another shocker. There was just another heavenly long queue that looked extremely to me like the one The Israelites must have formed as they tried to walk through the red sea. There were three long queues. The whole rowdy scene looked to me like mayhem. I needed nobody to instruct me to join in the struggle. After moments of fighting and struggling, I eventually got myself into a small cab very similar to a matchbox, only for one hungry looking, overzealous fellow to order me down for entering the vehicle illegally. Illega-what? I could not believe my ears. “I’ve been seeing you around, and I…” next thing he heard was a slap on the cheek. “Get out of my face!” I yelled, emptying the remaining content of my bottle water on his miserable face. The next hour I was standing in front of a stern faced, security man in deep blue shirt. For some reason, people explained to me that I had to follow the order of this young lad who had CADET conspicuously inscribed on his shirt; whatever that meant. Apparently, 25 the LENS