Naomy's memoir

'Good afternoon Sir, you said wanted to see me?' 'Yes, Ebiere welcome. Please sit.' Mr. Waziri, my course adviser was a fatherly figure and one of the most respected lecturers in the Department of chemistry. 'Your last semester result was poor. This is unlike you Ebiere. What I expect is for you to put all your efforts into maintaining your second class upper result, not dealing with a slack hand in final year.' He said staring sternly at me. After a long pause, he continued 'Is there any problem? Do you have something bothering you? You know you can talk to me.' 'There is no problem sir, I'll do better this semester.' I replied in a tiny voice. 'Please do. You are one of my best student, don't disappoint me. Remember that this is your last semester.' I left Mr. Waziri's office and decided not to visit Chuka or take dope ever again. I tried and succeeded for two weeks, until the devastating news of papa's death...

I love Imade very much and I need to spend more time with her, but I keep messing things up. Imade is my 6 years old daughter who lives with my mum. Mama is tired of the kind of life I am living and we fight regularly. I cannot forget the last fight we had, she said hurtful things to me. 'You are a disgrace Ebiere, I wish I was the one dead instead of your father, that way I won't be seeing all these.' I wanted some more money from Mama, after the N20,000 I stole from her a month ago. 'Things are quite hard for me now Mama, but I will pay back. I have this business I want to invest in.'  I explained, but Mama wasn't buying it this time. My mother is a church woman and she is amazing, we just never get along well. She hates the life I live. I hate my life too, but I can't help myself so I live it anyway. Don't even start to blame mama for the way I turned out. Mama brought me up in the ways of the Lord, but I wanted to explore other ways. Papa...

It all began with a small headache, I was in class when it started. Well, it was not unusual as I had not had anything to eat since morning and it was almost 4pm already. The first thing I did when I got to the hostel was to eat the food I bought from Buka 22. The food did not taste nice. For someone who usually is selective when it comes to food, I did not mind the taste. I just needed a little food in my stomach so I could use the pain killers I got from the pharmacy earlier. I slept off immediately after taking the drugs. When I woke up at bout 7:30pm, the headache had intensified. Two weeks later, I was at the school clinic complaining about the headache that just won't leave. The doctor, a nice looking young man that would have been perfect if not for two broken teeth in his mouth wrote some medical jargons on paper and asked me to take it to the pharmacy. The pharmacist gave me some horrible looking drugs that I had to force myself to take. When the headache still...