Doctor Freaks Journal - ''Breakfast'' Is For All

There is an African adage that goes thus: “What the elders see while sitting, the young ones standing on their toes won't see.” Permit me to tweak this and sound a bit paradoxical here. "What a woman sees while sitting in the comfort of her home, a roving husband rolling on the streets may not see."

As a married man, you don't know how lucky you are when you're married to a good and smart woman. 

Sometimes, when a woman is trying to offer some precious pieces of advice, a man may perceive that same is coming from a position of jealousy, selfishness or self-centredness, but some of the time, if not most, we are wrong.

In the early years of my marriage I made lots of travels and I drove to most of these jurisdictions. I hated to travel alone so I cultivated the habit of riding with mostly female passengers standing at seemingly safe spots.

 Deliberately, I avoided males, for obvious reasons even though Nigeria was not this bad in the mid 2000s. For strange reasons I always "confessed" to my wife that I assisted some ladies but gave her assurances that I never exchanged and would never exchange mobile numbers with them. 

She was never comfortable with this practice though and she warned me against it but I was just too stubborn. I continued until one fateful day when I was returning from Akure and somewhere around Gbagi market in Ibadan, a lass flagged down my car and trust me, I volunteered to give her a ride, as usual.

 She was going to Lagos, my destination. We exchanged courtesies and I initiated a conversation but this young lady refused to cheer up. Her weird attitude got me worried and I became worried. Upon further and persistent pestering, she opened her mouth and began to reel out a catalogue of woes. She was from ABC State, coincidentally my state and I became more interested. She was in my state university and she was travelling home (Lagos) to see her dad who would never give her money and the step-mum who would starve her for the number of days she would be spending at home and then she broke the bad news, she just got a call from the mum who had been forced to relocate to the village after the father's second marriage. 

The mum had just been rushed to the hospital and the doctor had diagnosed ruptured fibroid so they needed to "tear her open" like yesterday and they needed to deposit a huge sum of money for the surgery. Everything was happening so fast and she needed to save her mum's life. Poor student, what could she do?

 Nothing. I needed to come to the rescue of the mum, she pleaded profusely, even though I hadn't known her for up to 10 minutes or even less. Electronic transfer was not common at the material time or let me just say that I didn't have that facility so I enquired about how I could be of help. 

She simply suggested that I should use an ATM, withdraw and give her the cash so she could take the money to her sister's bank to transfer the funds to her. I did just that. Withdrew my widow's mite and handed her same, meanwhile I still gave her additional funds since she said that she needed to turn back to the village to stay by the mum's bedside. All of this happened under one hour. Since I was going to Lagos and if you're familiar with Ibadan you will know that after the Wema Bank around Gbagi market there were no ATMs along that Iwo Road so I had to drive to Ring Road area to access one.

I continued the journey, alone now and I was glad that at least I was able to save a soul. Few minutes after, I tried reaching my new friend but her line was unreachable. I continued until the following day when the phone finally rang. She ignored my calls persistently until much later in the day when she eventually picked and I heaved a sigh of relief, she was safe, I muttered. I got the shocker of my life! She sounded hostile and denied ever meeting me. 

I tried to find out how the mother was doing and she flared up. She denied ever meeting or receiving any funds from me and warned me to desist from calling her line. She cut me off and after several attempts I found out that she had blocked my line completely. It was at this point I found out I had been duped. Better a la carte breakfast.


Since that day, if you like wear the garb of a saint or that of an angel and stand by the roadside, you are on your own (O-Y-O) I won't even look in your direction.

 I think I learnt my own lesson the hard way and coupled with the present situation of things in Naija, no way. I can't remember sharing this story with my wife anyway and I'm sure she may get to see this someday. 

"She don taya for my old escapade accounts though." She would just shake her head again and say "you this man, you no dey hear word."

Its Kunle!!!