I hope you got the gift I sent you through Santa Claus. Did you like it? I know it’s not much. Just keep it with you all the time especially when you go to bed. It will help you sleep soundly and not have any nightmares like you used to have before when you hear of EFCC.
Have I told you about my new friend? I should tell you about him because he makes me very proud. If he was a woman, and I was big like my big brother, I would have made him my wife. Months ago. But he is not a woman, and I cannot marry a man. Because I do not want to go to hell fire yet. Not in this particular life. Maybe in one of the other nine lives I will have when I become a cat like your cat “Oliver”. Maybe by then, I will not be attending catechism classes anymore.
I love spending time with this my friend; I love listening to all the wise things he says and all the stories he tells me, especially the one of one old woman called “Michelle”. I have always wondered how it is that my friend is so wise. My mummy says it is because of his gray hairs. Do you think I will look fine with gray hairs? So that I can be wise like him too.
Sometimes, spending time with my friend means going for a ride in his car. He usually drives. He has a green car with a white stripe running down the whole middle from the back to the front. It is a very nice car. He once told me the name of the company that made the car. It sounded like “Loogaad” but I can’t remember. It is not like your own in that picture you sent me in your last letter. It is not as fine as that. My friend says it is because his car is a third generation model. It took me a long time to say that correctly but I did and my friend says I am very brilliant.
I like our outings in my friend's car because it has a radio, an air conditioner that works (not like Uncle Tami’s own that does not work), and it always smells good inside. I wish it is what I enter to school every day instead of those noisy danfo buses that have smelly drivers, rude conductors, and sweaty passengers. I will tell my mummy to buy this type of car for me next Christmas. I think she should be able to. The other day, she said she would buy anything I wanted if I was good and took my injection. I was good and took the injection. I did not cry too much (only for one hour afterward); I did not bite the nurse’s hand and I did not pinch her bombom when she gave me the injection. No. I was good. So I will tell Mummy to buy this type of car for me. Then I will ask my friend to teach me to drive it. And next Christmas, she will buy for you too.
But first, let me tell you about how my friend drives.
My friend is a good driver. He is always careful. He drives slowly and obeys all the road signs. He obeys the traffic lights and obeys the traffic wardens. He also obeys that traffic warden on our street. You remember that one who is not really a traffic warden and who does not have any legs but controls traffic with his big hands and wheels himself around the road junction on a small wooden panel on which sits his rather small legless waist? But my friend doesn’t give him money. Everybody gives that man money. Except my friend. He just thanks him with a wave of his slender hands and a bright, wide, sincere, gap-toothed smile. What I like best is that my friend doesn’t drink and drive o. He doesn’t even drink alcohol at all. Just sips of water and fruit wine. As a good driver should.
Yes, so you see? My friend is a good driver. But he is not the perfect driver. No one is, I guess. But I don't just like how my friend spends too long looking at the mirrors that show him what is going on at his back. My mummy says they are called “rear-view mirrors”. I have noticed my friend not only looks but even spends too much time talking about what he sees there each time he looks. He looks in the mirror before he overtakes beautiful jeeps and ugly trucks and then he talks about it; after he avoids portholes on the road, he looks in the mirror so long I begin to wonder whether he is quietly measuring the size of the porthole in his mind and congratulating himself for a job well done.
He looks in the mirror when we drive past beautiful girls and he smiles and nods his head (not that that bit is particularly worrisome); he looks in the mirror when we drive past beautiful houses and talks about his love for architecture. He looks in the rear-view mirror when he hears any car honk. And here, they honk a heck of a lot. Especially those danfo drivers. Those ones honk with their van horns as if it was a musical instrument for “Santa Claus is coming to town”. I don’t like danfo drivers. Thank God my friend is not a danfo driver. He is just a good driver who looks at the rear-view mirror a little too much for my liking. Sometimes, I even think he also looks at the rear-view mirror to see whether his eyes are too misty or his mustache too dusty.
Like I said, my friend is a good driver. But he spends so much time looking at that rear-view mirror and I sometimes have this fear that we may fall into a porthole or miss a bend as our beautiful car bounces forward along these unsafe roads. I wish he would look forward more. Don’t you think so? Am I wrong? My aunty in the school said the rear-view mirror helps one drive safely, but I think the mirrors are better for glances; not stares and glares. The stares and glares should be for the road in front, the glances for the roads and trees and houses we have past. Yea, the glances should be for them and for other things past - fine girls and ugly women, Sambo Dasuki and Goodluck Jonathan, your own house and everything else that appears in that past.
My friend Muhammadu Buhari is a good driver. I want him to stare at the road dead ahead, and save only glances for the rear-view mirror.
Starting now.
One day, you will get to meet him and I can bet with all the money I have saved for Cold Stone Ice Cream that you will like him as much as I do. Maybe not as much.
Take care my uncle,
Hugo Naijaman.
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Author's Notes: Very sincere thanks to Moore Numental for editing this piece and making it all the more readworthy.
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Author's Notes: Very sincere thanks to Moore Numental for editing this piece and making it all the more readworthy.
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