IBUSA IS A DEN OF INIQUITY (A Brother’s Keeper)

Previously on This Ibusa Story…

*

I was on my way home from school, but had to stop by at the market to see my aunt at her hairdressing salon. Before I got there however, I was at Coker junction, waiting to get a vehicle to Ibusa. While I was waiting, I don’t know what it was, whether it was gaydar or whatever, but I noticed this particular guy who had alighted from a bus that I was sure came from Lagos. I didn’t pay particular attention to him until I overheard him talking on the phone. His responses to whoever was on the other end made me aware he was going to Ibusa. There was a tone, a certain unknowingness to the one-sided conversation, that made me begin to wonder if it was a hookup he was going to Ibusa for. With a flustered air about him, this guy couldn’t have looked more like a Johnny-Just-Come if he’d tried.

And then, for an inexplicable reason, I suddenly started feeling fearful, scared for him. Just knowing that he was going to my notorious town for what was most likely a hookup filled me with concern for him. With nothing to confirm what I suspected, I had a feeling that there was a 90% chance this stranger was headed for a kito trap.

We both got into the same bus, and I alighted first, and took a bike to my aunt’s salon. On getting there, we bantered for a bit, with her demanding for the bread I promised to get for her. I’d forgotten to buy the bread, but she insisted. So, since the salon was located close to the market, I decided to go buy the bread at the market junction.

When I got to the market, I recognized the bus I took from Asaba just pulling up. And then I saw that guy emerge from it. He was back on his phone, most likely talking to the guy he’d come to see. I inched closer to him, and from what I overheard him saying, I became more certain than I initially was that this guy was here for a hookup. And with this certainty came stronger concern that this was a kito trap he was headed for. What I’d been through and everything I knew about my town began to fill me with some anxiety over this guy’s fate.

But I didn’t know how to walk up to this stranger and say to him, “Oga, you need to turn back and go back to wherever you’re coming from because whatever or whoever brought you here will end in tears.”

I didn’t know how to go and say this to him because doing this would be akin to outing myself to him. Plus, it’d be very embarrassing if what I’d built up in my mind turned out to be different from the actual situation.

So, I left that thought, bought the bread I came to the junction to buy and returned to my aunt’s shop. I didn’t spend a lot of time with her after that before I took off, now headed home.

Then I got to a narrow bend, and till today, I cannot explain what drew my attention to the random human being I saw sitting astride a bike and speaking into a phone.

“…eh, he say he don come,” he was saying. “I wan go pick am up. Him dey that market junction side…”

I heard “market junction” and as I felt the stirrings of something chilly gather along my nerve endings, I glanced at the guy on the phone. I recognized him as a very notorious face for criminal activities in the town. The ice solidified in my gut, and I knew – I just knew – that this person and his gang were the people that stranger from out of town had come here to see.

In that instant, I dumped any reservations I had and did a rapid about-turn. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, all the way to my aunt’s shop. She noticed my harried appearance and was immediately full of questions. “Wetin happen? What’s wrong?”

But I just came there to drop my bag. I tossed a “Aunty, you won’t understand” at her, and was out of the shop, sprinting to the junction, desperately praying that I’d find the guy before that criminal would get to him.

If there is anything like running faster than the speed of light, that would describe how fast I ran that day. I got to the junction panting heavily, and as Gay Jesus would have it, there he was, still by himself.

This time, I was no longer encumbered by any thoughts of how he might react or if I would get the situation wrong. I rushed over to him, and when he saw me, I began talking, “Excuse me, you remember me, right?”

He nodded slowly, recognition flashing in his eyes. “Yes, we boarded the same bus in Asaba.”

“Good.” I nodded. “I apologize for intruding on your privacy like this, but I couldn’t help overhearing from your phone conversations that you’re here to see… (I cannot remember the names I heard him mention). Let me just be honest with you: those persons you’re trying to meet up, I just overheard one of them on my way home preparing to harm you. Right now, they’re getting ready to beat you and take your valuables and maybe even keep you captive until your family bails you with a huge sum of money. In your best interest, you better leave this place right now, enter the next bus to Asaba, lodge in a hotel there, and tomorrow, go back to where you came from.”

The alarm that jumped into the guy’s face, that panic that widened his eyes, the way he didn’t even bother to ask me any questions – all these were confirmation to me that I’d been right all along.

“Oh my god, what am I going to do…” he spluttered, looking frantic and close to tears. “I don’t even have any transport money to go back home.”

I stared at him in incredulity. “Are you crazy!” I burst out. “How will you come all this way to see somebody and not have transport money to go back home?!” Then realizing that we were still in the eye of the storm – the guy on the bike must be very close now – I said, “You know what? Let’s leave this place first. Let’s leave here so they won’t get us here.”

We hurried away from the junction, and I took him to my aunt’s shop. And then, I resurrected my outrage.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“Lagos.”

“So how will you come all the way from Lagos to Delta State without money to take you back home?”

“The guy I was chatting with promised to give me my transport fare back.”

Unbelievable!

Somehow, this guy had automatically become my responsibility in more ways than one. I was just a student myself then; so I had to beg for some money from my aunt for him. I took him to my house where he spent the night. Meanwhile, his phone kept ringing with calls from the guy he came to see, and I enjoined him to not answer the calls and to block him. The next day, I took him to the park where he was able to get a bus back to Lagos.

(Dear Community Member, if you’re reading this, I hope the time that has passed since that incident had bequeathed on you more street smarts, and that you didn’t need to be kitoed to learn your lesson about hookups.)

I came to realize that this guy’s fate lied with me going through what I went through to be able to save him. If I hadn’t encountered Mike aka Kelvin, I wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to know the things I began to know about my town. This aspect of Ibusa that I’ve gotten to know is very shameful to me. It makes me sad to know that the place I was born and grew up in had become significant for so much harm to my community, but I won’t even bother trying to refute this reputation because it is deserved.

Ibusa is a den of iniquity. Gay people should be very wary of it. Gay people should keep away from it. Gay people should think twice before visiting anyone here for any reason related to sex and hookups.

The other day, I was talking with a friend and fellow resident and native of Ibusa, and he was lamenting the woes he’d encountered during his job search. According to him, whenever prospective employers look at his resume and see his town, they pull back and say they can’t hire him because of his origins. Ibusa has become well known for a people who are lazy with an aptitude for crime; and my friend had felt this scourge so many times, he was contemplating lying on his resume about his location so that the hindrance of being from Ibusa won’t be there.

And that is what this town does to you: to the person who visits from outside, and to the ones who are honestly trying to make their way out of here.

Written by Hausdorff Space El