THE HUNGER GAMES

Soooo, I’m seriously thinking about how awesome my secondary school was and I think I should take you back some years…………back to when I was a little mousy looking child.

*screen goes hazy*

Ok! *wipes screen*
You guys know my school was in Benin city, Nigeria right?
Well…now you know…AGAIN!

Ok…
One jolly day, my friends and I were hungry. We had exhausted our provisions and funds and our parents switched off their phones so we wouldn’t beg them for money.
Wickedness!!!
(Did I say my friends and I were broke?, I meant the whole JSS3 set was broke)

It was a life and death issue…..the “brokeness”…… I mean. The dining hall was serving crappy food and some of us(me) couldn’t survive without cabin flakes or garri and milk.
My friends, Chiamaka and kiki lay down on my bed looking like a train had run over them. I lay on the floor groaning. You could almost hear our tummys screaming out:
“Provisions…arghhhh, we need some milk, *growl* “.

I stretched my hand slowly towards my friends…hungry, dying.
Suddenly, the famed light bulb came on.
If we went from one room to room asking for a spoon of milk from each of the roommates we would get enough to last for a while.
I shared my idea with them and kiki ran to get an empty milk container(we had lots of those by the way…I think we hoped milk would magically appear in them one day).

We went round a’begging.
Beg ,beg, beg!
“One spoon pleassssse….”
“Ahh ahh now, audrey don’t be stingy. “Divine abeg now, just one spoon. Ok! ,make it two spoons”.

Two hours later, we stumbled with our collection to an empty corridor.
We poured it into the empty tin and Voila! We had a tin filled with milk.
Chiamaka ran to get some soft cabin and sugar she had and I ran to get a bowl. It was more of a bucket because we were sooo hungry and seriously if you were in our shoes you’d need a bucket to eat too.

Anyways……
We made sure no one else was coming our way, made a big bowl of cabin flakes and sat down legs spread wide to eat.
All I can say is that:
“Food eaten solo tastes better”.
All that crap about love in sharing is horse crap. If that meal had been eaten on Jss3 corridor, all our set girls would have begged for one spoon each.
Can a bucket(mini bucket) of cornflakes feed 54 hungry, beggarly girls?
NO!

We finished our food, belched, laughed happily and started gisting. The tin of milk was still very full and we made plans of how to repeat our begging process and get more milk…..we could even ask for cornflakes the next time.
Wha hahahahahahaha (evil laughter from us).

We hadn’t stayed up to 10minutes when we heard a cat meowing. We froze!
Now if you know Benin city well enough, you’ll know that there’s a certain myth about it being the headquarters of witches. There was also a rumour amongst students that our school was built on a graveyard.
Those stories were enough for us to be terrified of cats, strange sounds, bushes, the dark….
Name it, and we were terrified.

We heard the meow again, suddenly a cat streaked past us.
We abandoned our tins and bucket and ran for our dear tiny lives.
Our lives were more important than milk! We arrived at our corridor panting and almost peeing on ourselves in fright.
After two minutes of looking like we had been chased by vampires, we burst into maniac laughter. Yes, we were scared, but the adrenaline rush was awesome!

We waited for about five minutes, just to be sure the cat had gone then we went back for our milk. Did I say our lives were more important than the milk?……..
Well, we changed our minds then.
We huddled together and went back to the empty corridor.
Emmm….where was the milk and cabin?
We ranted and raged about how our hard earned milk had disappeared.
Finally, we went back to our corridor. As we neared my room, we passed Divine’s room. She and some other girls were seated on the floor with our stuff!
We ran into the room and demanded for the milk back. They asked how we knew it was ours. We cursed them some….
A slap flew from nowhere, milk flew from the tin….
I saw red and so did all the hungry chicks. Soon it was a free for all….
Damned thieves!!
They paid with their lives.

P.s…emm, I was beaten up that day and I have a little scar to show for it.