Don't Catch the Fever
Since he completed his NYSC year, he has achieved nothing enviable with his life…
Ola wakes in pain this morning. His body is in an unspoken war against itself. His head seems to have added weight and his eyes beg not to open. But he should be used to this by now. The daily struggle begins, whether or not he should force these eyes open.
Most days he is unbothered by the colour black he sees behind his closed lids. Other days, like this morning, the black comes off as sinister, as though a monster hides inside its inky darkness to prey on him. So he opens his eyes gradually, a leak of light after another, until his eyes can accommodate the brightening light of the dawn.
For a mild moment, all that occupies his waking mind is the unrelenting ache in his back and neck. Until his eyes stray to the patches of stains on his bedroom wall. Blood smear? Oh, the darn mosquitoes.
Since he completed his N.Y.S.C year, he has achieved nothing enviable with his life. Except for these stains in crimson, he tells himself. Only this feat of neutralizing a host of unfortunate mosquitoes. If there is anything worthwhile about him, he concludes, then it must be his continuous breathing — well, some of his mates are dead, no?
Yesterday, on his way to the secretariat, he thought things would go differently. That the man in the oversized suit would not flash him a dismissive smile. That the proposal would be approved against all odds. That “we will get back to you” would be something to believe in. That the word “unfortunately” will never have to surface, not to talk of becoming the watchword.
But life has happened as they say, and everything went as much flopped as the days before. Nothing is as sad as his suspicion that there may be no end to this dark tunnel — and who cares about the light always said to be at its end anyway?
Now he thinks of the late mosquitoes: poor them, do they have a life at all? But before his thoughts hit the usual peak where he deems himself no better than the tiny losers, he halts with a deep sigh.
This day, two roads open before him, and he can’t travel both at the same stretch. He will either run through one or desert the other. First, to remain in bed, cuddle up his defeat and kiss depression welcome. Second, the path less trod, to yank off his aṣọ ìbora, get out of bed, despise the discouraging voices in his head and make yet another attempt at making his day count.
He knows how this will go after all. He will groan and ache as his stomach churns for hunger. Yet at the same stretch, yearnings will cloud up his head as his heart beats for want of fulfillment. He will re-strategize and seek assistance. And yes, he will struggle with and through it all, until something happens. Or not.
But if there’s one thing he will never do, he concludes, it is giving in to the fever of giving up. This same fever that downs people, a quarter to their breakthrough. If he could manage to massacre these mosquitoes, whose splattered blood now forms a notable pattern on his wall, then good chances are, that someday soon, maybe today, he will smash failure to death and leave behind patterns of success.
