The View From The Window (2)

WARNING: ADULT CONTENT!


'My brother, see me see trouble,' Amba narrated his tale to a group of friends. 'As I hear the kick and Ada shouting and the mention of police, na so I remove my clothes and say make I quick comot outside for the dark. I don sneak from house finish, na so I hear hand grab me for waist. Wetin help me be say I don remove clothes. Policeman see say I no wear anything, na so he on him torchlight. He shout: "Stop or I shoot!" Ah, for mind I say shoot. You catch me with something? Even clothes sef I no wear. Na so I tear race.'


His audience were laughing and clapping. Behind the curtains of their louvred window, the Udiongs were smiling. So Amba was the guy the policeman chased naked into their farm?


'But the wahala wey dey now be say the police people no be from here. We don reach station, we no see Ada. But dem direct us to Zone 6,' Adim, Ada's boyfriend, said. 


'Ah, na Zone 6 guys? E mean the matter serious,' Amba said.


The audience made all sorts of speculation. It was only some days after when Ada returned that the picture became clear.


The incessant abductions of doctors in the state were already an epidemic and these were an irritant to the state chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). Then, a highly esteemed female professor of Medicine in the University of Calabar (Unical), the federal university based in the state capital, was abducted. The incident was the pandemic that exhausted the stock of medicine called patience in the pharmacy of the state chapter of NMA. It asked its members to proceed on strike until the state government could act decisively to protect them. The doctors stayed home and the state health sector suffered seizures.


The state government couldn't help but drop its laissez-faire attitude in dealing with the menace. It put on the cloak of a traditional father wielding a whip in one hand and a lantern in the other, with the flame raised high, moving from closet to closet seeking out the recalcitrant wards who kept tearing the fabric of peace in his home.


The lashes fell heavily on the hide of the ubiquitous operators of joints selling overtly the local gin called 'akaikai' laced with narcotics, especially hemp and tramadol and nicknamed 'combine'. The government believed the youths fed on these concoctions before embarking on their nefarious ventures.


The police made a haul of arrests during their massive raid in the shanties. In their net was the caretaker's son, Imo, and Amba's rival, Ada. Three days had past before Ada returned from the police cell. 


Not sharing the same mother tongue with Amba, being a common phenomenon here, Ada chatted in pidgin English with him on the bench on his verandah: 'The officers wey arrest us no be from here.


TO BE CONTINUED

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