WHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?

Some 20years ago, my best friend joined a certain fellowship on campus, back then in UI and I enjoyed her fellowship through her. It was a great gathering of believers.

Did you belong to a fellowship on campus? If you didn’t, how did you cope with undergraduate life?

I was heavily committed in another fellowship and I was an integral part of its administration. Thus, I could only enjoy this fellowship vicariously through her. I couldn’t change to her fellowship. That year, I wanted to change when I met her prayer partner though. I saw them together once and wondered how they ever got to pray. I knew that if I was her, with him, prayer would be the last thing on my mind.

After we met, I didn’t see him again for another 3 to 4 years. I however didn’t get the opportunity to forget him. My bestie kept talking about him and then he became a very popular person. He was always in the news; the good news. Thankfully or otherwise, he was a medical student and so we heard more about him than we saw him.

In 2002, I stopped having a fellowship. I moved out of the old one and didn’t move in to another one.

Don’t assume o! I didn’t join their fellowship because of fine boy! I have more Holy Spirit than that. 

I helped set up the follow up team of TRF (The Rock Foundation) but didn’t join that fellowship either.

I was a free moral agent.

I had a very close male friend who had been a bulwark over the years. We got close in 200 level Dentistry and he just stayed with me through thick and thin. I call him ATP. He is Pastor Akinwande Tolulope Puddicombe. He headed Stone Campus Fellowship.

I didn’t join that fellowship either.

On the 13th of January, 2004, ATP staged the largest interdenominational stage play/concert of our time in UI. 8weeks before that date he gathered the best vocalists and best actors and actresses in all the fellowships for regular rehearsals. I somehow got an invitation to that team.

PS: I was the head of the BLW Drama team from 1998 to 2001. I was qualified to be on the team, I just didn’t have a fellowship.

You really don’t see where this is going, do you?

When roles were assigned, I landed the role of a jilted girlfriend. Guess who the boyfriend who was supposed to jilt me at my birthday party was? My bestie’s prayer partner! 藍藍藍

I mean, I don’t blame those who call karma a b@£&#.

I was going to get ditched in public without ever dating the guy.

So we regularly attended rehearsals 3 times a week for 8 weeks. We were both dedicated. We didn’t get chummy but we knew each other. We could no longer even refer to each other as acquaintances with the amount of time we spent together. We said the lovey dovey stuff before the heartbreak speech and we had the heartbreak speech down pat. We were good at our art and we greatly admired each other for that.

On the day of the dress rehearsal, people had started having phones but he hadn’t gotten one and neither had I. The dress rehearsal was cancelled but we both didn’t know. We were the only participants who made it to Trenchard Hall that night at 7:30pm to rehearse.

We didn’t know the others were not coming. So, instead of “wasting time” waiting for them, we kept rehearsing our part of the drama. Practice makes perfect, they say.

At some point, while rehearsing our lines, we noticed that we had both abandoned the script and started freestyling. The implication of this was that when we got to the part where we were supposed to switch to a break up speech, we just continued uttering sweet nothings to each other. At that point, we both discovered each other as skilled lyricists.

Poetry flowed freely in the dark, carvenous middle of Trenchard Hall Stage with only the eerie glow from Mellanby Hall entrance to lighten our faces…

That day, he stopped being my bestie’s prayer partner. He became my friend. *I said friend o!*

I actually don’t believe in love at first sight (though a few times I have experienced attraction at first sight sha). We had fun that night. The performance the next day was a hit.
Johnny came to watch me. That meant the world to me. The performance however meant that the reason I had for seeing him was over.

Was that the end of our story? Definitely not!

I finished from UI some months after that. I didn’t see him again till I finished. I didn’t see him or hear from him again until I finished law school one year afterwards either.

What do you think of this love at first sight business? Share your opinion and let’s learn!

We were done rehearsing. We were just faffing around when my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I detached myself from the laughing ladies so I could hear properly.

Turns out my mystery caller was my bestie’s prayer partner. It was the first time we would talk on the phone. I don’t even know how he got my number. It was a very long call saying, well, nothing.
See finish has entered this matter o…

Can you imagine? Some people are wondering how someone who started as head of drama can end up as end of choir in another school, especially since nobody has heard me sing before…

Na you sabi…My singing is pleasing to my father in heaven. Besides, what both roles needed was my administrative skill.
So, in October that year, when we went for clearance for Call to Bar, my friends and I had to go to church for rehearsals. There was thanksgiving on the Sunday before the call to bar week and we had a special ministration. I also had a special appearance in the drama of the day (I was summoned by Uyi Umuhangwu, the head of the drama team) who had discovered I was hiding my talent.
I finished from the Nigerian Law School in the year 2005 and was called to the Nigerian Bar in November of that year. I studied in the Abuja Campus and during the course of the year, I was choir coordinator at RCCG Hall of Mercy, directly opposite the law school in Bwari.
When I got to Ibadan, I fixed an appointment to see him in school on my way from work one day.

On my way from Adamasingba to Bodija, I decided to stop by at Alexander Brown Hall in UCH.

That was the official beginning of *Operation Get Familiar*.
We spoke at length about anything and everything. We spoke a lot about him, his vision and his plans.

I don’t know if I was easy to impress but I was too impressed. He was literally larger than life when I got to know him.
That call ended with a promise – I promised to go looking for him whenever I got back to Ibadan after my call to bar.

The call must have been very ticklish, since I smiled sheepishly all night afterwards. He was an obviously younger person. He was still in medical school. I was flattered by the attention. I was also curious – why did he actually call?
By that time, he had become a full fledged tongue-talking, Bible-believing, miracle-working Campus Fellowship Head Pastor.

He was vying for the Chairmanship of ABH.

He was a youth PDP Leader in his community.

He had more than a dozen motorcycles giving him daily returns – his side business.
I don’t know what trips you but I was sold.

He made plans and followed through. He knew the Word and preached the Word. He was familiar with the Spirit and so my manifestation of gifts of the Spirit were not strange to him. He was so big himself that he could not be intimidated by my past or my future.

My dear people of God, that was how that year, your sister tumbled in love.

If it had not been for Medical students were too busy for life with their studies. This young man was too busy with life but he studied! He wasn’t flunking!! He was making money already too, his own, not his parents’!!!

What manner of man was he? I was in awe.

Then he asked me to help him with hosting Fela Durotoye who he brought to UI for a 2-day men’s conference put together by him.
On our way back, we were tired and hungry. From all that happened that day, we can safely conclude that all the occupants of the car slept. Everybody – including the driver.

I woke up being carried to the road side from the mangled car and made to sit on the scalding tarred express road. I realized that I was shouting in tongues and the first rational thought that came to my head was – _*I was thinking about a boy before the car crash and his name flashed before my eyes…*
How I discovered I had “fallen” was as hilarious as falling itself.

On the 7th of December, 2005, I was involved in a ghastly motor accident. My bestie and I went to court in Ado-Ekiti that day to show off our spanking new wigs and gowns. As the Nigerian Judicial System would have it, after making an early morning trip and getting to Ado before 9am, the court did not sit. We had to go back without achieving our aim.
It was all shades of bad. With how ghastly that accident was… I was the only one who went home that day. Although I was also injured, others had serious injuries, fractures that required surgery. And the first thing I remembered was a boy’s name.  Not even my name.

Of course, when I became conscious, I quickly reassured my dad (who was also in the car) that I was fine. All he was shouting was “Please check my daughter. Please confirm she’s fine. Please confirm her friend is safe. Jumoke!”

I had a cut on my foot that needed suturing. I asked the doctor if it could heal without sutures and he said yes. I left the hospital without stitching it. The wound on my left heel required daily dressing for the next one month. I had trauma to my legs and couldn’t walk well but the injuries of the others needed more attention.

My care and hospital trips became Pastor Doctor’s responsibility. I was dependent on him.
I can boldly say that this marked the beginning of our relationship since he never got round to asking me out and I never got round to saying yes but we (and everyone else in our lives that had eyes and could see) knew we stopped being friends and became something else during that period.

I was pampered and he recruited all his friends to support the pampering mission.

Pastor Doctor took me for wound dressing every day. He didn’t have a car but he had a friend who did. He sat with me at the back nursing my foot when his friend drove us to St. Vincent. I lived with my brother at that time till I recuperated fully.

I was pampered in that season. Friends and church members visited daily for a month bearing all sorts of gifts and treats, someone even brought _*point and kill*_ in his boot!

I was the most visited person recuperating that was never admitted that I have ever met.

Yet, nobody could outgive him. Time, attention, money, gifts. It was surreal; simply amazing.

In January 2006, he had to go for an outside posting in Abuja. I thought the loss was going to be great but it wasn’t. We spoke for hours every evening. Each time I had to go to the hospital for a dressing, his friend still came, though I started driving on the 31st of December because I had to go for my bestie’s birthday. He did everything to recreate the care even while he was away.

It was when he was in Abuja that I started getting a 3k weekly allowance. Now, you really can’t understand how awkward that was but let me explain a bit.

He was younger than myself.
I worked, he was a student.
I was living with my brother and I didn’t have to go anywhere so I shouldn’t need money.
Yet, I had a weekly allowance.

My money came in without fail. While he was in Abuja, I got to appreciate his protective type of affection.

He met someone he thought was interested in me and went to have a heart to heart conversation with that other man; to explain what I mean to him and why he doesn’t want him to encroach.

As annoying as that was, the civil manner in which he “marked his territory” was so endearing!

NYSC camp opened for me on the 14th of February, 2006. I was still walking with a limp. He was so concerned about how I would cope with life in camp with all the physical activities.

I didn’t go to camp on Valentine’s Day o! I “did” valentine with him; with a date and all the traditional gifts, before going to camp the following day. A red teddy, a perfume (Kenzo), chocolates and nice poetry.

Camp was a different kettle of fish! Being mobility challenged got me a lot of male attention and favour with physical activities but Pastor Doctor was just talented at caring. I would go mountaineering to call him in Yikpata, since we could only find network on a tree at the highest point in camp. There were a lot of doctors from UCH in my batch. Through them, he kept tabs on my health. He did the impossible in my second week in camp though.

So what happened was that I told him I was out of money and the allowee was not doing much since I ate selectively at Mami Market consistently. The second weekend I spent there, I just heard an announcement on radio that I should come.

Pastor Doctor came to spend the weekend with me in NYSC Camp and he came with plenty money to cater for additional comforts for me.

I’ve said so much about stuff he did. I was (and I still am) a very nice and giving person. I also gave at every opportunity I got but I didn’t give money. I gave spiritual support. I gave gifts. I gave time and attention. I worked with him on his plans and vision. He was a very happy boyfriend.

He wasn’t Yoruba so my parents were skeptical but he hit it off with my nephews and nieces. Eyitayo got the full arsenal kit and other paraphernalia. He made Eyitayo happiest. That was then o. The days of Thierry. Don’t crucify me. He got Eyitayo a life size poster.

I think the allowance stayed the entire duration of the relationship. I returned to Ibadan after camp and we established routines that had us seeing daily. I was introduced to his friends and he was introduced to my family and church members. We got along famously until his parents had to come to Ibadan for his induction. That was when his mum met the older Yoruba girl that was turning her first son’s head.

Was that the actual beginning of the end?
Maybe the end started earlier, when he told me he was uncomfortable with my male best friend – Johnny. However, Johnny wasn’t going anywhere. He had a seat in the grandstands of my life for life. In my mind, I had detached from him but Pastor Doctor wasn’t satisfied with the level of detachment. Although he was convinced there was nothing between us, he was not convinced that something could ever happen. I didn’t know anything I could do to persuade him

I am sorry about the abrupt suspension of the story. Let’s do Part II from Friday to Sunday.

Do have a wonderful week ahead!