There And Back On Time - Season 1 - Episode 42

5 years ago

There And Back On Time - Season 1 - Episode 42

The Game

Germany Dilemma
The first day on the field (Ogboo) went well. I
succeeded in making more sales.

John was nice to me. He was my master.

At a stage, I started selling for others too. I
had no money to start my own and the little I
was making from the sales went into food
and calls.

Time to pay us our monthly allowance was a
few days away. I had hoped to use the 200
euro I will receive to buy 50grams and tie
them in satchets.

I would go down when nobody was there
even in the night.

I started making my own customers too,
giving out my numbers and telling them my
name. They liked me a lot because I was the
only person who would attend to them in the
night, even after midnights.

Sometimes customers would call John or
Jordan or anyone, if they were not around,
they would call me to attend to the
customers.

My outfield name was Millo. No one dared
used his real name there.
In less than a week, My popularity had risen
from an amateur to an all-time-available
Millo. I would go down anytime of the night to
attend to customers who had called my
number.

Sometimes the customers who didn’t have
our phone numbers would whistle with his or
her mouth. We would hear them from the
HEIM and go down to attend to them.

The lazy Camerounian who shared the room
with me had seen the improvements. I now
cook small egusi soup with two chickens. (a
full Chicken was 1 euro anyway)
Unfortunately for him, the older
Camerounians in our HEIM had no courage to
deal on drugs like their Nigerian
counterparts.

All they do each day was to drink cheap
beers. Fortunately for them, Germans were
the highest producers of beer, so it made
the products very cheap in the country.

A can of beer was two times cheaper than its
water equivalent.

Water was the real deal.
Rumour had it that the German rivers and
lakes were poisoned during the second world
war against Hitler.

*I didn’t care anyway, the tap was so neat. I
figured that since we can swim and cook with
the water, it wasn’t that dangerous. I started
drinking it. I believed that no matter how
dangerous natural water could be, it will
never be as dangerous as whiskey
irrespective of what anybody think.

There was no way Germans with their science
and technology must not have found a
solution to what happened in 1943-1945.*

The business continued as usual. I eventually
started saving some small money.

Sometimes I would calculate my money and
mentally change them in naira. Euro was
hovering between 180 and 185 naira.

Two hundred euros amounted to almost
40,000 naira. That was a serious money To a
poor Nigerian.

The Day of our allowances came. The Day was
like a party day. All the people who had been
posted to our HEIM had returned to collect
their money.

More than half of our HEIM occupants usually
left to the big cities. Some went to Berlin,
Munchen, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg etc.
Just like the way I had left to Essen.

A night before the payment, the HEIM was full.
Music was blasting, the kitchen was busy. The
Camerounians were drinking while the
Pakistani and Indians were baking their flour
food. The Biafrans were busy with their
business.

The major reason for the mass return was
to let the authorities know that you were still
living in Germany. It was said that if one
misses the monthly allowances twice, the
authorities will council out his/her name and
arrest him/her whenever they returned.
The following morning, we all assembled in
front of the HEIM, names were called. When I
heard my name, I went into the office with my
Ausweiss.

I had collected my Ausweiss a day after I
returned to HEIM. The German police had
seized it in Essen and sent it back to the
HEIM. I was warned not to venture outside
the state again or I would pay 40euros each
time they caught me.

I received my own payment. It was a schein. A
kind of food stamp. We were required to use
it in the local markets. It was a plan devised
by the authorities to prevent people from
leaving the HEIM. The bad news was that we
couldn’t use the HEIM outside the City.

The good news was that the local traders
from Turkey and elsewhere would buy the
schein from us at a cut prize. A 200euro
schein sold at 180euros.

I sold my own schein too.

These payments happened at the end of
every month. January payment would be
given to us between December 28 and 30th.

That was when the Germans who lived on
social security got paid too.

So much money was circulating around
during that period. The Germans who used to
buy 20 euro weeds increased to 50euros etc.
I had no goods of my own, so I helped
Johnson sell his own.

When we got back in the evening, Johnson
said he was going to Berlin to buy goods the
next day. He offered to take me along. He
asked me how much money I had saved, I told
him I had 300 euros. He took it from me and
added it to the one we were going to travel
with the next day.

I went back to my room and enjoyed some
beer.

Agnes, my first love in camp had also
returned for her own allowance. After the
payment, we went to the mall together and
bought food items. She wanted to sleep over
before going back to Berlin. I gave her some
money to buy recharge cards. She was
pleased but the atmosphere between us was
still awkward. I had no desire to tell her
about love. I wanted things to be as casual as
it were at that time.

(I miss that girl)
She called me when she finished cooking. It
was some kind of sauce with white rice. She
asked how life was going on with me. She
was caring.

According to her, she had somehow ran into
John the bighead, my number one enemy in
asylum Camp.

They had exchanged numbers and they were
dating each other.

I was a little jealous, not because Agnes was
dating someone but because it was the
Bighead of all people.

I didn’t give it much thought. I was a man on a mission. Mission to make money and move
around the World freely like a bird.

The last thing I wanted was a woman to hold
me down;
Not Agnes,
Not Awiti,
Not Nnenna,
Not Mary and definitely
Not Melinda.

I had only one person in mind. Efuah, she
was with my child.