Oluwafemi 😎

Serenity Prayer.

A woman who called my number by mistake at 2am on a Wednesday. I almost didn't pick up. Unknown number. Middle of the night. Everything about it said ignore it and sleep. I picked up anyway the way you sometimes do things for no reason you can later explain. She was looking for someone named Tunde. Her voice was the kind of calm that sits just on top of panic. Like she had decided to be composed and was concentrating hard on staying there. I told her she had the wrong number. She apologised quietly and hung up. I lay there in the dark thinking about her voice for longer than made sense for a thirty second call with a stranger. She called back four minutes later. Said she was sorry. Said she had tried the number three times and kept getting me. Said Tunde wasn't answering any of his phones and she didn't know what else to do. I asked if she was okay. She laughed once. Short. The kind that isn't really a laugh. Said her son had been in an accident. That she was at a hospital in Gbagada and didn't know anyone nearby and Tunde was her brother and she just needed a voice she recognised but couldn't reach one. I was in Yaba. Fifteen minutes away. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not sure I was thinking. I told her I was coming. She went silent for long enough that I thought the call had dropped. Then she said I don't know you. I said I know. I'm coming anyway. I found her outside the emergency ward. Small woman. Maybe fifty. She had been crying but stopped and you could see exactly where she had stopped. She looked at me when I walked up with the specific suspicion of someone who had lived in Lagos long enough to know that strangers arriving at 2am usually want something. I sat down next to her on the bench and said nothing. We sat like that for almost an hour. Her son was in surgery. Tunde eventually called back. The crisis slowly found its edges. Around 4am she looked at me sideways and asked why I came. I told her I didn't know. She nodded like that was the most honest answer I could have given. Her son made it. I know because she called three days later from the same number to say so. We spoke for maybe ten minutes. She asked my name properly for the first time. Then she said something I have carried since. Said she had lived sixty one years and learned to be careful about who she let close. Said life had given her good reasons for the caution. Said she never expected the one person who showed up when it mattered most to be someone who had dialed wrong. I think about that night whenever I'm tempted to ignore something that feels inconvenient. Sometimes the most important place you will ever be is the place you had absolutely no plan to go.

Hopefully this is our Starting 5 tomorrow

I’m tired. My house keeper loves watching tv. I’ve told her many times to sit down and watch with me but she won’t listen. She just smiles and leaves. Then a while later I see her sneaking back to watch. So I’ve learnt to sit still so she doesn’t know I can see her watching, sometimes I’m pressed but I can’t get up. Oti su mi 🤣

What was I smoking

Nobody’s accent angers me more than John Obi Mikel’s