The KNUST Diaries - The Aluta Years (4) - Repu Waakye

“Who is there?” Modibo shouted, half asleep.

There had been a knock on our door very early in the morning on a Saturday.

“Open that door, kwasia!” a voice said

I was soon to learn, that in the Unity Hall, insults were much a part of everyday language. Kwasia meant, an idiot. We actually insulted each other as a way of showing affection. So a friend you had not seen for a while might say hello to you with “Kwasia like that!” when you would also respond “kwasia like that!” With our manly status thus firmly established, we could then quite comfortably engage in the female stuff like hugging and so on.

“Kakra C” Modibo murmured, rubbing his sleepy eyes and opening the door

He was dressed in a pair of track bottoms and a t-shirt with the sleeves torn off to expose his quite impressive deltoids. He looked quite sweaty and had either been on a jog or had been exercising in his room. In his hand was a bottle of water.

“You guys go pump?”

“Charley, not today” Modibo said, drawing his cover cloth firmly over his shoulders. He was also into a bit of body building but he would pick and choose when and how to exercise.

“Wait for me” I said enthusiastically

“Just come up to the ninth floor” he said, pointing upwards

I quickly dressed in my shorts and t-shirt and ran up the one flight of stairs to the ninth floor. It was a large open area with water tanks at opposite ends of it. It was so airy. People came there to study, or just to relax and enjoy the views of the university from a higher point. Some people used the place to pray, polluting the eight floor with loud inconsiderate tongues to the chagrin of the students. But the ninth floor had room for everybody and people simply minded their own business. At one end, near the water tank, were a few crude body building equipment and a bench. There were other guys there as well; including a gentleman nicknamed General Golbachov who was, like Kakra C, a final year Computer Science student. The two of them were also very good friends. They were all very welcoming.

“ You pump before?” General Golbachov asked.

I was soon getting tired of this question. My body deceived everybody and they wouldn’t believe me when I denied, till I got on the bench and shocked them with what little weights I could press.

“You don’t need bodybuilding. You are macho already” he said

“Ajimoto!” the guy doing the bench presses at the time would utter intermittently between his teeth, sweat pouring down the sides of his face

“No pain no gain!” the others would respond in support

I liked the company of these guys. I also really felt honoured, being in first year, and with everything I had heard, to be in the company of a guy like KC.

“Charley, we for go chop waakye” KC said

It was the Saturday ritual for the bodybuilding guys. We would descend down from our tower after a good workout and stroll across the road to an area behind the Republic Hall where a lady sold waakye in the morning. This was proper good tasty northern waakye, rice cooked in boiled red beans, with the stork from the beans lending the rice a reddish hue. Sometimes, they reinforced the colour with a sprinkle of some dried local herbs. The waakye was served with goat meat stew and a specially prepared shito black pepper sauce. You could purchase some add-ons, like a bit of pasta or spiced gari to sprinkle on the rice and if you really wanted to go “rich”, buy a boiled egg to sit on

top of it all.

.

Soon, KC would not go anywhere without me. I would occasionally go with him to visit his girlfriend in the African Hall. They were very close, Gladys and KC. In fact, they were almost like a married couple. Anytime we visited, three or four other girls would come into the room. Martha would come as well. Martha, the slim black beauty with a smile that radiated joy and happiness, caught my eyes. They would often come along with bottles of some soft drink or other and biscuits. Then they would stay to chat. And they would chat till we finished our meal and got up to go. It must have been a bit annoying to Gladys but she never showed it. Could they not have some time when they would be together, just the two of them, enjoying a meal? But then again, there was a price to pay for having a popular boyfriend.

People naturally started to presume, that I was spoilt for choice of girlfriends. They could not be more wrong. Despite the facade of a confident macho man,I was very inexperienced and diffident. I really fancied Martha, for instance. But I was scared. I still harbored that childhood fear of getting it all wrong and having the girls point at me as the guy who fancied so and so.

So I sat in my room and poured out my frustrations on paper.

Martha,

Had I but a few sugar-coated words

I would sing as loudly as do the birds

To pierce your heart and make you see

The love that burns deep within me

Had my heart been but a little book

I’d have opened it out for you to look

And see the love written out in gold

More convincing than any story ever told

If you would but look once into mine eye

Then you would know, I tell no lie

For you would see the flames of the inferno

That burns day after day, my poor soul

I folded the poem, put it in an envelope and kept it in my pocket the next time we went to Africa Hall. I kept my right hand in my pocket, holding on to the envelope and looking for that one opportunity when I would discretely slip it to Martha without making a fuss. It stayed in that pocket, burning my skin like fire, wanting to pop out. The opportunity came. There had been chants of Oooooh ooooh! Yes, the girls did pond each other, but it was always such a spectacle, everybody had gone out to the corridor to watch except, you guessed right, Martha and myself.

She pretended to be reading the magazine in front of her, but would intermittently raise her head to look into my eyes. I sat there; hand in one pocket, beads of sweat gathering on my forehead.

“Martha!” I managed to squeal out, a bit too loudly

“What?” She wasn’t being rude. She had a sense of humour.

“Nothing” I said, losing my rather fragile confidence instantly

She looked at me again.

“Are you alright?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “It’s a bit too hot in this room.”

She put on the fan for me and left to join the others to watch the ponding. I sheepishly followed shortly thereafter, my hand on the poem in my pocket.