You were said to have “grabbed” in the KNUST when you got a female visitor and especially when they stayed on for a few days. There were two ways of grabbing. You could grab internally or externally. An internal would be a student of the university. The external was anybody from outside. There were no written rules, but deep down, everybody knew it was more "prestigious" to have an internal rather than an external. An external could be anybody, let’s face it. She could be the prostitute from the shady sides of town or the little girl from the school down the road. It would be most inconvenient to your room mate when you grabbed. He would become the object of abject ridicule as he fleeted from room to room, looking for places to spend the nights.
Internals hardly stayed overnight, unless your room mate happened to be out of town. They would come for an hour or two when your room mate would pretend to be studying elsewhere and the burden could be shared between the two suffering room mates.
On the other hand, externals were more likely to stay longer. Sometimes, however, these externals would go shopping while we were at lectures and prepare the most sumptuous dishes for both room mates. Then, it was not that bad.
Normally, though, there was nothing worse than climbing eight flights of stairs only to realize your own room was locked from within and then finding on knocking, a half naked body, especially one with a face as red as Zak’s, popping out to say:
“Charley, I grab oo? Do you want to pick a few items?”
Shit! Shit! Shit! Take a few items and go where? It could be rather unsettling and then a bit annoying if they then stayed for more than a few days. Guys have been known to "grab" just in retaliation to treatment they may have received from their room mates.
“Don’t worry, yours is on the way” Zak would teasingly whisper to me
But it had been a doomed prophecy. For, one day, as I approached Unity Hall, I had been met by a mate who had told me I’d got a visitor. There seemed to be some urgency in his voice. I’d run up the stairs to find her waiting patiently in 428. Zak had already “picked a few items” and disappeared from sight. It was Florence, a girl I had, in all honesty, met only briefly in Cape Coast. I was a bit surprised. She had written to me a couple of times when I first came to KNUST and always reminded me she might pop in sometime to say hello because she had friends in Kumasi. But it had been a while now and she had not written to say she was actually coming.
This was a bit tricky. I had not expressed any interest in her verbally but perhaps she had read into my body language. But then again, I was still so shy, that if I was going to have a girlfriend, it probably would have to be somebody who simply decided to have pity on me.
When I had finally recovered from the initial shock,I had taken her down for dinner and a couple of bottles of beer. As we made our way back up to the eighth floor, I found myself in deep thought. Did I have to presume that she had come to share my bed and have sex with me or did I have to ask her “officially”? Did I have to give her my room and sleep elsewhere at least for the first day or so before things developed properly between us? We entered 428 and closed the door. I sat on a chair, in my own little world, considering what to do, beads of sweat collecting on my forehead, when she had started undressing, right before me, slowly and deliberately, till she finally hopped out of her panties completely naked and came to sit on my lap in the chair.
Idea
The idea of breasts is all there is left on your bust
Lust-laced love smashed to smithereens
Wistful memories all there are left to make up for both time and beauty lost in breach
Now we are beyond the teething stages of love and trust, necessity and survival dictate the terms;
And so everything is solid and real, tea and pee, food and shit
I have been accused of bad breath; it is indeed nothing of the sort,
Just the stale recall of mutton savored in a mouth of unwashed dreams
After the initial novelty had worn off, Florence’s frequent unannounced visits became increasingly difficult to handle. For, I was a student. I had no personal source of income. I only depended on the little pocket money my family were kind enough to give me. Having a girl stay over was expensive business when the girl was not in a position to contribute anything financially herself. Soon, I had had enough of all the sumptuous Fante meals she cooked in the evenings when Zak, and just lately, Capito, would come in and devour, making comments of approval as they did so;
“Charley, this be proper Fante whopper” Capito would say
“Charley, I no be small” Zak would add, smacking his lips
And where had Capito come from? Why had he suddenly become a friend of mine who had to come and eat every evening?
“Oh aren’t we waiting for Capito?” Florence had started to ask whenever the guy was not around.
Bloody hell, wait for him, to come and board freely, all at my expense.
And that was not all. Florence was an extrovert who enjoyed her evening outings and booze and dance. There was always one activity or the other on KNUST campus. There would be a jam somewhere, a play at the Great Hall, a disco at Club B, somebody’s birthday party and so on. But they all cost money and one had to pick and choose which ones to attend and which to ignore. So on this particular evening when I had changed into my pyjamas after our evening "communal meal", Florence had confronted me.
“Why are you in your pyjamas?” she asked
“Oh, time to sleep.” I said, tactlessly
“Sleep! Is that it? I stay here all day and cook for you to eat in the evening and you just want to come and sleep.”
“But what do you want me to do Florence? I have an exam tomorrow. I haven’t really finished my preparation, so I want to sleep and wake up at dawn to read”
“Oh ok. What about me? I should just be your slave here and just cook for you and your friends, is that right?”
“Be reasonable Fl…..”
“Be reasonable? Didn’t you promise we would go to that Republic Hall jam? Didn’t you know you would be writing an exam the next day before you told me that?” she was really angry
“The truth, Florence, is I’m just running out of funds.”
“Why don't you borrow from Zak?” she asked, to my utter surprise
“I just can’t afford it Florence” I said, controlling my anger
“You can’t afford it, but you can afford to shag” she was getting simply outrageous now. There was no need to respond.
“You are being very mean, very mean and ungrateful.” She continued
“Why that?” I asked
“You are being mean. You should be thanking me for teaching you how to have sex!”
“Oh?” I was lost for words
“Oh? You think I don’t know that you were a virgin when I met you. Thanks to me you are shagging now so you can afford to be ungrateful”
I began to believe this girl was just crazy and I had to ignore her and go to sleep. The more I ignored her, the angrier she became till soon she was shouting, almost at the top of her voice. It must have been obvious to those outside that something was wrong because there had been a knock on the door and Capito had come in.
“Charley, what’s going on? Are you guys ok?”
Florence’s answer had been to start crying, when Capito had taken her arm and led her to the balcony to try to calm her down. They stood in the balcony for over an hour while I tried in vain to go to sleep. I had exams to write. Capito had then come over to my bed;
“Charley, if you don’t mind, I’ll just take her over to the jam and buy her a bottle of beer, just to calm things down” he requested.
At this point I could not be bothered. I really wanted her out of the room so I could breathe again. She was suffocating me. So had they gone together, Capito and Florence to the Republic Hall Jam as I tried to sleep.
Bang bang bang!! There was a loud knock on my door. I opened the door, it was Zac!
“Hey what is happening? Why have you left your girl with that twat? Go and see how they are behaving at the jam. I would go for my girl if I was you!”
Bang, bang bang!! There was another knock after Zac had left. I opened the door. It was Samions
“Hey why have you left your girl with that twat? Charley, go for your woman oo!”
I was too numb to do anything. I had not even known Capito was a twat. I ignored my friends and tried to sleep. The two came back quite late, a gleeful, mocking look in his eyes, a satisfied one in hers. I could barely sleep the whole night, let alone wake up to prepare for my exam. As I opened the door to go for the exam in the morning, I heard her ask behind me;
“What time will you finish?” It was a strange question from someone who was barely talking to me.
“Well, we start at nine and it’s a three hour exam so will be here half twelve thereabout.”
The exam turned out to be more difficult than I could ever have imagined. I had not prepared well either and my mind was all over the place following the previous day’s incidents. After an hour and a half, I had done all I could. There was no point sitting around pretending any more. I submitted my paper and walked straight back to my room. Florence was not there. I went to check in the bathroom and toilets. There was no one there. Capito’s room was just opposite the bathroom and I can almost swear I had heard voices in there, but when I knocked, there was no response. I knocked again and again, there was no response.
I went back to my room and took a piece of paper;
Hi Florence,
I am aware of all that is going on. I’m going out. I’ll be an hour. Make sure you leave the room before I come. I don’t want to see you anymore.
Papa
With that, I went out of the room. I wandered aimlessly round the university to while away the hour. In my heart of hearts, I wished she would not go. I wished Florence would tell me a lie, any lie at all “I was in Capito’s room, but you had been mean to me. I didn’t want to see you. No Capito was not with me, I had been alone” Anything would have sufficed. I didn’t want to lose her. When I returned, however, Florence had taken down all her photos from my wall and left without as much as a note. I never saw her again.
"Idea" is reproduced here by kind permission of Kwame Okoampa Ahoofe
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