Gbenga honestly felt that this whole japa phenomenon was a nuisance! He was never one to live abroad but to go on vacations every now and then and return home to Naija. That, to him, was the life. Unfortunately, times had changed and it only made sense at this point to have the family relocate abroad.
He missed his wife and children so much and could not wait to join them.
He also hated the fact that he had to eat alone.
Damilola his wife, was an avid homemaker. Even as a banker, she had found a way to run their home successfully and yet keep it together at work. She was such an organised individual! He had no clue how she did it. With four kids to boot!
Time came and the bank where she worked was acquired by another. She had been ‘too senior in the middle management cadre’ to be absorbed in the new structure, someone had whispered to her. Whatever that meant. So she had been laid off. She knew, with little regret, that it was because she had been more technical than political, as some of her peers had been given roles in the new organisation.
Gbenga admitted that she had spoilt him. He could find his way around the kitchen, whip up a few dishes, but it was no where near Damilola’s prowess. Also, there was no joy in going through all that trouble just to eat it all alone.
His first egusi since his family relocated was baptised in salt. What made him embark on that venture was the mistake of opening Instagram while in traffic only for him to see one of those pages with enticing pounded yam and egusi served on their exact kind of Milton plates. He immediately knew that was what he was going to make for his early dinner. He was never really one for eating out and was grateful for a wife who felt the same way and so they had cultivated a culture of cooking almost every thing at home. Unfortunately he had exhausted all the bowls of egusi Damilola made for him when she travelled with the children and so he had to make this one from scratch.
When done, he had sent tantalizing pictures to Dami and she had congratulated him with pride only for him to confess that he couldn’t eat it and had to store it away. Her solution worked like magic- cut a few pieces of yam into the soup and let it suck out the salt. This was how he managed to eat the soup that evening.
As the date for his travel drew near, Gbenga felt a huge knot in his chest- he could not find his international passport. ‘Why this of all his documents?’ he wondered, and why now when Damilola, the search guru was thousands of miles away? She was the Google of item-searches in the house- if you were looking for anything you misplaced in that house, Damilola would find it, down to their youngest daughter’s earring stoppers. Gbenga could not count how many times he would hear ‘mum, have you seen my socks?’ and she would retort ‘have you looked in your school bag?’ Or ‘did you leave it in the laundry?’ She was blessed with that amazing skill. He had also been a beneficiary, as he had misplaced countless items and documents with Damilola coming to the rescue almost every time.
Gbenga searched everywhere for his passport. He looked in what was left of the shelves, the ones they hadn’t sold, the media wall shelves, beneath the last remaining couch and even in the First Aid box, the kitchen cabinets and underneath the plastic plant pots.
When he spoke with Damilola about it, she tried to walk his mind back to the last time he remembered holding it and what happened from there. He could remember that he had picked it up from the High Commission and had kept it in the interior flap of his laptop bag.
He had stopped by at the pharmacy after that visit and picked up his eye drops and supplements and gone home shortly after.
He knew he brought it into the house and with that assurance, put Damilola on speaker as they tried to together figure out where else to look.
A clear hour after they had agreed, then argued and then agreed again on checking specific spots, an exasperated Dami asked Gbenga to go look in the fridge.
Feeling defeated and out of options and objections, Gbenga obliged.
Sitting pretty at the bottom of the white carrier polythene that held his eye drops and supplements, was the international passport, that had eluded him for days.
Without saying anything, a grateful Gbenga began to flip though the pages of his chilled passport to be sure it was intact.
Dami could tell from his silence that the search was over and all she muttered was a relieved ‘praise God’. Even then, she was magnanimous in victory, as a proper ‘how could you be so careless?’ would also have been appropriate.
Written by -Yetunde Adepeju Abatan ©️2024
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