Onyemachi and Ohafia,

For me, Owerri dialect, our Biafran equivalent of Italian in its melody, es muy sexy! I wanted to have one Mbieri damsel for keeps just so she would occassionally "rap" the lingua, but no way. I was way too young, apparently held no prospects for her considering that we were classmates (and she studied harder, not necessarily with better grades, though).

In the end, I settled for the "good friend" platonic bit. If she knew what she was missing! And was I oppressed by the big boys in those days! I went into the University far too young, slightly less than 17 and from hindsight, at a bad time. You see, we were the second JAMB intake (1979). The oldies with their monstrous side-burns, multiple scholarships, bursaries and secure jobs, saying nothing about their 30+ years of sojourn on earth, made sure that those barely out of their diapers never celebrated their manhood. We were dubbed IYC and in that dim past, the babes wouldn't let themselves go unless there was some chance of luring the beneficiary down the aisle. A teenager was the last thing on their mind. How times change.

If you have a younger female relative in the University back home, chances are she is using your hard earned money to support some son of a gun in school. And it seems there's some competition on who would have the greatest number of bad boys before graduation. You would then understand why she continues to ask that you do the "WU" and why the hand-outs and term papers and projects are unending.

Anyway back to the melody: When I met the Italian, it was too late. I had been strait jacketted, having been led down the aisle. The center of Igbo genetic diversity had given me the joy of my life. But I still continue to enjoy the melody, Italian I mean. Everything sounds different , up to and including "pizza". I lost touch with my Mbieri dream, the last I heard being that she was married to some Mbaise millionaire, and rearing kids like it was going outta style.

Unu e meena mkpo ole?

I agree with you oh! Owerri dialect is truly the Romance dialect of the Igbo language. I picked up the Owerri dialect when I was going to secondary school in Owerri in the late 1980s. It turned out that speaking that dialect was sure banker for getting an Oji Ngbo girl (nickname for Owerri Girls Secondary School girl) or Federal Govt. Girls College girl to give you the nod.
Anyway, when an Oji Ngbo girl says bia ma didaa gi aka na azu (come let me rub your back), the last thing she wants to hear from you is Oyibo.

Okwa ima shi owee hu ebe eji azu eje. Thus, your brother did what he had to do. The music of Sir Warrior filled any gaps in my grasp of the Owerri dialect. Boy, living in Owerri was one of the sweetest times of my life.

Ngwanu! Emechaa anyi a kpaa.

Lucky you. Na so life be. What I yearned for, you had in abundance. I agree with you. Living in Owerri would be fun. I have a couple of friends from that area and do they dig living! The moral in all that is that one could have a ball in life without all that money. Before the advent of 419, there was no money per se in that civil service town. I gather there’s nothing to beat an ngboto Owerri in sensuality. Is that true?

Anyway, in order not to be seen as a complete loser, the high point of my philandering days was in Umuahia. When an Ibeku chic tells you Dee nga ibia lee gi, (a promise almost always kept, mind you) then you could bet there'd be some heavenly bliss. It needed not cost you much more than a bottle of GG, and or some smoke (Benson & Hedges, St. Moritz, Marlborough or even Gold Leaf) if she was inclined that way. It also helped if she suspected that there would be some rice and "fry" (as they fed on gari and achara soup 3X a day)!

Ngbaratu at the girl schools was the sh--. Our excuse was always the debating society. The debates lasted about two hours and the remaining 6 hours were spent dancing. That shindig took us to all the girls schools in Imo State.

It seemed that back then people came to school in Owerri from all over Igboland. One chick I went out with was from Emekuku, near owerri. The other was from Ezinifite in Anambra. Both women were hot. One said she was in love with me. Puppy love! What did she know? It seemed deep at the time. The best was from Ogwashi Uku. I was introduced to her by my Wawa schoolmate (a great guy).

Sometimes, all I did was kiss these women. But, back then, that was enough. How times change! Remember, I was done with high school by the time I was sixteen. But, the big guys in school had more fun. Some of them were old enough to have their own cars, which they picked up on weekends!

Again, you have outdone me. My school was unbelievably too regimented as would be expected of every Roman Catholic Seminary. We went for no debates nor socialized in any form even though a co-ed school was just across the fence. We received no visitors except on the visiting days, first Sundays of the month, and that included our parents. If a parent (especially mothers) disobeyed that injuction, her transport fare or petrol and time would be in vain. If she brought any provisions in the hopes of nwa Mummy smuggling it back to the dormitory, it would be shared amongst all the table mates. No provisions. No eating in-between meals. And do you know the average age at admission was something like 11 years!

Girl friends were out of the question, summary dismissal and the untold embarassment to the family would be the result. To drive home the point, our out-going and in-coming letters were all censored. In any case, the big bad boys managed to have chics anyway and many got expelled for that. I guess they were all Enugu boys - Camp, Iva, Asata and Uwani mostly but then had parents from all over Igboland.

Anyway, I couldn't have any girlfriend (didn't interest me that much), and was neither an athlete nor a great looker. Also and worse still, I could pass my exams effortlessly (already on the way to becoming the mortal sin it is now). To "belong" therefore I settled for being the consultant on writing love letters. That was one way of being close to the big boys who loathed the fact that I made all the noise in the class, was a back bencher, amongst the youngest, hardly ever studied for more than 30 minutes, yet beat them in exams. They couldn't hurt me too much though as I was a Rector's Office Boy for most of the 5 years. You see, all those jocks couldn't even spell their names but they had all the girls. Dumb things: believed actually that the boys who could barely muster some pidgin English actually wrote all those flowery stuff.

A chic nearly sent me home. She wrote this bundle of sweet nonsenses on a sheet of paper that she had serrated the borders and the inside. Our Auxilliary, as we referred to the Deputy Directors, called me and when I saw the bundle of already opened (and naturally, read) letters on his desk, I nearly fainted. An envelop with my Igbo name was on top of the heap. He went through the motions of asking me who owned that name as if he didn't know (though truth be told, I was registered in School with my Austrian baptismal name). I guess I saved myself by saying the name was mine, telling the truth upfront. To my utter shock, he said nothing further to me. He gave me the bundle of letters to go and distribute, which wasn't my duty. To this day, I am still trying to fathom why he spared me. That could easily have expelled me. In any case, it never happened again.

Truth be told again, I didn't miss the chics then, probably not even in my first year in the University. I guess at that point, some chics were beginning to find me charming and my friends found it unbecoming that I didn't encourage them. I then took up the yeo man's job of chatting up the girls and inviting them out so my buddies could carry on. I burst into being my own man in my second year, with a much older girl. More on that daughter of Eve (that nearly rendered yours sincerely impotent) later.

Please lets leave lady B out of this. It is strictly a BOYZONE and I shall be sharing how "they" stole my flower!

Stay tuned......

I don’t know if I dare join you in this round of nostalgia, on the other hand, my curiosity made it difficult to resist <bg>; suffice it is to say your journey’s through memory lane was compounded in Rex Lawson’s “LOVE ADURE”. Obviously he shared your fascination for Owerri chic’s. It was the ultimate love declaration for Owerri chic’s.

I grew up (same street in Kano) with one Christina, my soul sister. I must run, before melancholy descends on me.

Please, don’t stop remembering yesterday’s, and in the same breath thinking about tomorrow.

Ya gazie.

Another jab below the belt! Ouch! Now I'm hurting.
PS: I knew OU is a naughty boy

Funny, my background is quite different from the other guys as I was a "day bobo"(day student, never in the boarding house). This arrangement was good since our abode was quite close to the school and it enabled my folks to monitor my progress(read monitor their pockets)

I hear you O. I can see that Onyemaechi and OU were very bad boys then...badder than Anu Nti (so far).
They must have dealt with those older girls that made us ( the younger girls) seem like primary schoolers. By the time I was in class three, the era of old girls secondary schoolers was over...and thankfully so.

But in my school (which was an all girls school), these escapades you guys have described would earn instant suspension plus some heavy duty floggings from our "no nonsense" female principal. She never allowed co-ed debates. She was famous for chasing errant students deep into the bush or with her car. She frequented market places at random, fishing for our students. She was real terror.

Good to read from you again. Now, I'm glad I haven't said much. I thought you'd steer clear of this boyzone. Well, I ain't gonna talk about how "they" stole my innocence!

BTW, you wrote:

As for me, I was an examplary student...

Now, why do I know you'd ask that, naughty boy?

If you must know, I was a well behaved girl. My terror-Principal was even very fond of me...to the amazement of our students. She was known to reduce our teachers to tears. I never snuck out from the dorm at night, neither did I have secret rendez vous with guys.

Besides, my family was so strict that I couldn't go anywhere unescorted. My uncle visited me at school at random. He was known to appear in my classroom while lecture or study time was in progress.
So between my ultra strict Principal and my possessive uncle, I had no chance for escapades.

That your didam aka n'azu is bringing back memories. The only thing was that I was asked to do "it". You know the usual subtle stuff: "help me to unhook my...." Poor me, I fell for it. The long and short of it is that I was taken advantage of.

It was Anu Nti and Onyemaechi that started it O!

You guys sef. Una don dey carry am enter eighteen! Anyway, my name is Innocent Akamdiocha Odinkemmara.

Yea, I was telling you guys about how the chics in my generation in good ole Nkassu land preferred the oldies that presented vistas of more secure future for them. Well, what I left unsaid was that the streets of Nkassu was littered with broken hearts of these hopefuls. You had to pick your way through those litters to get to Okpara, Balewa, Mary Slessor, Eyo Ita and Bello Halls, where these uppity babes were quartered then. The smart ones managed to get ballooned up and the guys had no way of squeezing out of the “mess”. Marry her or get expelled from the University, not much of a choice there. The story then was that the University paid for the weddings, had to be in marriage registries, I bet.

So what were we homeboys left to do? It was called "importation" and the commodity was called bush meat, bushmore for endearment. If the babes within wouldn't touch us with a meter long pole, we had to make do with those outside who considered us superstars. In the late 70's and early 80's it was quite a feat to be a great Lion. So, outside we were hot cakes. Actually, it was not uncommon to find women of easy virtue during the Nov./Dec. GCE period in Nkassu clutching O'L Economics by Lawal, even after the subject would have been written! The intent being to pass for GCE candidates and thereby attract the attention of the undergrads.

Well, the foregoing is not to say that all the oldies were having fun. Actually no. Many of them were "roasting" and I gather there was a thriving business at the Hill Top (nick named Up Hill) to cater for these bushmen. IN the hey days of the ECOWAS immigration wahala, the hovels in Up Hill were occupied by our very dark sisters from the ECOWAS countries. How times have changed. They doubled for hairdressers during the day. The irony was that Hill Top overlooks the St. Peters Chaplaincy on Campus.

Some Flatters - first year male students quarantined, as it were, in the slightly removed Zik's Flats Hostels in Onuiyi - took bush meat importation to dizzying heights. I have on at least one occasion seen guys queuing up outside a door. Its left to your imagination to determine what was going on inside. The Campus yellow rag, Pandemonium, used to come up with really graphic drawings of dudes lining up outside a hostel room with bulging flies and a guy collecting naira bills from them. I later heard that folks contributed money to import these bushmores from far as away as Aba or made do with those who came to fetch water from the adjoining Onuiyi Community. I never heard the word "rape" ever used and I guess the fact that some money did exchange hands could also be telling enough.

While not trying to hold brief for the Flatters, I believe the arrangement then in the University was dehumanizing for first year male students. They couldn't fit into the community, pure and simple. As there was no transport system, Flatters had to trek to the main Campus every morning for lectures. Of course, arriving in sweat. Most of these guys wouldn't know a word of colognes then, remember. Little wonder their female counterparts would literally turn up their noses at them. Well, Flatters being so marginalized also had to trek back at mid-day to eat at the Zik's Flats Refectory. This is in spite of the fact that there were many more Refectories in the Main Campus and that in deed many would return for Science Practicals by 2.00 pm. It also did not matter to the Flatters that they had the choice of purchasing the meal coupons for those Ref.'s also. They just didn't fit in and so preferred to go back to Flats where they'd ask for adult dose and use their fingers to wack eba. But then in Ekpo Ref. folks were doing the same thing. Poor Flatters.

When Santos, the midget, became DOS (Director of Socials) he took the exploitation of Flatters to new heights. He began officially shooting X-rated movies in Ekpo Ref. It was a sight seeing these sex-crazed youngsters trekking back to Onuiyi well past mid-night after their loins had been thoroughly stirred.

Carry on guys now Adaora decided to cut and run.

One day I will tell the story of what happened when Saint Paul took Virgin Mary, and some virgins for an excursion -probably for a debating weekend :-).

Later, meanwhile carry on I am having fun.

I don't mind the straddle bit, but strangle ain't for me O. You must always remember I'm the only son of my mother in ala bekee.

I learnt some wacky yanks derive pleasure from being spanked and tortured. Is it true? You know I'm just a humble laid back Britiko.

Anu 2 + 2:

Terrific story. Good plot and nice setting and full of suspense. I'm waiting to see how the daughter of eve nearly made it impossible for anyone to ever raise the Titanic!

Onyemaechi:

Mandy Baby:
Do you see what OU and Anu Nti are doing to your brother? All I did was steal a few kisses, and now I am being lumped with people who raised the Titanic.

You are bad...kinda like Odi nkpunkpu n'eme ire. You haven't told us about your flower story, have you?

As for supe, I don't think it's anything more than girls being buddy buddy. There's nothing to it.

On the other hand, I encountered some big girls bullying as a skinny class 1 student.
I remember having a "mother" (a class 5 student) when I was a class 1 dormitarian. I didn't like her much. However, on a faithful friday evening, I came to get her clothes for laundering. As I went thru her clothes, I saw that she had included her dirty underwears. That did it. I gathered her clothes and dumped them on her bed without a word.

You may not have raised the titanic but you sure did help the Owerri girls passengers unto the titanic, no?