The Spill.

There was no form of freedom or flexibility for us.

I have probably mentioned this a thousand and one times but my high school wasn't a fun place to be or so I thought. As a teenager, following rules was never fun but breaking these rules sounded like so much fun.

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Unfortunately, flouting even the simplest of rules came with grave consequences. This alone kept me on track. I can't count the number of times I wished to break a rule and get away with it but these thoughts usually disappeared as fast as they appeared.

I had this group of friends who I basically did everything with. We were a group of three girls who went to school together, did our morning duties together, ate together and even slept close to each other. We all lived in the school hostel and so it was easy to keep in touch.

On one of those days, the three of us decided to break the “you must be at the dining room whether you're hungry or not” rule. Flouting this particular rule felt so good because the dish they served at the dining room that afternoon was one that none of us liked.

The bell for lunch rang and all the students flocked to the dining room while we hid in the corner of our hostel. After lunch, the rest of the students came back and this was when we decided to have our own lunch before taking a nap.

Into a deep bowl, we poured in some garri, milk, milo, sugar and groundnuts. It was a perfect meal for us at the time

After turning all these dry ingredients into a bowl, it was time to turn some water in and then feast but something happened.

Maureen, one of my friends, who was the group's comedian, immediately remembered one funny incident that occurred during school hours and decided to share it with us. We all listened keenly as we loved Maureen's sense of humour and how well she told stories. Maureen was such a good narrator that she could literally make people laugh even when she told tragic stories.

As she told the story, she poured water into the bowl of ingredients. None of us noticed until the water was almost spilling out of the bowl.

“Maureen! Look?” Dara, my other friend yelled.

Maureen immediately stopped pouring the water and looked down to see what she had done.

Anyone who knows anything about garri(cassava granules) would know that adding too much cold water to it makes it rise/swell so much.

“Oh no, I think I put in too much water,” Maureen sighed.

“And now, we have to finish everything in the bowl to avoid wastage,” I added.

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We were three famished girls but we knew pretty well that irrespective of how hungry we were, we weren't going to finish the content from the bowl. Nonetheless, we started feasting.

Spoon after spoon, gulp after gulp, we toiled. Anyone who passed by would have thought that we were being forced to eat. The only thing that kept a smile on my face was the story Maureen was narrating.

It got to a point where we were all saturated and couldn't eat anymore but a great portion of the meal was still remaining. Disposing of it wasn't even an option because it was too nutritious a meal to waste.

Maureen had finished the first story and moved on to another. The next story was one that the whole school witnessed.

“Did you people see what they did to that senior student today during the morning assembly?” Maureen asked.

I wondered where she got the strength from to keep talking as I was overfed and could barely voice out correct sentences. However, I chirped in

“Yes. I saw.”

“That was really embarrassing,” she replied.

“If I was in his shoes, I know I would have felt really bad.” Dara added.

“The compound master had announced that we should all get a haircut, so it's safe to say that the senior student was at fault,” Maureen said.

I couldn't say anything anymore and so I just watched. I watched as Dara and Maureen talked about the incident with so much glee. With every sentence, their eyes sparkled while my eyelids were slowly closing up.

“Shaving only one part of the senior student's hair made him look very funny” Dara said, stifling her laughter.

“Do you know that people likened the shave to rivers Niger and Benue because of the ‘’Y” shape?” Maureen said finally.

For some reason, Dara found this so funny. She laughed out so loud, spreading her arms and legs without caution and in a millisecond she stopped laughing. As she stopped laughing she slowly looked down at her leg, so did Maureen and myself.

It turns out that Dara had unconsciously kicked the bowl of food that remained. We looked to the ground, exchanged gazes with one another and immediately burst out in laughter. This time, I joined in. We weren't supposed to be laughing but we did anyway.

We all laughed because we had been alleviated from our suffering. If we poured the food, it would have been classified as ‘wastage’ but since the meal was kicked unconsciously, it was an ‘’accident’. We kept laughing for so long; the type of laughter where we would stop at some point , look at each other and start laughing all over again.

This was a very interesting incident due to the circumstances that surrounded it–the very captivating stories, the excess food, the overfeeding and finally, the spill.

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Love🤍

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