YELLOW AND WINE CABS

It was always a pleasure to view this city. Ibadan wasn’t beautiful in the way one expected a city of its spread and weight to be. It was pretty in a peculiar kind of way. The melting of brown roofs and yelling traders created a cacophony that was unique to the city.

Ayofe looked on as this matchbox-like cabs that dominated the transportation industry in the city swerved around and she realized why they were so popular, these Micra cabs. These cabs that you never seemed to find a new one of. These cabs that had no key just lots of wires to connect, like what was left of her. Ayofe had just left the shadows of a crashed marriage and this melting pot of wine and yellow cabs with the obscenities of its drivers was a breath of fresh air.

Seun wasn’t always like that. He didn’t always beat her but life got to him. Seun and Ayofe’s story is one of those love stories that keeps you interested and checking in every year just to be sure your favourite couple were still together. They were, for eight years before the dominoes came crashing down. Ayofe and Seun met while Ayofe was in her first year in Obafemi Awolowo University and Seun was in his third. Theirs was a Moz 101 story that beat the odds. They made it through the loveliness of Golden jubilee and the lust at motion ground and when they finally got married after almost 4years of dating, it was no surprise to anyone.

Seun was a dreamer. An aspire to perspire guy. He was one of those student leaders who made it to every conference in Oduduwa Hall and planned all the good ones. He always wanted to be an entrepreneur and Ayofe was drawn to his passion. The way he spoke about his dreams. Now that she thought about it, she should have been scared of the fact that he was just all talk. Seun lacked discipline, she saw it now. He never took anything seriously except of course his public persona.

It was no surprise then that when he failed at yet another big venture of his, he came crashing down on her. She was his misfortune and he told her just as much. She would have taken it all but the constant scars on her ata rodo skin was the breaking point.

As Ayofe stared down at the tarred road from the gaping holes in the floor of the Micra she realized she was just another Micra. Colourful, beaten up, broken in different parts yet always in motion. Then she decided she was going to weave through life just like this matchbox. IRREGARDLESS.

Love is as powerful as it is weak. People can and have fought wars because of love. Nations razed down to prove a passion yet leaving the toilet seat open and/or pressing the toothpaste from the middle can obliterate love. Sometimes people try so hard to find something called logic in love, something they could never find no matter how hard they looked. No one understood it when it happened, Ayofe moving back home with Seun. She had simply grown tired of being a “returnee”. Ayofe’s Sister, Labake screamed herself hoarse over the phone when Ayofe told her she was moving back with Seun but she was alone in her disapproval. The entire universe stamped that decision with an approving silence. Her parents were especially proud. Their daughter had finally learned the golden spice of marriage – ENDURANCE. Now they could truly and honestly say she had just come home for a vacation and that she had returned. Although it was highly unlikely anyone would take a vacation in Oke – Ado, Ibadan, all that noise.

One thing the preachers of marriage-no-matter-the-circumstances fail to mention- ALWAYS is that People die. That people die in and because of marriages. That their spirits wither and die within them leaving them a bag of intestines. That a wrong fall and their bodies fail to move again.

The first few weeks of Ayofe’s return to her matrimonial home was blissful, just like the first few days of a yellow and wine cab’s return from the mechanic workshop. Ayofe wondered why she ever left in the first place. Seun was attentive even doting. It seemed like his ego had melted by the possibility of his trophy wife leaving, shrinking his list of achievements even further. But it wasn’t long, it wasn’t long before he remembered that she came back, that she needed him to complete her, that she wasn’t a full human without him, that she needed to be Mrs. Anjorin more than he needed to be Mr. Anjorin. That her body count was societal concern. That her father had no room in his house for ile mosu. That nobody looked at anyone long enough to notice not so visible scars when we all had somewhere to get to. That she was a woman, he could always get another one of those.

So one day, she did something, something really bad. She had let the Amala of an Ibadan boy go cold. She had put his Amala on the table 30minutes before he came in 30minutes later than he usually did. And that was his breaking point. He couldn’t do this anymore. He chastised her and there she laid on the cold tiles of their home. Dead. Not moving. There was no mechanic who could undo what Seun had done. There were no wires to connect anymore.

It is finished.