Diary of a Nigerian Student Living Alone

The people who said no man is an island were not wrong after all. Even Robinson Crusoe had enough reasons to regret being stranded alone for 28 years. If you haven't read Robinson Crusoe, you should. I promise this story will make you understand him a little better.

After several weeks of combing the area around school, I still couldn't find an apartment where I could live without regretting my entire student life.

The first house didn't have burglary-proof bars on the windows or an iron door. The agent kept trying to convince me that the area was safe, but I didn't need a prophet to tell me that he was only trying to get me to pay and get me off his neck.

After the armed robbery experience I had at my aunt's house, I had made up my mind: any house without burglary-proof windows and an iron door was not for me.

The second house had no running water.

Which meant I would have to fetch water from a well at the other end of the compound and fill my containers myself.

Fear caught me.

I honestly couldn't remember the last time I fetched water. That was my brother's job.

The next house wasn't tiled. And the agent had the temerity to tell me it wasn't a big deal because I wouldn't have much cleaning to do.

I stared at him.

He stared at me.

I laughed disbelievingly.

He returned my gesture with a tone in his laughter that I interpreted as, “You don too stress me oo.”

I couldn't even imagine myself living in that house for the next five years.

And no, I'm not a nepo baby. I know that's where your mind is already going, so oya, left about turn!

If I were a nepo baby, I would simply pay Kappy to handle all the house-hunting stress, give him my unrealistic expectations while I sat in my father's big sitting room and watched House of David in peace.

But alas, I am not.

So I kept looking.

The next house was almost perfect. It had burglary-proof windows, tiles, an iron door and manageable electricity.

But...

Guess the but.

We had to board a canoe to cross a small river!

Bikonu, what do you mean I have to cross seven rivers and seven oceans every day just to get to school?

What if I had a 7 a.m. lecture?

What if it rained?

What if the river suddenly decided to have a bad day?

At that point, I started questioning every decision that had brought me to that school.

Maybe I should have rejected the admission.

Maybe accepting it was the mistake.

I returned to my friend's house, where I had been squatting throughout the first semester, completely dejected.

Thank God my friend wasn't at home.

I cried.

Then I prayed.

The second semester was already coming to an end. Obviously, I had overstayed my welcome, and our friendship was beginning to feel the strain.

That evening, I prayed almost as though I were accusing God of bringing me out here and then leaving me to figure everything out by myself.

I just wanted a place I could call my own.

And somehow, God came through.

I eventually found a house.

It was in an estate, which was great. The only problem was that the estate wasn't exactly saturated with students. Technically, my coursemates could graduate without me if I accidentally went offline for a week because, obviously, no one would know how to reach me unless they came to my house.

But who has that kind of time to spare?

At that point, I didn't care.

I had found a house.

That was how my journey of living alone began.

I didn't have a roommate because I didn't want one.

Being the only girl among six brothers in my father's house had taught me to own and manage my personal space from a very young age. Sharing that space with another person didn't exactly excite me.

In fact, it sounded boring.

There was just one tiny problem.

I had to stand in front of the mirror and talk to myself at least three times a day whenever I didn't leave the house, just to be sure I hadn't accidentally lost my voice. You can never tell if it's possible to forget how to talk from not talking for a long time.

Joke's on me shaa.

But I loved living alone.

I loved the freedom to wake up at 12 p.m. on a Saturday and press my phone until 2 a.m. without anyone advising me on why it wasn't good for me.

I loved being able to decide to cook party jollof rice by 1 a.m. and wake up to soak garri by 3 a.m.

The best part was that I could pray as loudly as I wanted without worrying about disturbing anyone. I could play my music at whatever volume I liked. I could read my books without anyone disturbing me.

For the first time, my space was completely mine.

And I enjoyed every bit of it.

I enjoyed hearing the sound of my breathing until it all started.

It was around 1 a.m. when I began to hear deep, guttural growling sounds.

It wasn't me.

It wasn't coming from the pages of my open Legal Method textbook either.

The sound didn't even resemble the barking of the ekuke dogs that patrolled the estate. There were probably as many dogs as there were humans in that estate, and they moved around in pairs or singly.

But I could never mistake the rowdy and randy bark of an ekuke dog for the deep growl of something the child in me recognised as the sound of Scar from The Lion King.

What was such a creature doing in my neighbourhood?

I know you're expecting me to say I wasn't scared.

You lie ooo.

Omo, I was scared.

Don't lie that you're not scared for me even as you read this.

I couldn't get up from my bed. I was frozen in place, my phone still in my hands.

The only thing I could think of was opening my sound recorder and recording the sound so I could show my neighbours in the morning.

So I did.

The next morning, I opened the recording to listen to what I had captured.

My brethren...

All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing.

The growling sounds were nowhere to be found.

That was when it dawned on me that perhaps I needed to take my prayer life more seriously.

The following year, I started hearing voices in my head.

The first one told me to masturbate.

I reacted the way I had grown accustomed to reacting by then.

I froze.

I looked around, wondering who had just spoken.

But then I noticed something else. My hand was already moving against my will.

Fear gripped me.

I felt trapped in my own body. It was as though I was fighting something I couldn't see, and the more I tried to stop myself, the more helpless I felt.

My body was responding in a way I didn't want it to, and tears began streaming down my face.

I couldn't go down that road.

Not again, Lord.

Haven't You saved me before? You can save me again.

I kept praying.

And almost immediately, the feeling passed. I was able to stop myself, and I was relieved that I hadn't gone through with it.

I kept praying after that.

But I still didn't get a roommate! 😁

It wasn't that I hated people. No.

My house wasn't close to school, so friends couldn't casually visit without digging deep into their weekly allowance to pay for transportation.

Besides, I have a very low tolerance for certain things.

For instance, I cannot stand someone leaving dirty dishes “for later” when they could simply wash them immediately.

I also cannot understand how someone can see a pile of dirty dishes and decide that tomorrow is a perfectly reasonable time to deal with them.

Maybe that's why living alone suited me.

I remember when some of my coursemates came visiting one day. One of them walked into my room with her shoes on, even though she had seen other footwear on the verandah.

I said nothing.

I smiled.

I waited.

Immediately they left, I grabbed my mop and bucket.

Nobody was going to contaminate my floor and leave me to sleep peacefully. 😭

The next experience happened one evening while I was doing the dishes after cooking.

I picked up the kitchen knife.

And then I heard the voice.

“Wouldn't it be fun to just slit your wrist and see how much blood would flow?”

I froze.

I looked at the knife in my hand.

Then I looked at my wrist.

For a brief moment, I actually wondered how much blood would come out.

Then the sharp edge of the knife touched my skin.

A sudden jolt of fear shot through me, and I dropped it immediately.

Thankfully, it had only grazed my skin.

Omooo.

I started casting and binding right there in the kitchen oooh.

I had never considered myself suicidal. I loved my life. I couldn't understand why such a thought had even entered my head.

How could I forget that I could die if I actually slit my wrist?

I stood there for a while, praying and trying to understand what had just happened.

But I still didn't get a roommate!

The last straw that broke the camel's back was when I temporarily couldn't see.

It happened that I came back from school one Thursday and realised that I had caught the famous Apollo—an eye infection.

It started with mild itching, then progressed to redness. It got a Master's degree when my eyes became swollen, and by the next day, it had earned a PhD when my eyelids completely shut.

I couldn't open my eyes voluntarily.

I had to use my fingers to pull my eyelids open, and even that was painfully difficult.

I was terrified.

What if I went blind?

I cried until I was almost exhausted from crying.

I started imagining what my life would look like as a blind girl.

What would happen to my academics?

Would I even be able to continue school?

Kappy would have to write me a sack letter, even though he loves me.

How would I manage anything by myself?

The walls of my house suddenly felt like they were closing in on me.

I desperately needed someone to call me. Anyone.

I wanted to hear someone call my name or say anything around me.

I wanted my phone to ring.

I wanted to hear children making noise in the street, playing street ball.

But it was midday on a Friday, and everyone in the neighbourhood was out.

I was alone.

Completely alone.

My thoughts were all over the place, and somehow, every thought made me cry even more.

I needed to get medication, but how would I be able to walk down the street when I couldn't see?

I decided to take a shower first.

The mind naturally knows how to switch to survival mode, so I walked around using my hands to identify objects in my path.

I made my way to the bathroom and reached for the soap bottle on the rack. As expected, I knocked over some of the other bottles, including the shampoo and hair conditioner, spilling their contents on the floor.

Eventually, I grabbed one and brought it to my nose, trying to figure out whether it was my bathing soap.

It was Hypo.

And it smelled nice.

I remembered when different flavours of Hypo were trending all over social media, when King Mitchy drank Hypo and VeryDarkMan made fun of her.

That actually made me laugh—if the little sound that came out of my sore throat can pass for a laugh shaa.

Don't be afraid, I wasn't about to drink Hypo.

I simply took my bath since I couldn't find the soap bottle, grabbed my towel from the line mechanically, as I did every other day, and dried myself.

Then came the next mission: getting dressed.

Apart from choosing what to wear, getting dressed had never been that difficult.

I did it almost entirely by instinct, feeling my clothes with my hands and trying to conjure an image of which one it was in my mind.

When I stepped out onto the verandah, something strange happened.

The light from the sky seemed to open my eyes just a little.

The darkness became extreme blurriness.

It wasn't normal vision, but at least I could see enough to move around.

So I made my way to the pharmacy.

The pharmacist gave me the medication.

I couldn't pay because being completely broke was my status at the time.

My account had nothing in it. Even if it did, I couldn't exactly make a transfer when I could barely see.

I started crying again.

It just seemed like I had an unlimited bucket of tears in my eyes to shed that day.

But the pharmacist, who had always seen me going to and from school, recognised me and told me to take the medication and bring the money later.

Bless his soul.

I returned home and started administering the medication myself.

Another arduous task I could have used some help with if I had a roommate.

It took several attempts before I could get even one drop of the eye medication into my swollen, tightly shut eyelids.

Omooooo.

Truly, the eyes are the light of the body.

I'm writing this two days later, and my vision is still like the camera of a Nokia 3310.

So, in case you spot any mistakes in this Stori, please inform Kappy. He'll fix them.

I know what you're probably thinking.

After everything I've just told you, surely I'm reconsidering my decision to live alone.

Well...

You're right.

I'm thinking of getting a roommate.

Kappy, please help me find a decent, extremely clean, Jesus-loving roommate who is single.

Emphasis on single.

Because the person cannot come into my own house and start oppressing my single self. You know how these relationship people can be naa.

Anyway, perhaps Robinson Crusoe had a point.

Maybe no man is truly an island.

And maybe having someone around to ask, “Are you okay?” isn't such a bad thing after all.

Or is it?

Do you have a roommate? What was your experience like?