On the Road to Makurdi: Episode 1 (How Scrabble Saved Her Life) BY SHARON SALU

I heard a beep from the phone nestled in the pocket of
my trousers, and instinctively knew who was trying to get
my attention, and why.
It was Sewuese.
But, until that moment, I did not know her last name.
Eager to know what she had just said, I jumped to my
feet, dipped my soapy hands in a bucket of rinsing water,
wiped my hands on my black trousers and pulled my
phone from the safety of my pocket.  One glance at the
screen confirmed my suspicion: Sewuese wanted to tell
me something. It was urgent enough to require a ping.
So, she pinged me.
As I glanced at the phone screen, my lips parted in a
wide, sheepish grin. Even though I knew I was alone in
the backyard, I still looked around cautiously to make
sure no one heard the laugh that escaped from my
mouth. Not that there was anything wrong with laughing,
but my over-sensitive self did not want anyone lurking in
the backyard to think I was crazy.
Was I crazy though?
Maybe I was ….
Crazy about Sewuese, at least. How could that be? I had
known her for just two months, if chatting back and forth
on Blackberry Messenger, otherwise known as BBM,
counted as knowing a person. If it did, then I knew her.
Quite well.
Uchi.
That was her last name. That single word, "Uchi," was
the opening line to our BBM chat that evening. I stood
there, wearing a pair of rubber slippers and the black
trousers, which used to be a staple in my wardrobe but
was now too shabby for work and had been converted to
house wear. I wore a white singlet too, although in the
orangey light that fell across the city of Lagos, it did not
look white.
As my fingers moved deftly across the keypad of my
phone, all I could think about was this person I was
chatting with. It did not matter that she was miles … no,
hours away in Makurdi, the capital city of Benue State.
Just two months earlier, I did not even know where
Makurdi was, much less know the surrounding states, its
people and how different it was from Lagos. I myself had
been born and raised in Lagos, and except for Ibadan
and Abuja, I had never really been to other parts of the
country I called my own.
But that was going to change.
By the time we finished chatting that evening, one thing
was clear to me: I had to meet Sewuese in person.  Yes, I
had fallen in love with her personality, sense of humor,
her mind and her voice. In that order.
I met Sewuese through one of those BBM chat groups.
You know, the group that that random friend on your
contact list, the one who is always changing his display
picture every five minutes, randomly invites you to join
on a random day.
This particular day must have been at least three months
after the fuel subsidy palaver. I remember this because
the said friend, Olujimi, had just put up that "Omoge wa
gba petrol," display picture with the guy wearing bell
bottoms and a pair of shades, looking very much like
Fela. The accompanying status update simply read:
My DP three mths ago
I was itching to slap the foolish fellow for no other
reason than the fact that he chose to abbreviate the word
"months" to the highly-irritating and in my opinion,
completely senseless shortened version, "mths," as if
writing the word in full would have cost him a pint of
blood.
But all thoughts of temporary bodily harm, coupled with
insults yelled in my mother tongue, were suspended, but
not forgotten, when the same guy sent me an invitation
to join a group.
Ordinarily, I would have ignored it, but the name of the
group really fascinated me.
SCRABBLE SAVED MY LIFE
I read the group name and laughed. My co-workers did
not find my loud, minimal-spit-diffusing laugh funny,
judging by the unkind glances they shot at me. But since
most of them were busy either Facebook-ing or Twitter-
ing anyway, no one bothered to ask me why I was
laughing.
Without further hesitation, I accepted Olujimi's
invitation and joined the group.
Before I joined, there were only 12 members. I was
Number 13, but Olujimi who had invited me in the first
place, left just a few days after I joined.
So, once again, there were 12 of us in the group.
Within five minutes of joining, I learnt that the group
consisted of people who were forced to learn or invent
new words during games of scrabble they had played in
the past.  They, therefore, decided to share their love for
words, or the invention of words, as well as harrowing
tales of narrow escapes and pure deliverance. All this
from a simple game of scrabble.
I had no wildly amazing stories to share, but I stayed on
anyway because of one person. Her display picture was
rather curious: an intricately designed white ceramic
mask with bright colors. It was one of those masks from
New Orleans. Thinking back now, I wonder if I would
have approached her if her display picture was the mask
of an Eyo masquerade or some similar traditional being.
But it was not just her display picture I found intriguing.
Her name captured my attention.
Sewuese.
Was it Nigerian? It looked and sounded so beautiful to
me, a Yoruba man. I was curious. So, I watched her and
waited for my opportunity.
Without a picture of her face, I fell in love with Sewuese
through her words. They were few, but well-chosen. Apt.
Thoughtful.
I liked that.
She shared her story with the group: she grew up playing
scrabble with her twin brother and cousins, but never
took it seriously until one day when she lost because of
one word: Decare.
She never forgot what it meant and as it turned out many
years later, at an engineering job interview, the same
word re-surfaced.
The interviewer, a senior executive at a small, but
prestigious engineering firm in Makurdi, told her point
blank that there was a tie between her and the only other
candidate, a young man who Sewuese had seen at the
reception.  He told her:
"If you get this question right, you get the job. Simple.
So, what is a Decare?"
It was like the question she had been waiting her whole
life for and just like that a random question would decide
her future.
"A decare is equal to 10 acres."
That was Sewuese's answer.
" … And just like that," she wrote, "I got the job."
That was the story she shared with the BBM group.
I did not know why an interviewer would ask such a
random question or why that question would be a "tie-
breaker" or why an interviewer in Nigeria, for that
matter, would even let an interviewee in on recruitment
or hiring decisions that only upper management would
have been privy to.  No clue.
Yet, I found this girl intriguing.
Sewuese …
Ironically, four days after she shared her story, the group
disbanded. But, before it did, as a sharp guy, I sent
Sewuese a friend request, with one motive: to get to know
the woman behind the mask.
At first, when my friend request went unanswered, or in
my own apprehensive mind, "unacknowledged" for two
days, I thought maybe this girl had fashied my side.
Perhaps, she thought I was a jobless lurker or worse yet, a
stalker. After all, I had not contributed actively to group
discussions aside from the occasional "Wow" or
"Interesting" or smiley face emoticon.
My excuse, of course, was that I did not have any mind-
blowing, life-changing or straight up weird stories on how
scrabble saved my life. I had never been good at
expressing myself in words anyway.
Even my primary school class teacher knew this, and
wrote it on my Primary 3, 2nd term report card. She
wrote:
He needs help expressing himself in writing.
Need help? Your fada! God punish you, Miss Gbadebo!
But maybe I should not be so harsh. Tolu, the boy who
always came last in our class, must have had something
much worse imprinted forever in his own report card.
Back to Sewuese.
After two days had passed and there was still no reply, I
made plans to ask the other group members one by one to
find out her last name, at least, so I could seek her out on
Facebook.
Things stalkers do …
I was still strategizing in my mind, when I decided to
take a bathroom break at the architecture firm where I
worked. By the time I arrived back at my desk, I was
pleasantly surprised to see that Sewuese had accepted my
friend request.
Even Barnabas, the colleague who always showed up
when nobody wanted him around, commented on how I
was "shinning teeth like person wey don tiff im neighbor
fowl." Ordinarily, I would have retorted with a smart
mouth comment, but at the time, I did not even care if
Barnabas was the neighbor's fowl which had been
snatched from the said neighbor. There was only one
thing that mattered: Sewuese had accepted my friend
request. Heaven had answered my prayer. The ball was
now in my court.
                     … to be continued …