Chapter 11

The year I started to work was the same year I met my first girl friend. She was one of the customers at the cold room where I worked. She wasn't the first girl I met at the cold room,but she was the one that caught my attention. I had begun to be attracted to the opposite sex but I didn't have the material things that most of the girls wanted. I found Beth in a never ending stream of faces that trooped into the cold room everyday. It wasn't as easy as I would have liked, it took months before she finally agreed to be my girlfriend and she became my companion and confidant.

It wasn't that I was interested in sex but I needed to be close to someone and share my feelings. Another reason was that I had noticed that my friends were going into relationships with girls and so I wanted to prove to my friends that I was also capable of getting a girl. We didn't always get a chance to spend time together but we wrote series of love letters declaring our love for each other and how much we would love to stay in together,get married and raise children. It was young,puppy and sappy love at its best,and it felt so good.

I had regular schedule,I spent my days working from 6am to 6pm, then I would go home to take my bath and change clothes before going to spend the remaining hours before my 9pm curfew with Beth. After some months of hanging out with her, I became comfortable with her because we had so many things in common. Her parents had also been separated, and she lived with her uncle,but while my dad was dead her parents had simply married other people and each didn't want her as an added baggage into their new homes.She had also lived with her grandmother in the village before she was brought to live with her uncle in the city . Beth had been with uncle Ugochukwu and his family since she was seven years old. She also had to work for her uncle's wife aunty Joana who sold fish in the market .

I kept on saving my money in the bank as well as getting the essentials for myself. I decided to write another WASSCE, so I paid for it from the money I had saved. This time, I made all my papers except English language which was a compulsory subject. I didn't felt so bad about it because I would have to wait another year before I could sit for another exam. After I got my results I made up my mind to invest the money I was saving on a business that would bring profit instead of leaving the money in the bank for me to squander on material things. The little I earned was a reasonable amount for me to start something small considering the fact that I didn't have to pay bills like house rent or electricity bills.

I thought of a profitable business I could go into with little capital and I decided to go into the video club business.The video club business was a lucrative business in the early 2000s in Nigeria. All that was required was to get a shop or kiosk at a good location and buy the latest home videos to rent out to registered club members for a fee.The longer the movie was with them the more money I made.I believed that once the profits started rolling in combined with my monthly salary at Madam Caroline's store I would not have to worry about my needs. I went to look for my cousin Emmanuel,he was the one that had unwittingly disclosed my father's death to me. I told him of my plans,he helped me to look for a location to erect my kiosk. On Sundays which was my off day, I went about the business of building my kiosk at the proposed location. I would go to the market to get wood of various sizes with the carpenter I had employed. After completing the kiosk, I and Emmanuel went to Idumota market of to purchase different movies compact discs which I would display in the shop for people to rent. The process of starting the business took me five months. Emmanuel found a friend who was willing to work at the kiosk,she agreed to be paid based on commission. Business had begun.

Aunty Mary was curious about what I was doing with my money since I had stopped saving money with her. She asked me how much I had saved so far and my plans for the rest of the year. I told her I wasn't sure how much I had because I was only saving and I hadn't bothered about checking how much I had saved. She told me to go to the bank and get my account balance then come and tell her how much I had saved so far. I had set up the kiosk on the mainland part of lagos to make sure I kept it secret from Aunty Mary because I didn't know what her opinion might be, and I didn't want to be discouraged about it. I didn't also tell Beth about it because I just wanted to keep it between Emmanuel and I. I began making plans on what to tell Aunty Mary if she asked me about my money again, I really didn't know how to lie so I decided I was going to tell her about the business.

Few days after, she asked me about it again, so I told her what I did with all the money in the bank. She got so mad at me for not informing her before the start of the business. She reminded me of how grandma had to beg her to take custody of me and how I had loved her husband over her. I was accused of being disloyal by doing something on my own without informing her about it. She said that now that I could make such decision on my own, then I should start looking for accommodation for myself because she could not continue to house me while I spent my money alone. It wasn't that the business was a big one, neither was the salary I made from the cold room enough for me to rent a room anywhere in lagos. I said to myself that Aunty Mary was only joking, so I laughed about it and moved on.

One weekend Aunty Mary invited all her children to the house for a meeting. She had told them about the shop I set up in Surulere and they were not happy about my decision. They thought that if I must take any step or decisions, it should not have been behind their back. They decided to set conditions for me which was rules and guidelines that I must abide with if I must continue living in their house. The conditions set for me made it difficult for me to be able to manage the shop the way I had planned it. First was that I had to go to church on Sundays, I had stopped going to church since I graduated from secondary school. Secondly, after church I must do all Aunty Mary's laundry which usually took all day. This became became the new routine for two months. Monday to Saturday I had to go to work, Sunday for church as well as washing aunty Mary's clothes and underwear.

For two months I didn't visit my shop to know what was going on there. I didn't have a mobile phone and Emmanuel didn't have one too, so there was no way we could reach each other. The plan was for me to buy more compact discs to maximize the profit from the business.I wanted to add my monthly savings to whatever amount generated after the sales girl had removed her commission, then go to Idumota to purchase them. But I was stuck for two months and there was no way I could have left Lagos island for mainland after work because it was evening already by the time I closed from work.

On a Monday morning when I was supposed to be at work, I decided to visit my shop in Surulere to find out how things had been in my absence. When I got there to check how much had been generated so far, it wasn't much but the patronage was incredible. Emmanuel had been helpful by monitoring the sales girl to ensure she was keeping proper records and I was indeed grateful to him for being a good cousin. I took the money made from the sales girl and headed for the market to purchase additional compact disc to increase the sales. Based on my little knowledge as a commercial student in secondary school and the experience I had while I was helping Aunty Mary with her food stuff business, I was optimistic about the survival of the business, so I wasn't ready to back down from it.