Episode One

Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria

For the past two weeks, Ekaette had made several attempts at moving her Dubai vacation till Christmas, when she, hopefully, would have saved more pocket money to spend on the trip. Now, she was not ready to miss her flight.

The seven-hour flight from Lagos to Dubai was slated for 8:30 am, but check-in had started around 3:30 am. 

“How does that even make sense?”, Ekaette murmured in frustration as she dragged her two heavy boxes with her. She had packed much more than she needed for a seven-day trip, but it was her first time leaving Nigeria, and she was determined to take plenty of pictures at the different spots the tour company had advertised that they would be visiting in Dubai. She did not know the next time she would get another chance to travel, so she was ready to make some unforgettable memories on this trip.

Only if she did not miss her flight!

Ekaette had struggled to get to the airport early, but she lives in Ajah, a far distance from Ikeja where the airport was located. She knew that she would be late, no matter how early she had woken up, but tried anyway. She had left home at 4:30 am being the earliest time to get out of her estate safely with all she was carrying, and had prayed all through the trip. Something could have easily gone wrong. She had no car, no friend who volunteered to drop her off at the airport, and not enough money to rent a taxi. So, she had first taken a Keke to the junction, a bike to Ajah bus-stop, and had luckily gotten a straight bus to Ikeja. 

However, the driver who plied that route once a day had waited for the bus to be full before leaving. He had also charged everyone a thousand naira each, bragging about how clean and comfortable his white bus was. People had cursed and lamented, and Ekaette had hoped that the people would win because she hadn’t budgeted more than five hundred naira for the trip. Unfortunately, people were in no mood for an early morning fight, and she was desperate to get to Ikeja in an hour, so she paid, only to be told that she had to pay an extra five hundred naira for a space to put her two boxes in the boot.

She grudgingly paid, and had even paid him an extra one thousand naira, when they got to Ikeja, so that he would drop her off inside the airport after the other passengers had alighted.

“I have truly outdone myself.” Ekaette said almost in tears of frustration, as she dragged her luggage out of the bus and watched other people alight from various vehicles, paying for trollies to load their bags and push into the airport. She wondered if such a thing as minor as a trolley should be paid for, but she would soon come to know that every service in the Nigerian airport was paid for.

It was just 6:45 am, but the tour guides on the group chat of the tourism company she was following to Dubai were already panicking and telling all those who had not yet checked in that they were running late. One of them also advised that if they encountered any delays at that point, they should tip airport officials or immigration officers to avoid further delays that could make them miss their flight.

Ekaette hissed and kept her phone in her pocket. There was no way she would part with the only five thousand naira cash she had left. It was all she had in the world, and would serve as her transport fare from the airport back home.

The queue was already short by the time she got to the check-in point, a sign that almost everyone travelling with her airline was already at immigration or boarding.  Dragging her luggage had definitely slowed her down, that was after she had joined the wrong queue for up to five minutes. She was out of breath as she slowly walked to the airline operator at the check-in. She signalled her to hurry up.

“Do you want to miss your flight?”, the operator had said with an air of indifference, as if she couldn’t be bothered if it actually happened. 

‘Why are people wicked by default at this airport?’, Ekaette wondered, knowing that she would sit on the airport floor and cry bitter tears if she was ever left behind. She proceeded to move quicker, weighing her luggage, and had been pleasantly surprised, almost hugging the official who took her bags, when she realised that part of checking in meant that she could finally drop her luggage and not worry about seeing it again till she got to Dubai.

It was the first time Ekaette was travelling by air, so she knew nothing about airline protocols. The one time the hospital she worked with had sent her to Abuja for a Special Nursing Training Workshop, she had saved both the flight and accommodation fee in her savings account, booked a night bus to Abuja and stayed with a relative there.

It was the longest journey of her life, the roads from Ilorin through Kabba were a nightmare. The bus had also detected a fault in Lokoja that grounded them to a halt for three hours, yet Ekaette had no regrets. The two hundred thousand naira she had saved on that trip had been instrumental to her eventually moving out of her Uncle Gideon’s place to rent her a  one-room self-contained apartment. Three days of pleasure denied, gave her one year of peace. Living in her Uncle’s house, with his overbearing wife had been the greatest test of her life when she moved from Calabar to Lagos to take a job at Oregon General Hospital, Ikate.

Naturally, a trip like that should not be possible for someone like Ekaette, who didn’t know anyone in her family that lived abroad, travelled or even imagined it possible. However, she was the rule breaker, determined to make it in life and do the seemingly impossible. When she was sixteen, her father had wanted her to go and meet Uncle Gideon, so he could find her a house to serve as maid, and begin sending money to the family for upkeep. Ekaette had begged to complete her secondary school education first. Even though her father considered her selfish and foolish, he gave her the extra year to finish school before she joined the family trade. 

Ekaette had studied like her life depended on it, and it probably did, because she had passed her exams in flying colours. When she got to Lagos, a hospital in her Uncle’s neighbourhood put up a signpost for an auxiliary nurse, and she had gone there to apply. They had been happy to take her, because she seemed bright enough to learn on the job, and they got away with paying very cheaply. Ekaette’s salary was not her own, she sent everything to her family. Yet, from the tips she got from patients, she saved enough money to enrol in the School of Nursing after two years, and had worked part-time to see herself through school.

It was a hard life, but she made it through school, while working in the same hospital, and rose through the ranks. Currently, she was earning Two hundred and Fifty Thousand naira, but more than half of it went to her family in Calabar. Despite the progress Ekaette had made in her life and career, she was still very poor. 

Poor and lonely. She had a few friends, mostly female, except for male colleagues in the hospital, and no boyfriend. She had never had a boyfriend, and at twenty-nine, what she had carried as a badge of prudence and virtue in her late teens and early twenties had become an embarrassment.

While in school, so many guys had asked her out but she had turned them down, fully focused on surviving and making good grades. Ekaette had the body most women could only dream of; with a full but not too large breast, well-rounded hips, a bum big enough to make people look twice, yet her stomach was not bulging. The awareness that she was physically attractive made her avoid men, disregarding most of their compliments and profession of love as fake.

Unfortunately, now that she was ready for male companionship and in full consideration for marriage, not a lot of serious men were asking her out anymore. All the ones that asked now, were only excited about touching her body; mostly inappropriate, lewd idiots who were attracted to her body.

That was why she had initially decided to change her environment briefly, determined to travel with a group of people going to Benin Republic for a weekend get-away. She had watched a film where a woman mentioned that the best way to make new friends was to go on holiday and put oneself in a position to meet new people.

“I could meet really interesting people on the bus trip, make friends, and maybe meet a man, for one hundred and seventy five thousand naira.” She had said to herself when she saw a trip advertised by a tourism company on Instagram.

It had taken another five months to save up the money, then she went to her boss to let him know she needed to swap her weekend off days to tally with the date of the trip. 

Doctor Jude liked Ekaette a lot, and had made passes at her often. Sometimes, he even joked that he would have married her if he didn’t have a wife already. If it was someone else that came to him with that request, he would have said ‘No’ even without looking up from his case file, but it had been the beautiful Ekaette, his success story of grass to almost grace. She had never asked for a favour and he had been inclined to oblige, but first, he wanted to be sure that she was alright and didn’t need the time off for some unfortunate emergency.

“Why do you need the time off?” He had asked and she had told him.

He broke into a smile and said to her that she needed to dream bigger, and not think about money. Ekaette laughed, and said: “I always have to think about the money. If things were perfect, maybe I would think of going to Dubai or Cape Town, but for now, I will start with Benin. I just want a little excitement.”

Doctor Jude had smiled, and Ekaette didn’t know what touched him but he said: “Ask the tour company if they are going to Dubai this time. If yes, let them switch your trip. I will pay the balance”.

Ekaette had thought she imagined the words coming out of Doctor Jude’s mouth, until two weeks later, when he had indeed paid the balance for the trip. That was how she became a Dubai tourist in the making.

The only problem was, she had no money! The tourism company had advised that each passenger travelled with one thousand dollars. At the time she got their mail, all she had was two hundred dollars, and that was in fact, part of her savings for house rent that would be due at the end of the year. 

She had tried to move the trip, but they said it was too late, so Ekaette had taken her two hundred dollars and five thousand naira; all the money she had in the world to make this trip that she prayed would change her life.

“Lord did I mess up? Do I deserve this? Am I biting more than I can chew?” Ekaette asked God as she walked to join the queue for immigration.

I will supply all your needs according to My riches in glory.

That scripture calmed her a bit, but as she overheard the immigration officer asking the woman in front why she was travelling to Dubai, her heart shook. People had told her that Nigerian immigration officers were as corrupt as the Nigerian Police and would ask the most stupid questions in the world till you dipped your hand in your bag and gave them some money.

The problem was, she knew that the only five thousand naira she had was not going to part ways with her today if she would have transport to go back home when she landed the following week.

So, when it was her turn, she flashed her biggest and brightest smile, greeting the immigration officer very happily and thanking him for the good work people like him were doing for the country.

The man had smiled back at Ekaette, a bit taken aback by her rush of compliments but too flattered to query her. He stamped her passport without looking at it, and waved to the next person on the queue that was moving so slowly because he was the only one with a machine that was working.

The plane had been boarding for thirty minutes, and boarding was about to close by the time Ekaette left Immigration. Without shame, she didn’t bother wearing the shoes she took off when passing through the scanner, she ran as fast as her leg could carry her, determined not to miss her flight after all the stress she had gone through.

She was going to Dubai, and with God on her side, nothing would go wrong!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Khalid woke up with a start, confused!

He didn’t know where he was. Even after looking around the room for one minute, he still couldn’t figure out where he was, till he rose up from the bed, and opened the window blinds of his hotel room. The city of Dubai smiled at him.

He was in his hotel room at Hilton Garden Inn, where he checked in yesterday after he arrived from Maryland, U.S.A. He had been at the military hospital for two months and was finally discharged last week. His therapist had suggested a vacation to help him clear his mind, and grapple with the new reality of his life. He was a soldier, and even though the saying goes, “Once a soldier, always a soldier”, he knew it would never be the same again for him.

His dream was dead, and it all came rushing back. He almost wished he could forget it all, but today, there was no luck of that happening. As he looked into the city, he knew that its beauty and activities would not be enough to distract him.

Sitting down for too long made him tired; the flight had exhausted him. For Khalid, activity was what kept him going, but he was still on doctor’s orders to keep his activities minimal. That he did, hoping that maybe if he obeyed them, his fate would change, but nothing was happening.

Lord, is this the plan? Is this how I leave the military? I found You there! You need me there.

Khalid blinked back the tears. He was determined to keep trusting God’s plan, but this was the hardest blow of his life, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. Nothing else mattered. Life was fast losing meaning. He didn’t know how to be anything, but a soldier.

Before I formed you in Your mother’s womb, I knew you.

Khalid sighed, picked up his phone and played Don Moen Essentials on iTunes. The first song that came on was:

God will make a way where there seems to be no way, 

He walks in ways we cannot see. 

Khalid smiled, a painful smile, heart breaking and he wondered if there was truly a way for him to win, and not lose himself. He tried to focus on something else outside his pain, and on cue, his stomach growled.

Rather than go downstairs for dinner after checking into his room at 5 pm, he had dropped on the bed and slept for thirteen hours at a stretch. He didn’t wake up feeling relaxed, he had a banging headache and a hollow stomach.

His hunger problem would be fixed with a buffet breakfast, but what was he going to do about the headache that was determined to remain a part of him? His therapist said it was psychological, so pain killers were not fixing it.

Damn! Coming to Dubai was not fixing it either, it was a waste of money and time to have come here, and he wondered what he would do with himself for two weeks.

Thank you for reading the first episode of this special Dubai Novella, Love On Toast.

Did you enjoy it? Can you relate to both Ekaette and Khalid’s story? Do you think their story will eventually intertwine as the episodes roll by? 

We would love to hear your thoughts. Please let us know what you think in the comments section. Thank you! 

Watch out for episode 2.