Corps Cathedral

I live in a cathedral and for this reason I’m not allowed to dress as indecently as I ordinarily would. Here, indecency means wearing any wearable two-legged thing apart from your underwear. Even wearing leggings under a gown is a mortal sin punishable here on earth by embarrassment. In the cathedral, we have resident angry, old men who parade in weathered uniforms with batons and seize every chance to play vengeful deities.
But then, this cathedral I live in is in a place called Yola, Adamawa- a place I only used to hear of in d recital of ’30 states and capital’(or is it 36 states n capital?) until July. When you live in a place like this, it doesn’t matter what you wear. In fact, you can survive with one wig and a good hair brush and buy all the skirts u can deal with for as low as 200 bucks. Adamawa- land of beauty n sunshine!
But even if, against all odds, you make d choice to look trendy, whose eye do u stand the chance of catching? The rate of HIV is insane and the men here are ‘tit-for-tatters’, dangerous tit-for-tatters, with a bitter resolve to make sure they establish a proper (improper) tit-for-tat relationship with females, especially desperate female ‘corpers’.
These infected men go as far as love charms o! And yes, the female corps member here is the epitome of desperation. Every female corps member has the ‘opportunity’ to stop more cars and turn heads on CDS days, when she’s dressed like a corps member.
But then, you know, the only reason we’re serving in Adamawa is because we do not have husbands to redeploy to. If we do, Lord if we do, all our present problems would go(to give way for new ones to grow). And seriously, as a matter of fact, every unmarried female of marriageable age is naturally desperate, trust me, if you’ve lived in a girl’s hostel, you’d know.
And we all need money. When you’re a girl living in a strange land with high expectations of you and peanuts in your pocket, you’re most likely to be desperate with an additional means of making money staring hard at you.

So yes, we’re a desperate lot, we’ve been for a long time, and the men took notice long ago too. So if you dress to kill and catch their eyes, they’ll either propose marriage (which is but another irritating strategy that should fail) or other money-spinning deals. And of ‘other money-spinning deals’, sex is but one. Another is the ‘Gombe Otondo’ way, named for 2 Ibo ladies I’ll tell you about later.

By Gold Odenigbo