Alvan Hall 2 (Toilet End)

Melvin climbed the staircase to the top swerving from the students that played round the corridors. He looked down from the balcony to the centre of the play ground and liked the sight. Each of the rooms had a six spring iron bed set in front of it and one suspended on the slab above the door where the students hung their clothes to dry after washing. Some cloths were spread on the railings of the balcony. Just like in Nkrumah Hostels, the iron beds in front of the rooms were supposed to be inside the rooms but the boys would not like to share a bed for two or more people; they threw out the beds and spread their mattresses on the bare floor to make spaces for some other students who could not afford the accommodation fee to squat with their friends. Squatting - using the school’s hostel facilities without paying for them - was illegal, yet a great number of the students did it. The beds being in the rooms would have made squatting impossible. Melvin sat down on one of the spring beds along the corridor. Now he felt like a bona fide student with nothing to be afraid of, not even the dreaded cultists. He was feeling very sleepy. It was night. He relaxed on the springs without a mattress and the bed shivered noisily and groaned as though it could collapse. Melvin closed his eyes, relaxed his bones and drifted away into sleep.

There were all sorts of noise in the night.

“Banana and Agidi! Banana and Agidi!” the call of a peddler penetrated into his dream. He jerked. He didn’t wake to buy; he wanted to see how someone could be selling such a bad combination. He didn’t see any hawker but a boy with a bucket of water passed him still shouting the same:

“Banana and Agidi!”

“Oh!” he lay back disappointed.

Throughout the night, the hall was very noisy. Somebody shouted from the left end:

 “Alvan I won die!”

 “Die now! Zuo!” replied another from the right and all such disturbances followed. He woke up very early in the morning with pains all over his body. He stood up and stretched aching parts of his body amid very loud yawns.

“E no easy for Ezekiel.” He muttered.

He looked at his wrist watch, and remembered it was not functional. He sighed and strolled down the right side of the corridor to look for where to urinate. There was growing stench of Indian hemp towards the passage by the left that connected Alvan Ikoku and Eni Njoku Hostels. The further he went towards the passage the stronger the stench of a mixture of Indian hemp and cigarette that tore into his nose. The passage was dark. He squint his eyes to make out the figures in the darkness and he saw nothing but glowing embers. He only saw hazy figures of human faces when the embers expanded and contracted like fire flies. A tall boy emerged from the dark with a soap dish on the left hand, a towel on his neck. It was the bathroom. Melvin entered the passage where the smell of the hemp reigned supreme and it chocked him. Glowing embers of the burning hemp moved from one side to another. Then he came close to a group of boys in a semi-circle with wraps of the weeds changing hands. The thought of cultists crept into his mind and shook his entire body with visible tremor.

He liked the flavour of hemp but the over powering stench of cigarette made him cough. Somebody laughed in the darkness and murmured what Melvin did not understand.

He groped in the dark till he found the lavatory at the right hand side of the passage. He pushed the door open and strong awful smell of stale urine poured into the passage and light from the lavatory poured out too and lit up the passage.

“Close that thing, zuo!” a hoarse voice growled from behind him and he looked back and left the door to swing back. He didn’t want to let the fears that shook his entire body show. He opened the door slightly again and slid into the lavatory. The stench of excreta from the lavatory mixed with the flavour of the burning hemps filled his nose. He held his nose with his left palm. The lavatory had six bathrooms to the left, six rows of toilets to the right and a urinary facing the door. Melvin first turned to the right, still blocking his nose with his palms. He opened the first toilet door. The toilet seat was filled to the brim with faeces dripping on the floor. The waste paper basket by the side of the toilet seat was also filled, with papers strewed all over the dirty floor. Melvin jammed the door immediately. The faeces he wanted to pass ran back into his intestine with a rumbling noise. The second toilet looked the same. A boy ran into the lavatory naked with his short on his left hand and a stick of burning cigarette on his lips. The boy shoved Melvin aside and ran into the second toilet.

‘Patapata! Patapata’ came the sound from the toilet and Melvin wondered how the boy could sit on the dirty toilet seat. He was yet to learn the different defecating positions of students in UNN. He couldn’t bear the increased stench any longer. He turned and headed towards the bathrooms. A furry fat rat scurried across to the door towards the passage. Melvin froze. It looked nothing like the rats that ran round their house at Aba; big and hairy, like a puppy. He continued straight to the bathroom and entered the first one. The tiles on the walls were shattered, leaving the wall coated with spirogyra and patches of indelible soap foams. Melvin pulled off his cloths and hung them carefully on a protruding shower pipe on the wall. He kept his shoes on the window. Beside the shoes was a medicated soap. Somebody must have forgotten it there.

The shower ran slowly and Melvin stayed for a long time in the bathroom. He was enjoying the shower until someone shouted at him from outside.

 “O boy comot for bathroom naw mek man pikin baf. Wetin be your own gbege now?” The undiluted pidgin of the voice outside made him hurry up. He hurriedly stopped the shower and dried his body with his singlet and jumped out of the bathroom. 

To be continued....