To Be Continued...

Olla’nna saw her death coming before everyone else did. Not in a dream or a vision at mid day but in the few seconds before she passed out, she saw herself dead. Contrary to the belief of the living, the dead did not view a slide show of their life as they traipsed down the red brick road to meet a sickle-clencing Death at the end of a dark rainbow...some simply saw themselves on the other side...and waited calmly for the transition.

“Ama, we are going to die today.” Olla’nna murmured to her smiling friend sitting at her side.
“Mmm? What did you say Olla, you know I don’t hear when I’m eating” Ama playfully replied, her constant smile still brightening her pretty oval face.

Olla’nna looked annoyed as she turned away from her friend and continued to look out of the window. She felt a sudden calm settle over her even as she stared at the lorry bearing down on their school bus. So close, she could see all of death’s colours. Vibrant vibrant yellows. Smoked yellow for the driver’s eyes, bright yellow for his teeth, the yellow underbelly of the kolanut he had on his now yellowing tongue. The yellow tip of the cigar hanging loosely from his chapped lips. And of course, the golden yellow of the bottle of whisky in his right hand. She wondered if anyone else felt the presence of the sickle-holding one. Then she saw them, the tell-tale signs of fear peppered the school bus. Isadora, the Assisi house captain held her rosary in her right hand as she quietly offered prayers. Imrana, her nemesis in J.S.S 2b sat quietly pretending to focus on his computer game, although his finger stayed stationary on the X key. A closer inspection showed Ama’s pupils had dilated, and she was speaking about eating in a high pitched, rather unrecognisable voice.

“We know.” Olla’nna thought.

The lorry bore down on the bus like an avenging angel, swooping down so fast it could have been mistaken for a race car not a 70 tonne vehicle stacked high with timber. The last thing Olla’nna saw before the bus spun into a ravine was the proud declaration on the lorry’s front “NO WAHALA FOR HEVUN”.

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“Ah ah, seventeen missed calls in eight minutes?!” a surprised Kilali asked her equally confused friend, Aleruchi. The phone was already ringing again before Aleruchi’s face had managed to fully shape into a frown.

“...yes, this is she” Kilali told the disembodied voice at the phone’s other end as she made herself comfortable and carefully placed her plate of wedding delights on the table, eager to finish the conversation and return to the wedding’s festivities.
“Accident?!” she shot up. Tipping her heaped plate and its delicacies unto her vintage Ferragamos. “What do you mean an accident...??!...” She continued, the stress in her heart reflecting in the stress she placed on every syllable. “OLLA??!?!?!?!? WHICH OLLA?!?!” By now her screams had alerted other guests at the wedding. People continued to stare as she threw off her gele, undid and redid her wrapper and began a march to nowhere at all.

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2:07p.m. on the fifth of February 2011 found Kilali Roger standing in a confused daze at the Kaduna Government Memorial Mortuary off Sabon Gari in the old town.

“Madam abeg no look us, look T.V. If na dead body you come fine’ for hya abeg fine’ am dey go! We get many dead body hya today” One of the mortuary attendants shouted at Kilali as she stared aghast at what looked to her like a million little bodies littered on the ground. The attendant’s loud voice came to her from far away, prompting nothing but an eery smile from Kilali. “Nigeria’s service industry will be the death of me” she thought. The smile was immediately wiped off her face as she belatedly realised it would literally kill her, if her daughter’s body were to be found littered amongst the charred corpses carelessly scattered around by the ineffective Nigerian Mortuary workers.

“S-ssor.....” She coughed. “Please, please I need to find Olla” she murmured to the frowning attendants. “ ‘Olla’ na road or wetin be that one?!” the most assertive of the attendants asked belligerently, drawing smiles from some of his colleagues. One of the attendants hung back, clearly not enjoying Kilali’s distress. “Madam no vex,” he told Kilali, “...we dey work since morning we don tire na why dem dey behave like this, you no say this job no be small tin. Who you dey find? Na pikin from dat bus from Minna state wey all the small pikin die?” Kilali could only nod mutely, her brain unable to retain information. Going into autopilot, she asked redundant, foolish questions.

“So this bus, are you sure it was the one from Minna that crashed?” “But some of the children are alive. Are they here? There is a little girl that belongs to me there..she’s in the hospital? Let me look at the ones that did not die first. Please. Please. Plea..” her voice cracked then. The look all the attendants were giving her now told her brain something her heart could not comprehend just yet.

Baby Olla was gone.

“Ok madam” the formerly belligerent attendant told her quietly. “Since you don already reach here make we first just check the pikin wey dey here fas fas then we go go see the one wey no die for hospital, mmmn?” he told her calmly, knowing the hospital was empty of a wounded but alive little girl belonging to this woman with the vacant eyes. He slowly winded between the little bodies. A silent Kilali followed.

The air gradually filled with hushed voices as more parents filed into the mortuary. Every few minutes, the pain in the air was exacerbated by a wounded cry from a relative indicating they had identified their own. But still Kilali and Olla’nna remained separated.

“Ma, you talk say your pikin get pink and blue watch and suppose dey wear yellow uniform abi?” The attendant said to Kilali as he stopped, staring down at a little girl that looked eerily like... “OLLA?” Kilali whispered quietly to her daughter as if the love in a mother’s voice could wake the child. “Baby Olla” her mother whispered again to her baby, this time shaking her pink watched hand. “Baby, Olla, Olla’nwam, Olla’nna...” her voice getting more insistent as she called her daughter’s names. She shook her with each name. As her voice softened, the pressure of her hands increased. “Olla, Olla, Olla don’t leave mummy. Please. Please Olla.” By now she had her daughter’s little body in her arms and was sobbing into her lifeless neck.

Kilali Roger cried like a king. Not a queen. In contrast to her regal, almost aloof, nature she cried like a lion feeling the first tear of the hunter’s arrow. Loud and haunting, the sound burst from her lips like it had been repressed for a long time. Like the tears of women all over the world, it had. It had laid deep inside her through marriage issues, losing a father, labour pains and more. Mixing with her intestines, peppering her throat, fighting with her tonsils to escape the prison of her mouth. Often she did not let it. But today, today there would be no other day like it. The tears burst from her, drawing gasps and answering tears from the eyes of the other parents as they all mourned the deaths of their Joy.

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