I have this habit of rushing to check my phone whenever I hear my notification sound. It’s not like I am a government worker or something. But that one buzz was very sharp and hopeful, cutting through the heat of the afternoon in my room. I was reclining on my bed, staring up at the ceiling fan, when the notification came.
Credit Alert: NGN 5,000.00 deposited into your account.
I remember jumping up so fast I turned in circles. Five thousand naira. Transferred from Mama's account — she'd somehow found the money after I'd called her crying over exams starting in a week and my own account sitting at ₦47. I held that phone like it was gold, reading the message over and over again. The figures didn't get larger, but they felt larger with each re-read.
I had already worn my slippers before I even made up my mind where I was headed.
The first stop we made was that shawarma place on the way from the faculty building. You know, the one with the one man who cooks the chicken a bit too much but for some strange reason it somehow always ends up better. I'd been passing by it for weeks, inhaling the peppers and onions, watching other students take a bite of those flavorful wraps as I held my wallet with nothing in it. But today I was receiving the big one, extra meat, extra sauce.
"Put am complete," I instructed the man, like I was some kind of VIP. Like ₦1,800 was an astronomical figure above half of what I'd paid in the past four days collectively.
I stood and ate it, sauce running down my wrist, not even worrying that some dripped onto my shirt. Every bite was like victory. Like being on the right side of campus life where people shopped without needing to count money twice.
And the MTN store. My data had been lagging by two weeks — sneaking on my roommate's WiFi password when he left the house, or lugging myself to the library just so I could access WhatsApp. But now I could buy the 3GB package, the one that would last me through exams. Another ₦1,000 gone, but who cares when you don't have to watch YouTube vids in shame?
I guess it was the betting that killed me. Or maybe I died as soon as I got that alert. There was this one guy who was always talking about particular wagers, low odds, easy money. I'd already seen him win previously — not big money or anything, but enough to buy more rice at the cafeteria, enough to be able to play big shot with the rest of us beginners.
"Even ₦500," he stated, holding up his phone screen. "This one is safe. I'm risking my own money on it."
Did he really say that? Or am I mixing speeches and having different days spill into each other? Memory is strange like that — one minute you recall the atmosphere but not the facts. And the atmosphere was: I had money now. I could play for free. I could be the champion, the one who receives extra shawarma, the one who helps other folks like they'd helped me.
The bet was on a Premier League match. I do not remember whose teams, but I do remember the guarantee. How the numbers appeared so neat to the bookmaking application, as if they belonged to them already. I pressed confirm and felt like I was soaring. When I returned to my room, I had already spent ₦2,800. In one afternoon. I counted the remaining ₦2,200 like it was still a fortune, like somehow it would double itself if I stared at it long enough. Seven days to exams. Seven days of eating, of traveling, of those little emergencies that always pop up when your phone screen cracks or your pen is out at the wrong moment. I planned and re-planned a couple of times. Each plan more fanciful than the last, each one evading the simple math that it is ₦2,200 divided by seven days is trouble.
The first day wasn't so bad. I had noodles for breakfast, beans for lunch, kept the rest. I even congratulated myself on being a big boy. Look at me managing money.
Day two, the headache started — that insistent, constant kind that hovers behind your eyes and reminds you that your body is keeping score even when your brain is making excuses. I skipped breakfast, telling myself it was intermittent fasting, something healthy people do.
By day three, I was measuring garri as one would measure gold dust. One cup, some sugar, cold water. The mixture never appeared to be enough, but it was what I had. I'd just sit there with the bowl, eating slowly, trying to stretch it out. Trying to convince my stomach that this was sufficient and this was only temporary.
The library was my haven. I wasn't studying, although I tried to, had books open and stared at pages until the letters blurred together — but it was a place to be that wasn't my bedroom, a place where I could pretend I was there by choice and not by chance.
I started sleeping earlier because sleep was the only time when I couldn't feel the hollowness. Sometimes I would wake up at 3 AM and think about food for an hour before I could sleep again. Buttered toast. Chicken jollof rice. My mother's soup with those morsels of meat that melt in your mouth.
It was on the fifth day that I saw David. I was passing by the cafeteria, rushing along because food aromas were more than I could handle, when I saw him at a table. He was eating rice and stew, real stew with chunks of meat and vegetables, and there was another man across from him — a person in our department that I was sure I had seen but couldn't remember their name.
"Want to try some?" David was speaking, pushing his plate forward. "I bought too much."
Too much. I stood there watching him sharing his excess while I had garri waiting for me in my room. David had been given the same kind of alert I'd been given, though he received higher, doesn't matter I'd have blown mine anyway — we'd made a running joke when the cash came, teased our parents' timing. But where I risked and binge-dined, he stretched it, day by day, meal by meal.
I don't think he saw me just standing there. Or maybe he did and decided to ignore it, giving us both a pass on a little awkwardness. Either way, I went back to my room with something burning within me that was neither anger nor shame but lived somewhere in between the two.
The betting app reminded me for days afterward. New games on offer, better odds, chances to win back what I'd lost. On day six, when I was too frail to be angry anymore, too exhausted to hope, I deleted it.
Even today, when I get money occasionally I feel that hum again. That same sense of potential. But then I think of David's rice, how he could be so giving and still afford to eat, while I mAeasured out sugar cubes, counting them carefully. I think of sleeping through hunger, the way my body curled up on itself when it didn't have enough energy to propel it forward in a normal way.
They talk about learning lessons as if they are sanitary objects, clear as mathematical formulas. But this lesson takes up room in my body as much as my mind. In the way that my hands shake a bit when I'm prepared to spend money on something I want but don't need. In the way that I demur at shawarma stands, calculating not whether I can afford it right now but whether I can afford what comes next.
At times I feel as though I learned too much. I find myself stockpiling little bills, declining treats that would not even scratch my budget.
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