The Neighbour next door

It's being a tough start to the semester for me and the whole difficulty doesn't look like one ready to stop anytime soon. First, the lecturers with their boring classes and crazy assignments. Next, the hike in transport fares even after the festivity is over and especially the fact that inflation of transport fares doesn't guarantee you reaching classes early. A lecturer once asked the doors of his class be locked the very minute he entered the class; thankfully I had been in class earlier that day than usual. Again, the nuisance constituted by some hooligans in my neighborhood and finally, the Neighbour next door.

The Neighbour next door

Living in Lagos, Nigeria is possibly one of the most interesting things to do, something that has the potential to make your life better and also make it your worst ever nightmare.

This neighbour of mine has embraced the latter as something of a pride.

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Sometimes last year.....

I woke up early, with an ecstatic mood, possibly due to the fact that I came first in a class test. The test was adjudged hard by many other students, cos the questions the lecturer asked were by no means stuffs that was in the syllabus. He was a kind of weird lecturer actually, he barely came to classes and when he did, all he wanted to do was crack jokes, a kind of tactical plan of his to make students think he was an easy going person and when he wasn't cracking jokes, on an albeit serious level he wanted to sell his course hand- outs. But there was this particular day we had just finished a course and it was a kind of draining one cos we were asked to complete a pretty lot of tasks in a designated and relatively short period of time and we had this lecturer next, then some guys were like telling everybody not to bother going to his class and go rest since he was an easily predictable man wanting to crack jokes. Surprisingly(maybe to me), there was a low turnout that day, about 30 students in a department of over 250 students came to his class. On seeing this, the man then taught a topic out of context and then he seized the chance and set the question on that fateful test day. I paid rapt attention to the class and knew the questions he asked. Then after coming first and was in a triumphant mood, I noticed someone shouting outside the house. Getting there, I saw so many people around and got to know it was the neighbour my room was next to that was shouting. Then listening to why he was shouting and not being able to make anything out of it, I decided to get back inside, only to hear him call my name. Wow,I was surprised, went to him, inquired what the matter was, and next thing I had a slap on my face, WTF. Then he started accusing me of frequently using his bathing water and this time around that I carefully masterminded another plan and made away with his pot of jollof rice. I tried justifying my innocence, but nobody wanted to listen, they were all looking at me with a wicked eyes as if to strangle me. When the unrest died down, one tenant came and vouched for me that I couldn't do that and took me away. A couple of days later, the neighbour came back and was apologising that he was sorry and he had known the culprit, I angrily left his sight and wondered if he could make the crowd of that day come back begging and at the same time erase the memory from my brain.

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Then this year, two days back.....

He came to my room asked me to lend him my spoon and cos I have a big heart, I gave him and he returned it after about 30 minutes.

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Yesterday........

I was washing clothes and suddenly I saw him climbing up the stairs and on his phone he was telling someone he just made a lot of profit from Smart BCH. Due to my inquisitiveness, I couldn't stop myself knocking on his door, then he ushered me in and after about 2hrs non stop Q/A, I finally decided to leave, but calculating his profit, he got a whopping 1.5 BCH as profit, I couldn't believe his luck. He then asked me to forward my Bitcoin wallet address and he gave me $35 in BCH. I didn't expect it from a neighbor that embarrassed me, just about 10 weeks ago. I was so happy and he was just like telling me it was a compensation for the embarrassment. "Favour found me" , I thought.

Lessons

• As humans, let's master the art of confirming things we hear or think about people.

• Let's also not repay evil with evil

• Let's pay pretty much attention to every detail our lecturers utter as students.