Favourite Christmas Memory: In which I Was Santa
The day was Saturday, 25th December, 2021. Back then, I was working in a hotel so ordinarily there was no holiday for me. After having to deal with arrogant and drunk club goers on Friday night, I left work very early Saturday morning to go and carry out what I had been planning since August 24. Yes, August 24 is my birthday, but that year I was so broke I felt depressed. I couldn't even afford to eat out on my special day.
While I was thinking of all these, it occured to me that I was better off than some people, I realised that there are people who would love to have what I had. And then, I felt guilty for whinging about not going to a fancy diner and getting myself a gift. The same day, I began to plan how to do something nice for others on big days and by evening I began planning to be Santa.
On Christmas Eve that year, several people tested my patience at work. From the waiters under my supervision, to people who turned down my reasonable offers, insisting on the ones that may cause us pain, but none of them got to me. All I wanted to do was get home after work and do what I had to do. So as club closed in the early hours of the morning, I did all the necessary paperwork and fled home.
Some nights
I got home by 5:30am or thereabouts. The gate was still locked. I did not want to knock on the gate because I didn't want to trouble my landlady who lived on the premises. But knowing that what I had to do must be done before everyone woke up. I knocked on the gate. Fortunately, it's the other tenant in the rear flat that opened the gate for me. I went in, said a short prayer in my room picked up my backpack and left.
Nafi’u often comes to our compound to fetch water from our well. One day, he saw me doing my laundry and told me he liked my Nike shoes. He was probably ten or eleven years old and my shoe was size 45. I laughed and told him that the show would be too big for him. My first stop that Christmas day was Nafi'u’s compound. I know how strange it is to give a Muslim child a Christmas present, I only prayed that his parents will let him wear the brand new shoes I bought for him. I flung the carefully wrapped gift, with Nafi'u's name boldly printed, over the fence. I heard a feminine voice shout “a’uzubillahi.” I ran.
How I imagined Nafi'u wearing my shoes.
When I closed from work that Christmas morning, I told M., a waiter I supervised, not to go home until I called. I rushed to his house with my old Tecno DroidPad 7 tablet. See, he didn't have a smartphone and sometimes he felt downcast when he had assignment to do (he was also schooling) and no one was willing to borrow him their phone. I sent my broken tablet to Lagos to get it fixed and received it back two days before Christmas. That morning I gave his neighbour the tablet to keep for him and told her my name was Saint Nicholas.
The pride with which I saw Nafi'u walk on his way to the mosque on Friday wearing his new shoes, and the shriek of joy M. made on phone when he called me some 20 minutes after I'd called to tell him that he could go home, really felt good, a feeling I've not been able to replicate since then.