SOFT PATTERS

03 (unedited)

20th August, 2003

Anne. The mixed race girl born a Nigerian mother and an American father has always gotten whatever she wanted but one. It wasn't new fact that her mother as always wanted her to be like her. To be almost the same as her. She had been raised that way. Starting from how she walked, acted, talked and related with people she was like her mom. Her father didn't seem to have a problem with that as he was never around but apparently his credit card could work wonders. But she had a problem with it. Her mother wasn't one of those who would dictate bluntly no, she would rather state what she wanted in a way that would make one do it until it was done and so Anne always listened to her mother. She didn't like it but she did it anyways. She prioritized her mother's happiness over hers.

Sometimes while growing up, she would hear her father arguing with her mother with how she behaves. With how she just stared out the window during a conversation like she just didn't want to be around anybody. It do be like that for her but that wasn't her mother's fault she just wasn't happy and couldn't force herself to be.

Her mother would cry and ask her what was wrong and she would put a fake smile on her face to make her mother feel better and that has always worked until her mother finally destroyed it.

It was a warm summer morning after high school. Anne has just received yet another letter with the stupid denial. She hadn't gotten an admission letter yet and she was scared. She had applied to a total of eleven colleges and not one has been positive. She was devastated.
Her mother just suddenly came up with the idea of Anne studying abroad not abroad like the UK or Ukraine or any other developed country but Nigeria. Nigeria because that was her mother's home. She didn't like Nigeria. Not at all, she hated the country. Her pleading and noise fell on deaf ears as her father already approved of it.
She thought of all her citizens as corrupt, greedy and malicious. Although she never expressed her true feelings towards the country her mother guessed it but that didn't stop her mother from using her connections to get her admission to a university in Nigeria.

Now she has to travel which means she has to change her environment and leave her life behind her to go to a country she's never been to before and never even planned to visit.
She hated change.
~
The rain poured in a seemingly mocking manner. She felt the clouds knew her pain and decided to mock her with it.
Anne was to start at the prestigious University of Ibadan on the 20th of August, 2003.
It was a total nightmare to her. She just wanted to go back home in Madison and walk down the street every evening like she always does. The weather in the foreign country wasn't even human friendly and neither are the mosquitoes. Her once blemish free skin was now covered with pink and blue ugly looking marks. She hated it.

Each night her mother called her to ask how she was loving the new environment she'd always say the same thing. 'It's the same mom. Nothing fun is happening here' how would anything fun happen? When she was robbed on her first day in the city.
Her arrival at the country was so devastating as she got robbed at the airport and no one seemed to care about her lost goods. The police officer just picked at his teeth with a toothpick rather obnoxiously while pretending to care. She wanted to slap the pick out of his mouth and punch his pot belly but she was scared of going to jail thinking of how uninhabitable the prison might be.

Being a foreigner in a strange land, she was easily exploited and she was often thought of as credulous by the sun burnt women by the roadside. There seemed to be a lot of them. Everywhere she turned to she was called oyibo! Oyibo!! She didn't even know the meaning but she decided it was an insult. If only her mother had taught her a little bit of her language she wouldn't be in this particular position.

She felt different and often wanted to enter the ground anytime she left her apartment to get a cold drink at the shop opposite her house. It was like her mother wanted to punish her for a wrong doing. At least being in Nigeria she should be privileged with a nice apartment, an actual working air conditioner and probably a nice bathtub but unfortunately rather than the opposite she got none of them. To say she was depressed would be a great understatement.

Now finally it was her first day at the said first and best and she couldn't even find a reason to be happy. It's like she felt all shades of sadness on this day itself. The rain was falling heavily, she couldn't communicate with the cab drivers well since most of them only spoke their native language that she had no idea about, she didn't take her umbrella since the weather forecast said it'll be a sunny and yet the clouds are screaming. Nothing on earth could make her forget this day.
If not for the nice woman that could speak English well and interpreted to the cab driver she would have been stranded for God knows when.

She got to the school and even though the school was really beautiful she couldn't find it in herself to appreciate it. After the unnecessary stares she had been getting probably owing to her wet clothes rather than her skin color. She kept on walking without a care in the world even though she felt really cold and embarrassed.

Then the most unexpected thing happened. A girl with a beautiful Afro and thick rimmed glasses approached her asking if she would love a change of clothes and then she made a friend.

~
The whole day had gone fairly well especially since she was able to change her clothes and look okay. The girl Tolu -as she insisted she called her- was by her side all day. They were apparently course mates. It was quite sad that Tolu lived on campus cause Anne really needed someone by her side every morning and Tolu seemed to be really nice with her very big smile and her small petite stature. She really liked the girl and the friendship she had formed with the girl just under a couple of hours was the first grateful thing for her yet.

Then she made a decision to get an apartment on campus. It seemed to be the most logical considering how stressful it is moving from her apartment to the school and luckily for her Tolu was a roommate short. It seemed everything was working it's way for her and then she smiled for the first time in her entire two weeks in Nigeria.
'Probably the country is not all bad'

I know the chapter is a bit mediocre but I promise the book is fun.
Get ready for a nice ride ahead.