Form four was a big relief for me. I was glad it was going to be my finally year in school and more so, it had been decided that I was to move to my cousin’s house since he lived near my school. My cousin had actually offered to host me since he was a bachelor living in a two bed roomed house. His house was actually five minutes from the school. I gladly embraced the offer. He came for me one Saturday and found me all packed up. That was an answered prayer.
I was overly excited to finally have my own room and freedom. I loved the new estate, I was looking forward to making new friends and the highlight of it all was the fact that I did not have to commute while going to school. Good times:-)
So I finally settled in. I quickly took up my new chores in the house. Since my cousin was always at work, I did not expect him to do much. He would come home and find food already made, the house cleaned, the clothes washed. He also allowed me to have my friends over so I was mostly at home. Since it was my last year in school, I would study sometimes until late in the night with my classmate who was also my neighbor, then we would go to a certain shop to buy some chips and walk home eating. Those are the nights I would find my cousin cooking or having cooked dinner. He never gave me a hard time, I guess because he wanted me to concentrate on my studies. We would have study discussions with my friends in the neighborhood sometimes until midnight and since I had my own key, I would go home at my own leisure. Oh how I loved those days.
No sooner had I started being the best cousin, than the estate idlers begun making my life difficult. My bedroom window was right above the 'idlers corner', that is where the estate boys would sit and smoke, having idle profane talks and arguments until very late. It even became harder when they realized that was my bedroom and would sometimes throw stones at my window. My cousin Caleb was not amused at all. He would come out very angry only to find that they had taken to their heels. I took it upon myself to put an end to this menace so I purposed to look for them. One day I approached them and warned them. In order to gain their respect, I decided to become their friend. So I would often say hi to them and they stopped making my life difficult.
One time, one of the boys decided to come see me at my place, talk of wrong timing and wrong idea. We were enjoying our dinner nicely with my cousin, catching up on the day’s events. I still had my uniform on as usual. So we hear a knock and my cousin goes to open. He tells the boy to enter and sit down. I was so tickled at seeing the panic and fear on the boy’s face. I knew my cousin could never hurt a fly but maybe he was merciless to such boys.
I waited anxiously to see what would happen. So the boy was thoroughly interrogated as to why he would look for me at such an hour, knowing very well that I was still in school. My cousin was so calm that it appeared as a bad joke. We offered the boy some food but he refused. He quickly excused himself, apologized and left. We were left laughing with my cousin. That was the first and last of any boy knocking at our door.
