I’ve never been as glad for the weekend as I am today. Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy with my new job, and it has been a great week adjusting to my new workspace, which is incredible. Everyone is friendly, accommodating, and helpful to the point where I feel at home and envision myself growing and enhancing my knowledge and skills when it comes to creative work.
The creative department is on the third floor. Each unit has its level. The team consists of five long-term staff as the firm can hire freelance photographers and designers if the need arises. There is the head of department, Mrs. Bethany Anobi, who oversees everything and manages us. Diekolola Amao and I are the on-ground designers, Marka Danjuma is the department finance accountant, and James Adeolu is the department’s secretary.
Each of us has our private office—except James because his desk is in the reception area of our floor. Unlucky for me, mine is beside the toilet, but no mishap has happened where I have had to endure the smell of something horrid, at least not yet because everyone except Mrs. Anobi uses this toilet. Of course, the head has to have a personal one.
The other rooms consist of a studio for everyone to work together or for freelancers. A conference room for official meetings, a storage room, and a kitchen—which you can’t precisely cook in but it has a water dispenser, microwave, kettle, a wall cupboard stocked with kitchen utensils, a table for four, and a basin for washing the utensils.
I assisted Dieko on two projects he was working on, and when we presented them to the different authors, they fell in love and couldn’t decide which of the multiple designs to use. That was all I did this week, apart from adjusting and getting to know the people around the offices. We did not acquire any new publishing rights or author this week, and some of the manuscripts hadn’t been cleared yet, so no new brief on what to design or create.
Lucky for me, my work best friend Dieko has a car, and he passes my estate on his way home, hence him dropping me off in front of my estate gate since my first day. I’ve been looking forward to today since Wednesday because my girlfriends and I had decided to have our monthly girls’ night out tonight.
I have three girlfriends. I’ve known Nafisa ever since secondary school. We instantly became sisters for life within a few months of knowing each other, and ever since then, our relationship has stood strong through the test of time and remained unchanged by it. Her family is my family, and mine is hers.
Onyinyechi became my friend when she transferred to our school at the start of senior secondary school. She is not only adorable but loyal and knows how to make wherever she is lively. Nafisa isn’t as trusting as I am when it comes to making new friends, but it didn’t take long for her to see what I saw in Onyinyechi and for our friendship to blossom. Onyinyechi went ahead to another continent to attend university, but that didn’t stop our friendship from flourishing, and it became something more significant when she returned to the country.
Nnoli became my and Nafisa’s friend during our second year at university, under unfortunate circumstances. We went to a private university, with a student body of more than one thousand and five hundred, a relatively small number when compared to the number of students attending other private schools. Because of this, it was quite easy to become popularly known for something amongst the students.
We stumbled upon a distraught Nnoli in front of our hostel on a Sunday evening. We had just returned from Nafisa’s house after spending the weekend there. Nnoli was one of the freshers we were friendly with. Nafisa and I mainly stuck to ourselves because we could not relate to many of the students in our school, and we’d soon found out that many of them weren’t genuine about the reasons they spoke or interacted with us. It was alarming because people were going about their regular business, coming and leaving; people stood around watching her, but no one was consoling her. The girls she usually went around with were nowhere in sight, and some people were giving her nasty side-eye as they passed.
We approached her and sat with her. I asked her what was wrong, and she proceeded to wail and cry harder. I wasn’t comfortable with how people were watching us, and I urged her to please come inside and into our room. It took a lot of pleading but she finally agreed, and when she got into our room, her cries reduced ’til she was silently sobbing.
Nafisa gave her a bottle of water and painkillers to take, and I provided tissues for her to clean her face. Once she was able to control herself and took the pills and drank the water, she thanked us profusely, and when I asked her again what was wrong and how we could be of help, she was surprised we didn’t know.
Nnoli nudes leaked that weekend while we were at home, and it instantly became viral. The usual story, of sending naked pictures to boyfriends because they asked or begged for it and instead of protecting those personal images, the receivers are careless with how they keep them. A jealous female, apparently one of her so-called friends, was browsing through the pictures on his phone and saw them. Instead of moving on from it, she sent the images to all his contacts on WhatsApp, and the rest was history.
Her picture was shared all over social media, and people dared to tag her in the posts, many false stories about her promiscuity also shared by people adding salt to the wound. Her boyfriend broke up with her because he didn’t want to be with someone everyone had seen naked, and she had allegedly been with too many members of the male sex for his liking. She became labelled a prostitute and was being dragged both online and offline by bullies. People she called her friends turned their backs on her and went ahead to show support to the girl who had leaked the nudes, who claimed it was an accident.
Nnoli had finally reached her emotional breaking point and had just confronted her friends when we’d found her in front of the hostel. We took her under our wing and made sure she understood she wasn’t the one at fault and had done nothing wrong except trusting a wicked person or people and even that, she couldn’t have known. We made sure that she understood the culture of victim-blaming in Nigeria, especially when it came to girls and women, was wrong and shallow—many people just don’t know any wiser and would rather be ignorant and follow the crowd like sheep.
We made sure Nnoli understood that this wasn’t the end of her world. That she should always keep her head up, be strong and emulate self-confidence. Even if she didn’t feel confident, she should fake it, reminding her that most of the people in our university won’t always be in her life nor would they add any value to it and we had her back no matter what, and that’s how she became our girlfriend.
Nnoli and Onyinye, as we call her for short, became good friends instantly. In Nnoli’s defence, no one can meet Onyinye and not be her friend. Nnoli today is a confident, no-nonsense, and self-assured young woman who no one can mess with or use to their advantage at her disadvantage. She hadn’t let that episode in her life cripple her, and she learned a lesson about living from it, albeit a hard one.
Tonight, we are meeting at La Mango at Ikeja GRA to eat, drink, chill, and unwind from our week. It’s not like we don’t see each other any other day; it’s just hard to get us all together in one place, so we use that as an excuse to have a compulsory night out once a month.
While we are there, Nafisa takes every chance she gets to bombard us with her wedding plans, ignoring my constant pleas to take a break from wedding talk because I also have to endure wedding planning talk when I am home from my mummy dearest.
Onyinye is working as the overall head of the social media department for the phone selling organisation Mobile. Mobile has many branches all over Lagos and in several other states, and all the social media managers report to her. Her mother is the owner of Mobile, and one day, Onyinye would head the organisation. Onyinye loves her job, and she takes a lot of pride in how she is growing the organisation’s online presence.
Nnoli is doing well, only she is very stressed with her job as an assistant at a government office and wants to find out if she could work elsewhere, but she honestly can’t wait to finish her NYSC program so that she can apply for a master’s course in marketing.
Onyinye offers to hire her in her department, telling her the work won’t be easy but would be fun because she would be in an environment with people near her age and she would also get paid a salary along with her government required fees. Nnoli accepts the offer, and they decide to discuss how it would go on a later day. We instantly see how happy Nnoli becomes and a lot of the stress she was feeling leaving her body. I love how we are there for each other.
After I gush about my working situation to them, Nafisa proceeds to take a break from talking about her wedding to tell them about Lucas, then Jide. I want to kill her for mentioning Lucas, but I preen when they proceed to praise me in the process of bad-mouthing him for turning down an unpriceable wonder like me.
I turn into a blushing fool when it comes to talking about Jide, and I know I won’t see the end of being teased by them about how hooked on him I have become in a matter of two weeks. But they all know the beginning is always the sweetest part when you like someone—it’s not like I haven’t watched them make a fool of themselves when they had desired someone in the past. Even Nafisa still behaves like one when it comes to her fiancé, Sani, and whatever he does for her, even the smallest things that don’t need gushing over anymore because she has been dating him for more than two years now.
My phone vibrates. Speaking of the devil, it’s a message from Jide. I can’t hide the smile that takes over my face whenever his name pops up on my screen, and my girlfriends notice and tease me more about him.
Jide: Sewa love, hope you’re having a good time for both of us because I’m still working on this new application and my favourite distraction is too busy for me. I know you said I shouldn’t call or text you tonight and you would when you get home, but I couldn’t resist I miss you.
I just send him a smiling and heart emoji before putting my phone in my purse. Once done with our foods and drinks, we decide to be a little crazy and have a dance party at our table, entertaining the other people in our vicinity. We take a seat and burst into laughter because Nnoli and Nafisa don’t know how to dance, but it never deters them. We buy another round of cocktails and calmly sip on them before we part for the night.
Nafisa and Onyinye offer to drop Nnoli and me off at our respective homes, but I don’t want them going out of their ways and driving too late. Besides, Nnoli’s home is on the way to Onyinye’s place, so her taking Nnoli was more understandable. Sani dropped Nafisa off, and he would be the one to take her home because he didn’t trust anyone else to drive his baby late at night.
I don’t have a problem with using Taxify. It was what brought me here. I couldn’t wait to get home, take a nice warm shower, and talk to Jide a bit to end such a beautiful day.