GOBE IN LOBELE !!!!!!

Friday nights at a joint at lobele; a surbub town in the hearts of cotonou, state capital of republic of benin was always fun. The genre of music blasting from the hi-fi speakers, the prettily shaped and nicely dressed waitresses, the alcohol, the sweet aroma of neatly cooked meals and snacks, the beautiful cars and motorcycles moving in and out of the park and the fascinating crowd spilling in and out of the opened-air arena made it all more compelling to always return every friday night but the most important reason I always want to spend my money at this local joint is the drama!! the drama always complete my friday nights.
On that special friday night, I was sipping my usual pamplemousee; a drink with a tangy taste of lemon, sweet taste of pineapple and a little shot of alcohol waiting for the grilled fish that I love so much when I saw a young girl with a petite frame sitting on the extreme end of one the man’s robust laps. The flesh of the portly gentleman’s ham hock overflowed the bar stool and dangled perilously threatening to topple the girl off the man’s lap. The girl was obviously oblivious to this as she rubbed the man’s plump body with tiny hands that looked like they were going to be swallowed up by the man’s body. I just stared and wondered how much the man could have paid her or promised her to make her feel so comfortable caressing a man almost ten times her size and obviously many odd years older than her, publicly. I laughed at the way the girl did it with such open abandonment and almost envied the ego she possessed because had started sucking on the man’s lips like it was her favorite candy. “Oh boy, dis babe don smoke igbo o”, I whispered to myself.
I was still watching with amazement and a bit of irritation when suddenly a young lad clad in such fancy garb only a student would wear burst out from nowhere. The horrified look on the girl’s face only confirmed what I was thinking. Her boyfriend don come burst her bubble, I giggled excitedly craning my neck to see the drama clearly.
“Whadda fuck you want with such irritant?”, the guy asked the girl pointing at the fat man.
The girl could not reply, she just shook like trembling leaves in the wind.
“I give you everything you fucking want and you still go around fucking men, huh?”, he shouted. When the girl didn’t answer, he moved close to the girl and shouted angrily at her “Titi, answer me now. I said whadda fuck are you doing with this old man”. The girl had started crying and muttering silent pleas. The obesed man just looked at the couple strangely. He was a beninoise and english was as foreign to him as fufu is to a white man. The young guy left the girl and went for the man. He pulled him up and the table rocked slightly as if aware of the weight of the man standing close to it. The man didn’t wait to be questioned before he started speaking gibberishly in french and the only I could grasp was “s’I’ll te plait, monsieur- please, sir”, the man was pleading for his life obviously.
By then, a little crowd had formed around them, begging the young dude to leave the innocent porky alone but the guy was too enraged to listen to anybody. Before we knew it, the young guy slugged the fat man and the man hit the ground with a thud that was close to a mini earthquake and on cue, the siren from gerdamarie’s vans filled the air and everyone started taking to their heels like some sort of pandemonium had struck the joint and truth be told, the gerdamarie could be likened to a pandemonium. The gerdamarie (popularly called gerdam) was benin police force in nigerian army form; very ruthless beings. I followed the lot and board the available bike to peckadis; my area without thinking about the unnecessary hike in the fare. All I wanted was to get home; a cell room was far from an ideal chilling zone.
In my room, some minutes later, I realized I had left without my already paid for grilled fish and charger but it was by far one of the best nights at lobele carifo. Laughing loudly to myself, I knew it was going to be a night to remember for a very long time.