THE DAY VALERIE DIED EPISODE 1

   Its been almost 6 years now, but a single detail of the events that occured the day I lost my best friend to the cold hands of death has not escaped my mind. See, Valerie was more like a sister to me. We were born in the same month and year although i was few days older than she was. We grew up in the same neighbourhood and attended the same primary and secondary schools and were always in the same class. Our parents used to know one another from a distance but because of our friendship, they got closer and became friends too. Valerie's mum infact, helped my mum secure a job with the company she works with till today.

   It seemed God made us one for the other, because Valerie and I shared alot of things in common. We loved the same food, adored the same music and movies, admired the same type of clothes, engaged in the same sport and best of all shared the same passion for reading and writing. Val was also my gossip, dancing, study and arguing mate. Ofcourse we fought often but our fights never lasted more than a day as we loved and could forgive each other easily.
    There was just one thing I hated about Val for (as i fondly called her) and that was always the bone of contention between the both of us. Val was too trusting and always ready to offer favours to anyone in need of it, therefore any and every stranger was regarded as a friend by her within few seconds of meeting. She termed it selflessness while I called if foolishness. She would hear none of that so we quarrelled often about it.

 Once, In our JSS3, we were walking down a lonely unavoidable road to church for choir rehearsals around 7pm when a man on a bike stopped us to ask directions for a place we had never heard about. the best answer that is if we were supposed to give him an answer at all should have been a simple 'I don't know!' Instead, Val stood there with the unknown man, scratching her head for any information on the place which we obviously didn't know. Next, she began looking for people around to ask for help in describing the place. It took my going towards her to pull her away from there remind her the time which said we were already 30minutes for rehearsals for val to realise herself and send the man on his way.
   Another time,at school, some people from the state educational board came for their routine yearly assessment of schools. On their way out, one of them suddenly came back and said she had forgotten an important envelope in the principal's office. A thorough search of the office revealed it wasn't there. the woman kept insisting she had brought it with her. When it still wasn't found, she had to agree with us and suddenly she suggested she must have left it in the school they had visited before ours. She was sad because they had 5 more schools to cover that day which were all in different directions from the school where she had forgotten her envelope. before the principal could utter the next word, Val, who happened to be in the office at that time reporting some issues to the principal (we were in SS2 and Val was the school's head girl)was already on ground with the offer to go in search of the missing envelope at the last school.which was located somewhere in a village (Bandia) nowhere close to our school.the principal agreed because like he said, it was almost time for school to dismiss and he didn't want to displease the supervisors.

   Val hurriedly left me with the burden of taking her school bag home for her and zoomed off after collecting transport fare from the woman in srarch of the envelope. that day, the whole neighbourhood was thrown into confusion when by 7pm that night, Val wasn't back from the envelope hunt. Her parents and mine(I was allowed to join after much pleading) together with some the principal (who Val's parents had forced out of his house with a threatened police arrest, if anything happened to their daughter), few neighbours and one of our teachers who lived closeby, began a search for Val. We eventually found her wandering the streets in Kusala, another village close to Bandia, the one she was originally sent to. "Valerie, are you mad? how dare you put us in this kind of situation", Val's mum screamed. "Mummy I was only trying to help.I'm sorry", Val apologised.She went on to tell us how she had lost the transport fare she was given and because she had no phone and couldn't communicate in fluent hausa with the villagers, she had a gotten a wrong decription of both the schol she was sent to and ours inorder for her to return back from her failed assignment. Val's parents bought her a phone the following day.We were so thankful to have found her. I especially. Because of Val's absence in the evening, I had had to cancel volleyball training for a match we were preparing for against a rival school. Everyone including I, scolded her so much and Val seemed to repent that day of her 'kindness' and 'selflessness'. Ofcourse the principal was very embarrassed. He received a query from my school's director the next day and from the P.T.A the following week and was sacked a month later. Although, we were sorry for him, we agreed he needed more education on how to run a school and on how to take proper care of the students placed in his care as the principal..................To be continued
Ciao!