Dec 11, 2010

Lost Angels: 5 years of Broken Dreams.

I tried to do a real post yesterday but I couldnt manage it. Too much emotion..I had to do a dedication instead. Truth is, all the posts and articles I have read have been emotionally charged. Real loss and grief never truly goes away. It just lies under the surface waiting to be unearthed, and every year we are forced to relive the gruesome and needless death of those 60 young men and women.
They were sons, daughters, friends, brothers and sisters. I can remember calling Kechi's mom over and over again, during those agonizing moments when we did not know whether she had made it out or not. Few minutes before, a friend Amarachi had called me, sobbing as she asked me to 'pleease, pray for Kechi'. That was how I tuned into TV to watch the most heartbreaking tragedy I have ever witnessed. What I saw then wasnt angels dying. I saw friends. Zikora and Chidinma Okafor had been on that flight. Their dad was a good man, and they had been our neighbours for a long time. He had lived for them. They had been his pride. But they were gone. Forever.
More than the pride of their parents, they had been our friends. We had gone off to boarding school at relatively the same time, and even though we kinda becamse quasi-strangers, due to the fact they only came back one a year, our families had known each other too well. The shadow of their loss hung around for a long time. It hasnt fully gone away. Im not sure it ever will.
Ifeanyi Ubah had been a little whizkid. Energetic, fun and yet decidedly studious. He was far brighter than his brother Chibueze, who is my close friend. And if u know Chibueze, then that is saying a lot. He had big dreams and that spark of genius. But he was also just a fun kid. I wonder what he wouldve been now. But one can only wonder..we can never really know. We were talking about it yesterday and someone suggested a seance. Maybe we will do that. Maybe it will help us know.
The only silver lining in my experience with this tragedy has been Kechi. From childhood we had been close. We fought over puss in boots storybook in the back row of Primary 5 room 211. We went to kiddies xmas stuffs every december, and she kept going even till 2003, long after all our mates had stopped. She just had the gentle, upbeat, childlike personality. And she was extremely bright. So when Amarachi called me on Dec 10th 2005, asking me to pray for Kechi, I prayed with everything in me. And it seemed even God was not ready for her to leave. She made it through the crash, 7 long months of coma, during which her mom stayed at her side, and we stayed on the phone; years of several skin grafting procedures, in S.A. then in Texas. And whenever I think about her, this tragedy leaves a little room on my face for a smile. Becuase she is alive, well, and on her way to those dreams we dreamt as kids.
The rest of those kids had dreams too. That will never materialize. And knowing Nigeria, Im left to wonder, will they be remembered? Will their death have been in vain, forgotten under the daily tragedy that defines life in Nigeria? Or will we someday see a society where trageides like this are less likely to happen??
I believe the future will tell. Que serai, serai. But we have a part to play. 60 dreamz to live.

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