The life in the residential hostels in the University of Benin is what every student must have a feel of. I have no say about
the female side of the hostels but being opportuned to stay a full session in Hall IV which unfortunately has been nicknamed the Headquarters of Beans was epic, by beans I mean those grains that comes in different color variety, takes forever to cook and gives a lasting impact to the environment after consumption, shout out to natural global warmers.
You might have to wonder why Beans is the most prepared food in the male hostels despite the long processes involved, if you have wondered, then welcome to the chain of wonderings because I am still in that chain.
Among the many reasons why people opt out of staying in the hostels is the state of the restrooms. The toilets which are always put together with the bathrooms are aged and poorly maintained. According to my former bunkmate; “Hall IV toilets dey make you loose motivation to pass your own wastes”
The toilets are always cleaned up but even with that, you still walk into them and you start seeing the poor flushing skills of students who were kind enough to flush, others do not even flush. In short, even the cleanest of toilets cannot be trusted to the extent of sitting down on it, hence boys have styles of positioning of which the most used is “Squat rest”. I tell you, nothing is as EPIC as when you drop a bomb in the white war zone and then you dodge the water that splashes due to....…. Ok, I really don’t want to go into details as some girls will be irritated with it. Perhaps, they usually don’t experience things of this kind as they have an un-matched innovations of using the buckets and nylons, otherwise known as shot-put. Shout out to Hall 1 girls.
Alright, so on this certain Saturday, having being opportune to eat Beans and bread the previous day, I felt my stomach rumble and my intestines contract and expand as they started pumping out air. I knew what was up, Saturdays is the worst of the days you could think of visiting the toilets and I couldn’t go to my favorite church - St. Albert which became my official non-emergent rest room , it was an emergency that had to be attended to, right in UNIT ONE, HALL IV. I decided to go and fetch water outside.
On my way out, I discovered a group of porters coming out of a supposed toilet which had been put on lock since I could remember because it was renovated, two of the porters had seized four of my hotplates in Four weeks but that is not important anyways, the news was that the toilet was not locked again. I thought it was just opened for further renovations, so I went on still to get my water.
On my way back, getting ready to “Squat rest” in one of the closest cistern to clean, I saw students gathered in front of the toilet, most of them had cameras and others were with their towels, nobody needed to tell me that it was opened. Just as I was about taking a peep, my roommate came out with his body wet and shouted “Their Father, I don disvirgin the bathroom”, thanks to people like him, a very quiet boy from the city of Jos (ME) had certainly turned a Lagos Agbero.
I noticed people were checking out the taps and mehn, the tiles in the bathroom were so new you could be tempted to put a tongue on it. People took selfies and others queued to use the bathrooms as people were shouting “Baba, you wan turn oyinbo?”… This was unlike Hall IV were people bath anywhere, anyhow and anytime. “Una papa nor do shower for house?”, a fellow mate shouted as he obviously tried getting access to the bathroom. You might want to ask why it was like this, but till today, I nor wan ask.
I was about considering using the new toilets when I heard someone inside one of them shout “Oboy, See as toilet dey flush like say na flood”, then it became dawned on me, for the first time in the history of my stay in Hall IV, I was actually going to sit on a toilet seat without dodging. Na so I leave my bucket of water outside and barreled through people that were taking selfies with the facility, I knocked Five of the toilets and people were already inside, with the smell of oil paint that was used on the door combined with the odour oozing out of this area, one couldn’t help but pity the cisterns. Anyways, the odour is nothing compared to other aged facilities. I knocked on the sixth one and nobody was inside, lucky as I was, it was still fresh and your beloved was the first to use the toilet. It was a peaceful packaged delivery I tell you.
I also took my bath that day and yes, the toilet became a tourist centre as boys from UNIT TWO, THREE and even Hall III came to take their bath or should I say shower?
Fast-forward to this day, I went to the same toilet and I almost wept at the state it was in, it was an eyesore and i couldn’t help but frown at the maintaining ability of students. All the shower pumps weren’t working again and the toilets were as brown as the teeth of the porter that seized my mattress because he saw me use two hotplates to cook, one for Beans and the other for ummm… Rice.
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