MY FIRST LOVE 2

Sarabi

Sarabi was beautiful by all standards. I don’t know if it was the love I had for her that heightened her beauty to me or it was the beauty that made me perceive her like that. When I saw her the first day, she looked at me and I looked away, she was sublime. She used to be naïve those days and when she had closed from school, she used to tell me men stopped in their tracks to look at her. I remember one afternoon, immediately she came home from school she came and told me that a man in a private car stopped beside her and told her that she was beautiful. He told her to be patient so that she would have a good person to take care of her. These praises got to her and changed her radically as we shall see as the story unfolds.

She was the typical African woman. She was a bit heavy; she had the massive African lady buttock that was very shapely and it was so nice to behold (Ghanaian men love this kind of buttocks). She had firm breasts and when she run, the breasts shook slightly and stubbornly by reason of their firmness. The sight of her naked body always left me speechless. She was fair, not like a half cast anyway, but her colour was beautiful because her skin was spotless.

She drilled her nose and put on one cooper earring that made her look like an Alhajia even though she was a Christian. She used to cut her hair because that was the requirement of the school she attended. Even so, Sarabi was devastatingly attractive with well cut short hair.

She liked to paint her nails black, a colour I liked so much. She knew what my heart liked and Sarabi used it very well, to enslave me. Her voice was thin and it was music to my ears. When she calls I would shiver to my spine and the world froze in front of me at this moment I had to stop whatever I was doing and attend to her with immediate effect. I loved this beauty of nature. When I saw her coming while am eating, I lost appetite. Not the kind of appetite one loses when one is in sorrow, but this one was because I felt a knot in my throat and I could not swallow. She was a lady that I adored and this adoration was going to be my punishment and bring me pain I never knew could exist in our world.

I used to give her raps you know? Sometimes I would write her short and powerful lines on her birth day. I would write these words;

You are my fantasy

You are my dream come true

The only thing I have ever wished for in life

The only girl I want to share the rest of my life with

If I should die and come back again I would still choose you Sarabi

I have no regrets falling in love with you

Baby, don’t change I want you just stay as you are with all your beauty and mistakes and everything.

Sarabi’s beauty became a snare to me, I was trapped by it. Once when I saw her emerge from an alhaji’s Barracuda Benz I felt my throat tightened around my neck and my tongue become bitter and I could not breathe properly. I would wait at the back of their wall till she come to see me. In times of my vulnerabilities like this, I would give her my favorite and archaic raps.

Collins: Sarabi

Sarabi: Yes

Collins: Why do you scare me so much?

Sarabi: what have I done?

Collins: stop pretending as if you don’t know what am talking about

Sarabi: Am sorry but the man just gave me a lift

Collins: But I don’t like to see you taking lifts from strange people

Sarabi: I know, am sorry

Collins: Look, dear, you know you are the sugar in my koko and the only wele on my waakye please don’t do this to me again. Please don’t pour sand into my gari.

Sarabi: Ei Collins!! you and your raps, hahaha kekekeke (she laughed like a man, the only thing I didn’t like about her)

Collins: No its true baby. Honestly you are the last apataa on my fufu

(at this time she would burst forth with laughter and passersby would be looking at us).

Sarabi: Darling, am sorry I promise not to hurt your tender heart again.

(Sarabi would say this still laughing with tears in her eyes)

By this time, my world would return to normalcy again and I would go home whistling to myself and be in a cheerful mood for the rest of the day.

This beauty was what destroyed the friendship we could have built. As a young man, I could not wait to touch her with the least opportunity. I think she was very good at it and I could not have enough of her. For instance, there were days she would visit me when no one was around and did things to me that turned me on like an electric switch. She could visit with just trousers and nothing under her with her African beads showing, her massive buttons shown like two fufu put together with only a thin line in between and the beauty of her skin shown like the sun in all its glory so that I wanted to shield my eyes from the rays. At this time, I felt like my feet were been bitten by a thousand ants and my chest had the sense of hot water been poured on it and to top it all, my cock begun to hurt. So we would not chat at all. Business all the way, the luckiest man, I envied myself.

I had no time to chat her up and as we grew together this became a problem. No communication no link and I could not get to her when there was trouble. We could sit down several minutes without saying anything to each other. She turned the friendship to her friends and they gave her counsel that did not favor me. Actually they said I don’t quality, I was not her class.

My gifts

Love they say is blind and young men in love are often foolish. I was foolish. I loved her more than my life and as far as I was concerned I thought she was the best thing that did happen to me at that time.

I had an uncle who resided in the United States of America. He used to send me money and cloths and so on. One day my uncle sent us a message and some items. In those days, mobile phones had not existed for me; at least I didn’t know they were in the system. Before we could talk to my uncle, we went to the city at a specific date and talked to my uncle in the US from a call center. But the favorite medium my uncle used was cassette recordings. He would speak as if we were there and record it and send it to us by post mail. I remember when we got the cassette from the post office, my mother and us would gather in a circle with the cassette player in the middle while we listened attentively to the tape.

My uncle was a good conversationalist because he talked as if we were around him and he addressed us individually. One could feel his love radiate towards him or her when one listened to his recordings. He would then show us what each of the items he had sent belonged to. Everybody got something nice. My uncle sent me my first pink walkman. Those days it was walkman and not CD players that one would find in Ghana. Even it was very rare to see a person use a walkman.

I used to get money this way and anytime I got some money I channeled it to Sarabi. I even stole some of my sister’s latest American dresses and shoes for her. My sister receives the clothes but never wore them. She would rather admire the dresses in her big bags, and so, I also made sure I stole them for my lover and amazingly my sister could not know realize Sarabi was wearing her dresses, she had a lot. Sarabi too did not know I stole the dresses for her.

I used to save my money with Sarabi but I never got a pesewa. When it was time for me to collect my money she would say the money is gone. Sometimes she spent the money with her mom. I didn’t care, in contrast I was happy. When I went to visit my uncle in the US and every pesewa I got on that holiday I sent to Sarabi and she spent the money as quick as they arrived.

She was a great spender as most Ghanaian ladies are. Actually her hobby was spending. I had to provide the money for her to spend or I got spent. In spite of all these gifts she always complained that she was broke. In retrospect, I got nothing in return instead she took me to the university of hard knocks.

The golf between us

Children or young adults are advised by parents not to get involve in love affairs. The reason is that they don’t know what they want. Once they grow up they realize this is not the kind of person they want to spend my life with. People grow to become who they really are. Not because their partners are bad but their behavior, likes and dislikes or even looks (sometimes even height) is not to their taste. But by this time they have to stick together because they’ve gone too far with each other. This I think is the root cause for adultery.

When you are young, you don’t know what you want. A young person may fall for a caterpillar today but the caterpillar would grow to become a butterfly tomorrow. Not everybody like butterflies. For instance, I know of friends who don’t like obaa -kokor; they say the competition is too much!

Although I was older than Sarabi by 5yrs it made no difference in our relationship. I noticed a gulf between us. She grew to look older than me and more beautiful. I grew taller and lanky and my friends called me taller. Actually it looked like a mismatch.

I was an introvert while she was an extrovert. My major temperament was melancholy while she was a thick skinned choleric. We could not relate match. While she attended all the parties I was at home reading story books. I wanted to go out with her but I could not make myself to. I could not also discuss the stories I read, she would rather watch Nigerian movies rather than listen to me tell stories read from a novel.

She liked parties and you would always find her sitting with three or four friends. I liked to stay in my room alone. So the devil invaded this crack in our relationship. All manner of friends came in and turned my lover’s heart against me. I would tell this side of the story in part three of this book.

She became better in height and looks and she grew mentally mature than me. This is why I think a man should not marry his age. She had the courage to go to places I could not muster the courage to. The parties she attended and the big guys she related to all lead to build an inferiority complex in me. She practically lost respect for me.

One day, she told me am not her class. I wept the whole day and she wrecked three whole years of my life. Adults say it is not good for a person to marry their first love and I think it is true. Because by this time, I had witnessed the monster of a beauty she had turned become and I was always on my knees begging her not to live me. I was kissing her dirty feet by this time. Whatever she did to me, the pain she caused, the tears and sorrow and broken hearts all vanishes when she appears and returned as fast as she left. She became my nightmare. I had a lady friend I used to lament to and the lady would try to console me to no avail. I kept kissing Sarabi’s dirty fit till she lost every ounce of respect she had for me.

I learnt an invaluable lesson. If I would ever trust ladies and marry in the future, I would never marry my first love. With my first love, my emotions were in chaos and out of complete balance. But another lady would not have all my love, for that I could be myself and reject her if I wanted to and this kind of behavior would earn me the respect I deserve as a man. I can have to courage to enforce my rules on my second love and succeed and I believe that kind of emotional control would make our relationship last longer than most relationships.

Ladies have no respect for men who kiss their feet but for men who are hard on them (‘mbaa p3 nkwasia fuo’); yes a man must start the relationship from their feet with proposal but that should be the first and last. Once you stand as a man never go on your knees else you would lose your throne. If you would go on your knees then it is when you have committed a grave error against her, but even that should be very brief, perhaps in nano-seconds.

By this time I had started hearing rumors that made me develop heart burns. This side of the story would be told in the Part three of this piece. I cried though it was hard for me to cry as a man. Rumors that made me drink alcohol like a fish for I did not know how to alleviate myself of this suffering and mental torture. The alcoholic drink would numb my hurt and bruised emotions so that I could continue living. Nothing could console me. My only wish was that I could put my hand in my chest and remove what I had for her inside me. She had me, I was her slave and she was a bully. She used to humiliate me too. She used to hold my cock from my trouser in front of her friends and asked if I wanted to use it on her. I relocated to another city in no time.