IDOWU KOMOLAFE – THE RACE AGAINST TIME

Our first encounter was in utter darkness. I’d gone to my local beauty salon to meet my hair stylist, Show Boy, for my usual once-a-week hair trim. In the analog age, I would have called him a barber, but today it’s the Pinterest Age, where everything has to be sexy, glamorous, and fun. And there she sat. Ebony black, composed, slim as a broomstick, I immediately conjured in my mind she could be Nigeria’s trump card for a global beauty pageant glory. I didn’t see her full curvature though as NEPA, oh Never Expect Power Always, now PHCN, yes, Please Hold Candle Now, had, at the exact moment I turned my car sharply into the narrow gate leading to the compound where  Show Boy has his salon, decided to strike.

As I alighted from my car, a pang of thirst struck me with a devastating force as if I’d not had any fluid for a day or two. Whether  my sudden burst of thirst was the gods conspiracy that I had a chat with the slim, nearly emaciated figure sitting on a ramshackled bench by the darkest part of the nondescript   building, or it was a mere happenstance, I would not know.  But to her I went, and straight to the point too: please can you help me buy low sugar malt drink across the road, I pleaded as if my life depended on her saying yes. With lightning speed, agility and grace that was nothing but exemplary, and before I even had enough time to tell her thank you, she had collected the N200 note I’d thrust to her and was back within seconds with an ice-cold drink.

That’s how my romance with Idowu Komolafe began. As I looked closely at her that eventful night as she handed me the bottle of drink, asking, ‘’can I open the drink for you sir’’, I saw a starving young woman crying for attention. My thirst gone, and Show Boy’s smoke spewing Taiwan-made gen announcing the salon’s readiness for me, I thanked Idowu for her generosity and bade her farewell. But before I’d taken a step, Idowu threw me a surprise as she said, ‘’but sir this is your change, the drink is ‘one-twenty’ so you have eighty Naira.’’ I didn’t expect that. I thought she would appropriate the change, after all, in all honesty, I knew that’s how things are in Lagos. First, I didn’t know the retail price of the drink, she would have guessed. Second, as typical, she would have concluded, I didn’t need the paltry change. What, with my big car? Third, she could have justified that she needed the N80 more than I the true owner, thus using all manners of subterfuge to prevent me from having it.

Idowu was honest. I didn’t know her name and her true situation until much later. In further encounters, as I continued to patronize Show Boy,  I was to learn Idowu usually went for days without food. She had a heart condition that needed corrective surgery. She had lost her dad years earlier. Her relatives, including her mum, I learnt were somewhere in Ibadan. She was staying with her grandmother who was in her eighties and who was in need of care herself. That’s how I became Idowu’s benefactor.

One day I asked Idowu what her true dream was. She didn’t miss the mark. She said if only she was well, she would ‘’love to settle down, have a family of her own, and be happy’’.  I shed a tear or two because Idowu is miles away from her dream. Idowu has been receiving treatment from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital for some 10 years now. Since she has to pay for every single tablet she gets from the hospital’s pharmacy, most often she goes without medication. Why? You guess, she has no money. Idowu’s condition took a precipitous turn downwards two weeks ago. She had called me at 3am on 10 September to say in the feeblest of voices ‘’daddy my tmmy and legs are swollen, I’m dying’’. Idowu now calls me daddy. She and her grandmother were ejected from their last abode for inability to meet up with rent payments, and Idowu had suddenly felt she was worrying me too much, so she had taken to hiding her deteriorating health condition from me despite all entreaties to always alert me anytime her condition took a turn for the worse.

Idowu was rushed to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja on that fateful day and has since been on admission. Her stay there is not free. She currently owes LASUTH an undisclosed sum.  Idowu needs open-heart surgery. According to estimates from a hospital in Chennai, India, the operation will cost between $13,000 and $16,000, excluding personal maintenance, return flight tickets for two, and rehabilitation on return. All told the cost may likely be in the region of N3.6million, (about $22,300 depending on the exchange rate used).  Meanwhile we have also reached out to University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, to find out if the operation can be carried out locally.

We can save Idowu and make her dream of true happiness come true. Why don’t you join the race to save Idowu now by doing the little that you can? I advise you go to www.saveidowukomolafe.org, where you’ll meet Idowu face-to-face. A register of Friends of Idowu Komolafe has been set up at Paradise Bookshops, 11 Alhaja Kofoworola Crescent, Off Awolowo Way (By Balogun Bus Stop), Ikeja, from where you can send a get-well-quick card, and/or flowers to Idowu. Better still you can visit Idowu at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Medical Ward BT Female. Calls for additional details can be made to the following telephone numbers +234-803.307.5133, +234-802.875.3412, +234-815.262.7510.  For Idowu Komolafe, the race against time is on. Who will win? Is it death or life? Let’s make life the winner. We really can make the huge difference, for as Zig Ziglar says, ‘’genuine happiness comes when you do things for others’’, and if I may add, especially, for someone like Idowu, who cannot help herself.