Kubatii - A very short story

The room was hot and stuffy. The concrete floor made the place look unpalatable and the bottles of water on the tables had condensed so that droplets of water ran down their sides and settled at the bottom, creating small pools.

                There were a lot of people in the small space and the noise of intertwined conversations and coughs and laughs made Tochi feel even more dizzy.

                He took a seat by the door and settled at a table with a family of four – father, mother and two little girls who had fallen asleep on their parents.

                He nodded at them and the man and woman gave him a tired smile. Beads of sweat dotted their foreheads and dabbed at their armpits.

                Tochi placed his bag on the rough floor and wiped his sweat with his dusty handkerchief. He looked at the watch on his wrist and decided he needed to drink something before he fainted. He darted his eyes around the room and eventually caught the eyes of one of the aid workers dressed in a white polo which had yellowed around the collar. He signaled one finger at her and she brought him a bottle of now lukewarm water.

                “Thank you,” he said, as he unscrewed the cap.

                She smiled a jovial smile as she walked away and he wondered what exactly there was to smile about.

                He gulped half of the water down before taking the bottle away from his lips. He then looked down at his watch again. Time went by so slowly these days.

                He looked up at the aid worker and she was at a table a few feet away handing bottles of water to other kubatii [refugees].

                That is what the war had made of them. Vagrants; wanderers whose worldly possessions now fit into a bag the size of his and sometimes even smaller.

                He needed to get on the train that would take him to Salo. Rather, he needed to fight himself onto the train that would take him south, where there was more sanity, more food, less sun and more rain.

                “I want to piss, Dave,” the mother of the two girls sat across from him was saying to her husband. But Dave was nodding off and didn’t seem interested in taking his other daughter off her.

                “Dave,” the woman nudged him and his eyes flipped open, looking red and disturbed like a mad dog.

                “Oh, Oluchi,” the man groaned and shifted in his chair, “nne, you just eased yourself ten minutes ago. Haba.”

                Oluchi handed the sleeping child to the man and stood up. “When all these people are giving us is water. How won’t I piss?”

                Dave was more awake now and he cradled the girl in his second arm.

                Tochi looked down at his watch.

                Only two minutes had passed.