The Sting of Terror

On the 1st of April 2004, I was awakened from sleep by my aunty who played an April fool’s day joke on me, I fell for it and we had quite a good laugh.

Later on at night, precisely 9:50 pm, I was reclining in the comfortable arms of the living room couch when I saw my aunt walk past the living room door with both her hands placed on her chest and the look on her face was like that of someone who had just seen a ghost. I paid little heed to her and turned my attention back to the telly.

From the corner of my eye I then saw someone walk into the living room and I turned to see who it was. To my surprise it was a total stranger who was walking purposefully toward me, he had one hand placed behind him and he had the other hand close to his mouth with the index finger held across his lips, in that way motioning for me to be quiet! I was suddenly furious at this young man who had just walked into my house at this late hour and was demanding me to be quiet, the look of anger must have been evident on my face, for he then brought out the other hand from behind his back and it was only then I realised that he had a gun!

My voice died down within me and my senses went into neutral, prior to my sighting the gun, I had engaged my vocal chords in uttering some words of anger. But on sighting the gun, the only word that escaped my lips was, Jesus!

My attention then shifted to a family friend who was putting up with us, she was sitting across the room from me and was on the phone with her fiancé, I tried to catch her eye but she was lost in love world as she cuddled the receiver in her hand while talking with her fiancé.

This intruder (an armed robber obviously), walked up to her, gently took the receiver from her hand and yanked it off the phone box, it was at this point I assume, that she made a return to earth. While I was watching that scene, another assailant had walked in and was suddenly standing next to me. He held a shot gun to my face and told me in my native language (Yoruba), “See (thrusting the gun in my face), I will KILL you!!!.

From the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, I had no cause to doubt this threat. But amazingly, my heart did not skip a beat nor did it beat double, I was simply calm, then he told me to lie down on the floor, which I did as manly as I could, without appearing cowardly, while also being careful not to provoke him into thinking that I was trying to resist “robbery”.

He searched my pockets, while yet another assailant came into the living room with the house helps who had been in the other living room ( I later learnt that the robbers were about eight in number, some were keeping guard downstairs ), we were all told to lie down facing the floor. Subsequently we were relocated from the living room to the master bedroom where we joined my aunty and my cousins. We were made to lie down facing the floor. While my aunty was being harassed to bring out all the money she had and other valuables

I had never spared a thought to think that I would one day find myself lying face down on the floor with the house maid lying down right next to me, so it happened on this day. In fact we were practically glued together, breathing in the same air. She was in great panic, and she kept asking me, “what are we going to do now, what are……..” to which I simply replied in a low but firm voice, “KEEP QUIET!”, and amazingly she kept quite after that.

They searched the house and took jewelries, mobile phones and a large amount of money. After which we were all herded into the food store. And this was a paradox of life for me, nine of us living in a large six bedroom apartment with two large living rooms, now being packed like sardine into a 4 x 4 foot sized store room! And we all fitted in quite well too except that there was no space left to take in even a rat.

I had to climb in through the ceiling and came out in the kitchen to set us all free. So did the ordeal end, of which we were all grateful that no one was hurt.

However all this was little compared to the actual sting of terror I experienced 4 days later when the luxury bus I was traveling in, ran into an ambush laid by armed robbers and we were greeted with a hail of bullets! Well, that story will come up another day, if you guys would like to hear it. Bye….