The Collector's diary

Lex, Kajo the other friends and I met the following evening just like that. In the end it looked like we had met to compare notes.

Each and everyone narrated their experience of the previous night. Kajo seemed to be the only one who succeeded to have the fun we had fundamentally come out to have. Some persons had half empty fun, some half full fun, but Kajo had full fun.

We usually criticise Kajo for being so blunt. He calls everything by its name, its real name or its real raw name, including genital organs and the act of copulation which the rest of us would refer to with a lot of pussyfooting.

Kajo knows no euphemisms. Once, he told his girl who he wanted to shake-off to go home. She had told him that it was not possible to sleep with him that night.

When she was still sitting and pulling faces, hesitant to go home, Kajo howled: “Go home and sleep or you will be slept!!!”

As we were dancing in pairs the previous evening, Kajo had warned his own companion about what he wanted with her.

“Very sweeeeet, very n-i-c-e....” everybody on the dance floor was singing.

“You will go and show me your sweetness and niceness in bed this night,” kajo said he told the girl.

“But you will give me money noooooo dear,” he said the girl had said and he replied: Money is not the problem. It’s the fun we should have together.” He said she was so submissive and he enjoyed every moment with her.

In the morning, he reminisced the good time and gave her ‘mami bakala’ (FCFA 10,000) plus coins for taxi and promised to do same next time. She was happy and gave him her number.

It was the turn of those of us who had half fun to tell our own stories. I told my own story which you know.

Lex said after he got into his car and asked his own companion to hop in; she said she wanted to see her sister before going with him. He had to wait.

The girl went back into the nightclub, after about five minutes, she came out with another girl and said she wanted him to give her the money he was going to give her to leave it with the sister, before she could go with her.

“You think I am going to leave you like that? Don’t I look like a gentleman?” he asked.

“You know men are funny,” the other girl was saying, “they will always bring up stories to say they lost their purse or that someone stole their money - that kind of thing.”

Lex said he looked at his girl thinking that she would disapprove of that, given the promises he had made to her, but she instead nodded her head “Uh hmm,” a sound meaning that she was in accordance with her sister whatever she called her.

“When you will see the bad guys, you will not recognise them,” he said he told them and drove away.

We asked how he did with all the hopes he had demonstrated of having a swell time with the girl, from the way they danced and simulated sex.

He said from the moment the girl asked him to give her money first, he discovered that she had no affection and was thus a pro - cash and carry sex hawker, his tensed muscle shrank. He said he did not have fun but has learnt and would adopt the Kajo way.

Biro, was the most care-free guy among us. A very arrogant fellow, somehow in the Kajo way – only that he doesn’t talk much like Kajo.

He said, when he and his own companion got into his car, she asked him how much he was going to give her. He said he felt a recluse between his legs. The tension which he had there was slowly dying down.

“How much am I going to give you?” he said he mustered the courage and asked her.

“FCFA 30,000,” tumbled immediately from her mouth.

“What!” Biro said he screamed. “Do you mean something else or ...?”

“I said FCFA 30,000... or if you don’t have that, you can give me FCFA 25,000,” the girl clarified.

Biro is a Francophone who likes the English Language too much and insists to be spoken to only in the English Language. But sometimes when he is angry he would exclaim in French.

“Merrrrrde! C’est du terrain que je paie? Tu vas me donner ca ave titre foncier?” (Whaaaaat ! Is it a plot that I am paying for? Are you going to give me the land certificate?) He said he told her, hooped into his car and drove off.

The Collector