I remember them almost like they happened yesterday.

I was at school. My aunt hadn’t been getting any work for some months and when she did, it was from clients who kept owing. When a parent from our Port Harcourt group came to visit, I wrote a letter to everyone at home. It was fairly long, and most of what it said has been forgotten, but I still remember the message I sent to Aunty A:

You’re going to get a lot of work. You will work all the time. The offers will only stop when you get tired of the work.

Miraculously, the job offers started to pour in. People came from all places to get work done. She had a pile at home, and another in the office. She worked and worked, and the money couldn’t even be spent because she had no time to do so — until, as I said, she got tired of the excessive work. I don’t know what prompted me to make that statement and I don’t know why it worked but from then on my aunt looked at me with new eyes.

She’s unmarried and unhappy about it. A while ago, she approached me.

“Do you remember the time you said I was going to get plenty of work?” she asked.

“Yes. I was told you worked from morning till night everyday,” I said.

“Can you…” she hesitated. “Can you do the same thing again? Can you make me have a husband by the end of this year?”

I turned to her. I was tempted to say nonchalantly, “I’ll see what I can do about it” but inside, I knew I had no powers. I merely stared at her without saying a word until she walked away. She never asked again…

We were preparing for the inter-house games at Fedacad. Every night the seniors gathered us on the Kantoma courtyard to teach us the ‘malewa’ songs we would chant on the field to the beat of tins to cheer our players on. Those who could play soccer, basketball, badminton or table tennis practiced every evening. Competition was in the air.

I didn’t want to sit there with my rusty Milo tin joining the others in creating a cacophony of sounds. I snuck off with some friends to class — and got caught. While trudging back resignedly to the soccer field, someone asked,”Who do you think will win the match?”

“Purple House,” someone in Red House said.

“Gree-Yell,” someone else in Green House said.

I don’t play soccer — don’t even like to watch it or hear others talk about it — but I piped up suddenly, “None of them is winning the match. It’s going to be a draw.”

The others scoffed. “See Azuka talking. What do you know about soccer?”

“I know what I’m saying,” I insisted. “It’s going to be a draw — 2-2.”

I forgot about everything I’d said and managed to sneak off before the match even started. I was so out of touch with sports that I didn’t find out the outcome until a few days later when Blue House played against Green. I–, one of the guys who asked me the score the last time came looking for Azuka the ‘predictionist’ — if I remember his words correctly.

“What’s the score going to be this time?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“Just make a guess,” he insisted.

“Well, since you want to know,” I said. “Since you want to know, it’ll be 3-1 in favor of Green house.”

As luck would have it, that’s exactly what happened. I’ve been wary about making predictions since then.

Got any interesting stories to share?