HERO

I’ve always heard tales of people being swept away by fiery tides on our Nigerian beaches but I never dreamed that I’d ever experience or witness it firsthand- and I’ve had my fair portion of nightmares. This nightmare material crawled out of someone’s dark dreams and landed squarely before me on Friday, November 27th 2009 at The Kuramo Beach.
The day at the beach started out pretty regular with the gathering of everything edible in my party’s path. On arriving at the waterfront, we picked the cleanest patch of sand to sit and devour our booty while we debated whether or not to venture into the water. Hardly had we sat to our first conquest of suya when we noticed commotion nearby. Following the pointing fingers and stares of the crowd, we discovered the cause of the commotion; someone was being swept away by the beach water. My first thought was that it was probably one of those show-offs at the beach, who had come to make me feel bad about not learning to swim earlier in life. This misconception was quickly corrected by a few seconds of watching whoever it was trash desperately in the water. As the horror of the situation dawned on me, I saw a guy dash past with a floater and dive into the water after the guy in the distance.
With our jaws slack, we watched as Mr. Life Guard (I think) struggled to reach Mr. Swept-Away and heaved a unified sigh when he eventually managed to throw the floater around him and steered him safely to shore. I hate to exaggerate situations so I told myself it must have been a minor accident. That was until the rescuer dragged an unconscious young man of about 20 years unto the sand.

I was horrified. I just cannot lie about that. I kept pondering how the slightest adjustments in Fate could have placed me in the shoes of the unconscious young man; after all my best underwater technique is a short glide which wouldn’t save me if I were drowning in a bathtub. I tried to imagine the terror that must have gripped the guy and just couldn’t. Of all ways to die, I guess drowning couldn’t have been anywhere on his list. Scratch that… he couldn’t have planned to die at all! And then for this to happen out of the blues! I wondered what his thoughts were as he struggled in the water in vain… “Lord, help me!” “Lord, forgive my many many sins!” or “Oh, my poor Mother!”.
Word got around much later that the young man lived with his mother and had come to the beach without her knowledge and just that caused a fresh wave of goose pimples to break out on my skin as I imagined the agony she would have suffered as she wondered what had happened to her son, never mind a man on the scene who thought the mother was somehow to blame for the boy’s near fatal accident.
As soon as Swept-Away gained consciousness and was deemed to be in no obvious danger, the rescuers and gapers alike asked “How did it happen?” The truth was far from all the stories I had told myself. It was an inglorious tale. A lady (who was nowhere to be found afterwards) has lost her slipper to the waters and he tried to retrieve it. Unbelievable but 100% true! This young man had almost lost his life playing Hero! A hero emerged at the end of the day, but it wasn’t him. The Hero was the man who had swam after him and dragged him back to shore despite his disability. Oh I forget to mention that. The man who rescued Swept-Away was missing at least two fingers on his left hand? Yes he was!
When Swept-Away came to, his first words were… wait for it…wait for it… “Where is the slipper?” I thought he deserved a sound slap.