When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I recall my father had a friend, a huge man who always came to our house in the afternoons to shit in our toilet and never flushed it!
I kid you not!
The man had no shame. He would make loud groaning noises as he shat…I mean, this was a family house, you don’t live here, you’ve come to use their toilet, quit the noise and get the eff off!
I really don’t remember who he was, I was quite young, I just remember he was way taller and heftier than my dad. I had seen him several times at a mechanic workshop not far from our house, so I guess maybe he was my dad’s mechanic without the soiled oily mechanic clothing. Or maybe he wasn’t, I really don’t know, I was too young.
The only thing I recall about this man was that he always came to our house, like every other day, he would ask to be given a glass of water and proceed to dump huge shit in our toilet then leave it there!
Did my dad know about this? Of course he did, because every time he came to our house, even when my dad wasn’t in, we knew the drill, give him water and clear the loo for him. I don’t know if he signed a loo pact with my father because it was one thing to allow your friend to keep coming to take a dump in your toilet, it was another thing if the idiot leaves his dump every time! My dad would then ask one of us to go flush!
We hated it, who wouldn’t? And he always left quite a pile!
Now, though we lived in a three bedroom house then, we had just one toilet and bathroom, both separate. That was the way our house was. There was no fancy visitor’s toilet or ensuite rooms, no.
As a family, we all used one toilet and the next stall housed the bathroom. I will never know what stopped the man from flushing, we always had water and if his shit didn’t go at one flush, go into the bathroom, fetch water and flush out your shit man! He never did!
Anyway; this must have gone on for…maybe 6 months or even less. But we complained bitterly to my mum. She herself had seen the “evidence” and my dad too had had one or two unfortunate ‘accidents’ going into the toilet after his friend had left his mess!
We would spray with air freshener and make fun of the man.
I asked my siblings about the incident lately and my elder sister said she recalled the story, that is why I am telling it.
Ok, so we complained several times to our parents but they shushed us up and forced us to go flush his dump. I remember that once we saw the man coming, we would go hide, because the person any of our parents saw next would go flush the toilet, many times flushing required us going to fetch water from the bathroom, in addition to the normal flushing.
After a while, I think my dad himself might have spoken to the man because for sometime, he stopped coming to our house.
We all breathed a sigh of relief and began to tell ourselves we should have found ways to punish him for the mess he left behind all the time.
We spoke about not letting him in whenever we sighted him approaching, we suggested that perhaps even if he came into the house before sighting him, one of us would quickly run into the toilet and lock himself/herself in and complain of diarrhea.
We even suggested owe would lock him in the toilet to smell his own shit and claim someone must have locked it by mistake. Anyway, since he stopped coming, we were only just talking.
It was holiday period. Our parents had gone to work and we were home either playing outside or watching cartoons when this man returned to taking a dump at ours!
So, we decided to put our plans to action; I must say I wasn’t the master planner. It was my older brother who was doing his A ‘levels at that time but was also on holidays with us.
He was 17 years old or there about because he is 10 years older than me. Anyway, so after this our father’s friend began to come again, once, twice, we were caught unawares, the third time we had a plan!
I was the lookout, playing outside with other neighbours kids when I sighted him from afar…I rushed to the house to alert the rest of my siblings.
The man came, we greeted him, he didn’t even answer, he knew our parents were not home, he just asked for water, and after that, by the way, my sister spat into that water, as if that was meant to kill him, anyway, after drinking the water, he got up and headed straight to the toilet…it was locked!
He turned around, my sister and I pretended to be reading. He knocked on the door of the toilet, my elder brother came out of his room and said the toilet was out of bounds that the key had gone bad and my father asked us to use our neighbour’s toilet if we needed to.
The man was like, ‘huh?’
He said we shouldn’t worry that he could fix it for us, at this time, he was pulling at the toilet door handle and jerking it trying to force it open. My brother asked him to stop, told him the toilet was out of bounds!
Believe it or not, the man was sweating, he was panting, telling my brother not to worry, he was sure our dad wouldn’t mind if he forced it open…that was when my brother lost his cool. He shouted at the man to leave our house!
The man paused like ‘are you mad?’ Brother stood his ground o, told him to leave our house. The next thing, the man began to beg, as in, huge, sweaty, hefty looking man
‘Please, I took agunmu, I don’t know why I did but I really, really need to use the toilet!’
The man was pleading, he didn’t let go of the toilet handle, he was still jerking it forcefully to open it and rush in.
You know agunmu is local herbs people mix with pap or water and consume; I think he took the bad one that day…
My brother stood his ground, told the man to leave our house!
Finally, when he saw all five of us, looking at him, like, ‘won’t you leave before we start screaming?’
He left in shame.
Looking back now, he must have shat himself because before he left, he let out one serious fart! The smell hung around to torment us for long even after he left.
That was the last time we saw him come to our house; we never reported to our parents and I think the man finally got the gist, he knew we staged it. He also never reported to our dad because if he had, my dad would have mentioned it. That was the end of him coming to dump his lump for us to flush!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)