The Initiation: What it means to cut your hand in Nigeria (Pt.2)


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I stepped out of my car and went back into the bank premises, watching the security guard suspiciously as I walked past him and into the trap door (Note to self – bring garlic to work tomorrow). I don’t recall … Continue reading

The Initiation: What it means to cut your hand in Nigeria (Pt.1)


This gallery contains 1 photo.

Dear readers, As I think back to the time when I returned from London after ten years of work experience to settle in Nigeria, I marvel at how much of the local lingo I’ve learnt e.g. To ‘trafficate’ is to … Continue reading

Entry #52 – The bullet in my bathroom

Just when I thought life was becoming a little bit boring and predictable I experienced a sudden rush of adrenaline 2 nights ago around 8pm when I heard a loud bang in my bathroom. There wasn’t any electricity at the time and I was alone in my flat. I walked past the bathroom (which serves as a spare for guests and is separate from my ensuite) and for a second I thought it was a gun-shot. The next I thought was that my sink had fallen apart or the shower curtain rail came crashing down…but surely it must have been a fire cracker or something. With the light from my Nokia E75 I sneaked into the bathroom and inspected the surroundings and then I tripped on something metallic. I picked it up and at first I thought it might have been part of a heavy duty nail but on closer inspection I realized it was a bullet.

The first thing I would have done at this point is call in the CSI (Las Vegas) team to do their nifty forensic work. I would let Grisham bamboozle me with words like ‘Trajectory’ and ‘Ricochet’ and the watch them as they scamper around looking for the ‘Entry point’. That night I barely slept because I felt this wasn’t random. I’ve lived in this flat for close to 6months and nothing like this has ever happened. I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Was someone trying to kill me?’

I had a mental list of people I suspected I had ticked-off and probably wanted my blood as payback:

  1. My recent ex-girlfriend – Looks innocent but is capable of something like this now that I think about it.
  2. My neighbour – I told her off for shouting like she was the only one living in the compound going ‘MAAARIAAA!!!’ repeatedly
  3. The Security Guard’s mate – They wine and dine with my security guard outside the compound and I don’t like the dodgy ‘I kill you!’ looks I get from them sometimes.

I found later the following day that there was a hole in my bathroom ceiling. Part of  the shape was an exact replica of the bullet lying horizontally. I expected the shape to be round. There were no holes in my window or walls so I got Googling…asking the seemingly dumb question, ‘Can a bullet go off by itself?’

I was pleasantly suprised indeed when I came across the following answer from Yahoo! Answers: “No. Something has to make contact with the primer or cause the primer to get really hot. Dropping or hitting a round, or throwing it into a fire can cause it ignite.”  So it was actually possible for the bullet to have just gone off without being in a gun chamber. By the looks of the photo above, the bullet must have been lying flat when it suddenly penetrated the ceiling unto my bathroom floor. So how could this be explained further?

If you observe in the diagram opposite, my bullet is very similar and there is actually a primer at the back of the bullet (labelled ‘5’). What could have triggered it? Heat? If so why didn’t it go off in the peak of the hot afternoon? Why in the evening after dark? Could a mouse or rat have been tampering with the primer before the bullet went off? I didn’t see any rodent body parts or blood around the crime scene. This bullet just descended by its own free will.

Thankfully I wasn’t doing a ‘Number 2’ when this near-homicide took place. Just imagine, being found dead with a bullet in your head, pants halfway down, toilet unflushed and no trace of a killer. That’s what I call a freak accident – Perhaps this can be used for the next Final Destination movie installment ( …I think they should be working on part 5 now.) But this begs the question, what kind of tenants where living in this apartment before I moved in? Drug barons?, Assassins? Ex-military mercenaries? Are there anymore bullets lying up there in my ceiling. Even worse, is there gun cache up there? a dead body? If I start to smell something funny (and I know it’s not me) then I’m going up there to investigate…


N.B – That black spot in the celing is the bullet hole…crikey!