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Old 5th Oct 2016, 11:31
  #51 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
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I had one sort of like that.

We had this new-hire, a Norwegian who was a stand-out in the bar. Usually a rather grumpy sod, one pint cheered him right up. Two, and he was the life of the party. Three or more, he was falling-down drunk, not that he stopped at three.

One night I walked back around midnight to the hacienda from a visit to the Aero bar, since I was not on earlies the next morning. There on the porch next to our "night-watch" was this lissome young thing, young enough to be his grand-daughter. I nodded to this mismatched pair and was halfway through the door when a thought came to me, "Who is she, and what is going on here that Papa can afford a girl on what we pay him?"

I turned around to ask him who his little friend was, when she erupted into floods of tears. It seems that she was new to Lagos and new to the world's oldest profession, just arrived in the Center of Excrement from somewhere out in the Nigerian bush, so that she had been one of the numerous tarts who hung around outside the gates of the Airport Hotel. In the rush to get into our Crew Bus she had left her shoes behind, but once she got to our house her new "boyfriend" called her a "bloody whore" and left her standing there, shoeless and unloved on the veranda! Now, no shoes, no cash, no way to get back to the Airport Hotel to confess her abject failure, when it was curfew anyway ... she was stuck on our veranda for the night.

I agreed that this was indeed a very rude thing to do, leaving her standing like that, but I still had to point out that it was nothing to do with me, that I only lived there. I apologized for her misfortune at the hands of a fellow aviator and turned to go inside to go to sleep upstairs, since the girl seemed to calm down a bit after my apology.

No such luck, there came the Norwegian to shout at her a bit more about how she was just a "bloody whore" and how he was not paying her anything at all since no deal had been made when she jumped into the bus and, and, and .... Then he turned on his heel, slamming the door and leaving me to settle the poor girl down all over again! Five minutes of soft words seemed to do the trick, so that I then left the scene myself to go upstairs, again to try to get some sleep.

As it happened, the guilty party, our Norwegian (for it was he), lived at the back of the house, but I lived right over the veranda. As I was trying to zonk out there came this continuing chorus from below, Papa in bass and the girl in soprano. After about 15 minutes I went back downstairs to tell her that while I agreed that life was unfair I really needed to go to sleep, so that if she did not observe strict silence from then on I should be forced to summon the police. None of us wanted that to happen, did we? Perhaps the morn should bring a solution to her troubles, because who knows really?

I set my alarm for 0630, since I had the keys to the company car. At that time I went down the hall and knocked on the Norwegian's door, telling him that I was handing over the keys, that I would make my own way to the airport later that morning, okay? A hung-over grunt was the only reply.

Then I went back to bed to listen to what was going to happen next. Sure enough, around 0700 I heard the front door open, followed by hysterical complaints from the girl, with the Norwegian blustering a bit, calling her rude things, which only made her complain the louder. Soon afterwards, though, the front door slammed, steps were heard stomping upstairs, and then there came a knock on my door. Could I loan the Norwegian 50 naira? (From that you can tell how long ago this was, when 50 naira was about 20 bucks, I guess.)

"For you, anything," I said, and handed over the cash that I already had ready to hand.

After that I slept the sleep of the just and then walked to the airport around 0930 for my flight. It was a nice morning, all in all.
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