IT wisnae me SAS!
It was a quiet night in at 3 Bomadi and since I was on nights I declined the invitation to a young Pork & Cheeser Engineers gaff where the Warri equivalent of "The Who" were planning a jam session to while away the dark African night. My cellmate - a short wiry moustachioed former Royal Marine and accomplished bongo player begged me to lend him the Night Standby Nissan pickup since riding a bicycle through "snake alley" past the Shell swimming pool and Bush Hut clutching one's bongo was liable to end in tears.
Off went the mighty Nissan and I settled in for a scintillating evening flipping through the 3 available TV channels.
Midnight was fast approaching with no sign of the vehicle returning so after checking my bike tyres in case there was a call out I was just about to turn in when with a screech of tyres the pickup arrived sideways in the driveway disgorging a well oiled bongo player who fell straight through the mosquito netting on the veranda leaving a well defined short wiry shape like a Looney Tunes cartoon character.
To my surprise the pickup rapidly reversed out of the drive and tore off into the African Night - the driver's identity was not clear but appeared to be a bearded
Oyibo.
Interrogation of the bongo player proved difficult since he appeared to be speaking an ancient form of Norwegian and early next morning as I set off for work at 06:00 although he had regained a basic grasp of English seemed now to have been inflicted with early onset of Alzheimer's !
On arrival at the hangar it was obvious the pickup had not been miraculously returned so I sent the drivers off to scour the camp for the missing Vehicle - Joe the driver discovered it in the monsoon drain by the old Shellie teachers accommodation and it was duly recovered.
The suspected perpetrator (an upstanding character from WT with the initials DT) who had been temporarily detained by security at the main gate on his way back on foot to Idugbo at 02:00 denied any involvement.
WE WILL NEVER KNOW.
Trog