Jesus of Sports Hall

The tragic comedies of living in Sports Hall still haunt me. The Male Sports Hall was, as the name conjured, originally home to the Defense Academy’s sportsmen allegedly lodged at the very gates of the Sports complex. It had however degenerated into a den of conservatively speaking, the worst blackguards anywhere in the city of Kaduna: who in the pre-politically correct era gave free interpretations to all laws pertaining to survival. It was in this sad state of affairs that my friend Zang thrived, rather unhealthily. Zang was what is called in literature, a proper caution, one who looked narrowly upon any laws not created by himself and sometimes depending on convenience, upon his own. I still wonder how Zang, the most unsporting chap, ever came to roost in Sports Hall but that is another story.
Zang, was known by the colorful appellation ‘Jesus of Sports Hall’ and as he was neither skilled in the intricacies of religion and did not wear a halo, I made up my mind to find out the origin of this picturesque sobriquet. In Matthews gospel verses fifteen through to twenty-one of the fourteenth chapter, the Lord Jesus fed 5000 men, women, and children with five loaves and two fishes, a miracle that Zang was destined to re-enact. As customary to the purse of a cadet without the excesses of capitalist parents, he was down to his last fifty kobo note. Fifty kobo was in those days before the oil doom approximately equal to fifty cents and all hopes of replenishment in a week were to say the obvious, altogether improbable. Zang called upon his five room mates who were in the same if not worse state of financial solvency, he bade them accompany him to the buttery the last bastion of heavenly, stomach stirring scents. He had a plan.
‘What can you buy from a measly fifty kobo’? One of them, an unbeliever asked.
‘Follow me o you of little faith’ Zang replied mysteriously, preaching a gospel of a full stomach to his mixed multitude, who risked no original remarks.
Now, of the nine or so butteries on campus, the Sports Hall buttery was a phenomenon unequalled. It was a kiosk with a high counter, behind which a vendor, usually a girl from the suburbs sat. Before her on the counter were loaves of bread, fried fish, moi-moi (bean-cake) and other delicacies ,while behind her on shelves were the more expensive items, tin milk, cube sugar, canned sardines and the like. Apparently, Zang had kept watch over the buttery and had noticed a change in the administration of the buttery.

The new salesgirl clearly unschooled in the intricate rules governing conventional conduct in Sports Hall and a naïve and trusting soul, was confronted with Zang’s face with the gravity of manner befitting a prospective customer.
‘How much is that?’ he required of her, pointing to a shelf.
Following his finger, in trying to identify what he wanted, she shifted her look and her attention from the high counter. With the speed of a cheetah and a deliberate dissociation from reality, he picked two loaves off the counter and dropped them to his feet where his aide-de-camps waited.
‘The big bottle of orange juice?’ she asked.
‘No, the packet of cabin biscuits.’ Three wraps of moi-moi were translocated.
‘Four naira’
‘Too expensive I can get it for three in Angola buttery.’ Two pieces of fried fish disappeared.
‘Pay three fifty.’ Her back still to him.
‘How about macaroni?’
‘Two fifty’
‘Why are your items so dear? Is your uncle planning on buying a new car?’
All the while in craning her neck to call out the prices she did not notice all the subversive activity going on behind her back. Finally disgusted at him for carrying on and on, she turned abruptly to find Zang in the process of lifting a packet of cigarettes. Smoothly he removed two; paid for them and carried on to join his long departed accomplices. With a fifty kobo note, he did feed six adults thus his name and regrettably his reputation. So, imagine my consternation when a few weeks ago, twenty years after I last saw Zang, he was named among our new supposedly incorruptible ministers. I hear they still call him Jesus.