The Devil's Banquet

 "He who must dine with the devil must have a long spoon" is not an uncommon saying. But why dine with the devil in the first place, long spoon or not? I came across the story you are about to read five years ago and it gives credence to what my grandma used  to  say "Don't taste the food you will not eat." Read, learn and share!

 "Hi, I am Tonia (not real name), a girl who has fears, beliefs, reservations and just your regular typical Nigerian girl. This past few weeks has been one hell of a game for me. I have really been unsettled and I thought I share this story with you.

 When Cynthia (the lady killed in the hotel room in Festac, Lagos) surfaced on the internet and various news media, I was scared and it brought back a whole lot of memories to me and also served as and eye opener. Many people castigated and criticised Cynthia (may her
gentle soul rest in peace), but my point is, it could have been anybody, anybody at all.

 We have met people through various social media. Some have ended up well, some have not but with painful memories. To cut the long story short, let me kindly share with you my encounter with social media especially the very popular Blackberry Messenger (BBM).

 I am a graduate and currently serving in Kaduna. I could have runced it, but I needed somewhere to clear my head and forget about my ugly encounter. Here is my story.

 I happened to have a married man as a contact on my BBM. He had been asking me out for over six months and I refused to date him. As time went on, he invited me clubbing with him when his wife was outside the country, and I went with him all night. We spent most of the night at Swe bar, Lagos.

 I also met his clique of friends, married as well with their various mistresses. We had 'mad' fun. After all the clubbing and drinking, he lodged me in a hotel somewhere in Obalende. I felt sort of safe with him. We did not have sex, but he made sweet love to me and touched me in places I had never ever imagined.

 He kissed me passionately but guess what? He did not have sex with me. We did all sorts but there was no penetration. So, to an extent, I trusted he was a good person to be around with. I did not know that it was all part of the plan.

 He gave me N10,000 and put me in a cab to go home the next morning. We kept talking and chatting and sending naked pictures to each other and he told me naughty things of how he wanted to whisper things in my ear, I blushed. We didn't see for two weeks and that was because his wife just came back from Turkey.

 One faithful evening, he pinged me that he was organising a beach party/boat cruise and that he would love for me to be his date and that he wanted to open a BBM chat, as a medium for his friends and my friends to interact. I was excited about it, I just wanted to have fun. I was able to get five of my very hot friends.

 The BBM group opened and we got chatting. I also realise that majority of them were married and working in reputable firms. It was fun and we didn't mind if they were married, we just wanted to have fun, as well as some other girls apart from my friends in the group.

 We chatted exclusively, sent pictures to the BBM group to introduce ourselves, and we had opened group conversations pending the beach party. And as excited as we were, we went shoping for nice sexy beach wears.

 The D-day finally came, we all assembled at the Lagos Island Boat Club. I was wowed because it was a high class party. We were cruising in a boat loaded with goodies drinks and hot babes, and as well 'MARRIED MEN'. I did not care, I just said in my mind that I would not roll with married men anymore after this, that for now, all I wanted to do was to catch some fun. After all, I wasn't paying bills.

 We got there, it was a private beach resort. Most of the beach facilities I got to see there were owned by multinational companies. We got out of the boat, and went to where we were partying. It was a duplex made with wood. It was a very nice setting.

 I felt comfortable because it even had a fence around it separating it from other beach houses around. So, there was privacy and of course bouncers (heavy looking guys) guarding the place. I said to myself, this must be heaven, I must be dreaming.

 Anyways, we felt free with each other because we had been chatting. It was 5:30pm and the party just started. We had drinks flowing from the private bar tender which happens to be owned by one of the men in the group. Reality struck when I realised that I was feeling dizzy and feeling really funny and light headed. Not only me, but other girls around me too noticed there was something strange about it.

 I was also feeling HORNY as hell! I had been drugged. They monitored us and when they knew the drug had really gone deep into our system, they moved us up into the main beach house. I could still see faces, but was too weak and horny to react.

 Mr B, the man who took me clubbing, carried me in his hands like a sacrifice and put me down on the floor just as other men also did with their girls. We were eight in numbers; 8 girls, 8 guys, and they all stripped us down and had sex with us.

 I enjoyed it a bit because I was horny. It was a mixed feeling because I cried, I moaned, but I did not know how many times he came into me. He pounded me hard. I was dizzy, but he grabbed me with force. All I could notice was the wedding ring on his finger. I thought of how wicked and miserable some married can be. How inhuman and heartless they could be.

 All of them took turns in switching partners and slept with all of us. I passed out. That was the last thing I could remember. I felt water poured on me. I noticed all the other girls around me too were half naked and some stark naked. 
 We spent the night at the beach, but the men were no where to be found. I looked round me and all I could see was packs of used condoms. I ran to pick my cloths and possibly raise an alarm. I got dressed, found my phone with an envelope. It contained N16,000 and a note asking us to take N2000 each for transport. Tears of anger and rage filled my eyes and the girls around me as well.

 We were drugged and used like tissue paper. I grabbed my phone and noticed a ping came in. I checked my phone and I noticed the BBM group had been deleted, and a message via BBM from MR B came in. He threatened me that if I say a word to anyone, I would regret it.

 I told him he was a bastard, and he said try it. A picture came in, several pictures. In fact, they were pictures of us being naked on the floor. Pictures of the humiliating us but they blurred the faces of the men. In total, I got 20 pictures. I was not myself for a month.

 I went back to school, I had no one to talk to. The rest of the semester was hell for me. My CGPA dropped drastically. It was the worst out of the worst result I ever had.

 Till today, my friends and I have not discussed this with anyone, but all I could do when I heard of Cynthia's story was to narrate my own ordeal anonymously and spread the news, the word, and pray they see it and changed their ways.

 I am now born again. I have given my life to Christ. I fear men so much that I cannot even move close to them. I still have nightmares, but with time, God will strengthen me and I will move on. My advice to single ladies out there is, do not be desperate for fun. Pray to God to open your eyes of understanding, and pray hard. He who kneels before God will stand before kings and queens.

 To all married women, pray hard to God to intervene in your marriages and turn your husbands from bad habits to and bad friends. As for me, I do not think I ever want to get married or date a man again. That chapter has been closed for good in my life.

Please, do not ignore my mail. Please post it. There are a lot of things we ladies need to learn including you. Please post it on your blog and save a soul. It could be your friend, sister, cousin, neighbour.

 God bless you as you pass it on. To all readers, I do not care if you insult me or rain abuses at me. My job is to share this encounter with you and save you from any mishap. God bless you all. Amen."

The Nigerian Wedding Ring Convention

My first ring confusion came during my engagement. On that romantic evening, the fine, gentleman went on one knee with a ring box in one hand and expressed all I meant to him without mincing words before ending with the famous question: would you marry me?  When I answered in the affirmative, he got the ring out of the box, held my hand and asked a second question "Where does it go?"

My heart skipped a beat. First, I wasn't too sure where the ring went. I hadn't expected the proposal and I certainly hadn't expected that second question otherwise I would have done my research. Even if I had expected the proposal, I would either have been too excited and forgot to find out for sure what finger gets the rock or I would have assumed that being the one who was proposing, he should know. I had to think fast. I didn't want to ruin the romantic moment. Also, it was a new relationship and I was still self conscious so I also didn't want him thinking what kind of a lady of marriageable age doesn't know where her engagement ring should go. If I had only known the kind of guy, I was about to marry, I would have saved myself the trouble of all the carefulness and self-consciousness. When I am not sure of a question, I employ the non-verbal means of answering and I think it is because I do not want my words to be used against me in the future. I pointed at my middle finger because I thought I had seen people wear it that way. In fact, I figured out that one way to tell if a woman was married on not, apart from looking at the ring itself was by what finger she was wearing it: engaged ladies wore theirs on their middle finger while married ladies wore theirs on the finger before the pinky finger.Years later, I realised only one finger is called the ring finger not two. Oblivious of the confusion going on in my head, he slid the ring where my gesture directed him and that was done with.

Alas! I went to work the following morning flashing my ring proudly until two colleagues told me I had it on the wrong finger. The male one said wearing it on the third finger made it looked like I was trying out my newly engaged friend's ring or that she had gone cheating and had given me her ring to keep for her. I looked at the left hand of the female colleague. She was wearing her engagement ring on her wedding ring on her next-to-little-finger (I am avoiding the temptation of saying fourth finger because some over-zealous perfectionists do not count the thumb as a finger and saying the third finger may make many people mistake it for the middle finger). It was easy to believe her because having being married for close to six years, she should know better. I didn't waste any time in putting it on the 'married women's finger'. Of course, I wasn't even sure in the first place.

Me flaunting my ring the next day (Sunday) after my engagement only for me to get to work the following day and get told I got the finger wrong.

Being observant isn't one of my strong qualities and I would have probably not noticed in what order anyone wore their rings no matter how long I lived but from that day on, I was looking at the left fingers of almost any lady I came across. First to see if they were married or engaged and then to see where they wore their engagement rings. Let's just say the mental statistics I took showed that it is the norm in Nigeria for ladies to wear their engagement ring on the middle finger. I am not condemning it or saying it is a sign of lack of exposure, I am just saying it is a sign of lack of exposure. I am just presenting facts as I have seen them. In fact, I think it is good for us to have a unique ring culture. We don't have to copy everything from the western countries. Apart from the Yorubas who wear engagement rings at their traditional weddings, I can't think of any other ethnic group in Nigeria that wear rings for their traditional weddings (I stand to be corrected) so it is bad enough that we have copied the ring culture but we can modify it to suit us. However, the only reason I could think of for why Nigerian ladies wear their engagement rings on the middle finger is because they don't want to be mistaken for married women. This is due to fear and uncertainty. We do believe and we have heard stories that confirm our belief that anything can still go wrong and the engagement called off before the actual wedding day. If that happens and you wore your ring on your marriage finger, you may have ruined your chances. It didn't matter that you took off the ring altogether after the messy break up. our belief which helps promotes morality and decency is: You are not his wife until he takes you to the altar and replaces your engagement ring with a wedding ring. A more religious view, which is related to the one above is linked to the trinity. It goes like this: in the name if the Father (thumb) and of the Son (index/pointer finger) and of the Holy Spirit  (middle finger) and it remains there until the marriage 'amens' (seals) the union, then it is transferred to the fourth finger. Quite logical!

Fast forward to the wedding, although my mum and many other women I know wear their engagement ring under the wedding ring, I purposed to wear mine in the reverse order. Not just because of Tammy (real name withheld) who corrected me but because prior to my engagement, I noticed another colleague of mine wore her rings in a different order from what I was used to and when I asked hey why, she told me that she tried it the Nigerian conventional way when they went ring shopping but the seller who looked like he knew a lot about rings didn't only tell her it was wrong. He actually eased the rings off her fingers, reversed them and slid them back on. She was convinced. And so I was.

We had bought the complete ring set that includes an engagement ring. At the point of purchase, I didn't see the need but I was thankful we did later on as a close family member of mine lost my engagement ring on the wedding day and I had never been a fan of wearing the wedding band alone. That was too old school and masculine for my kind of person. The second ring confusion came a day before the wedding as I thought about the events of the following day. What was I to do with my engagement ring? Should I keep it on and have hubby slid the sparkly, new wedding band on it? Do I wear it on my right ring finger and transfer it back on the way to the hotel home or do I take it off altogether? I went with the last thought and handed it over to a male family member to pocket it. Unfortunately, that was the last I saw of the lovely rock my true love got me to make a promise of marriage to me. I had no choice but to wear the fake engagement ring which came with the wedding ring set. This also made me realise too that most Nigerian women and indeed most women all over the world do not wear their real engagement ring once they get married. The reasons are not far-fetched. First, it could have been lost or misplaced like mine. Second, it may not be compatible with the wedding band. That couldn't have possibly happened in my case because I went shopping wearing my engagement ring and I tried several rings and picked one that went well with my engagement ring. This does happen when the rings were bought in the absence of the bride-to-be or she was too excited to remember just little details. The third reason some women do not wear their real engagement real after marriage is if they never really liked the engagement ring but only accepted it out of love for the giver. Finally, some older women like my mother-in-law believe that the wedding ring should completely replace the engagement ring. She keeps saying to me lovingly "My daughter, you are married, you are married. You do not need this engagement ring." A lot of things can be done with the real engagement ring if the woman doesn't want to wear it. It can be kept in a treasure box and shown to daughters and granddaughters as evidence of a love that once was young, warm and passionate but now is old, grey and cold. I have also noticed  a trend in Nigeria where ladies use the real engagement ring as a pendant for their necklaces while they wear the fake one with the wedding band on the ring finger. It should be the other way round, if you ask me.

Hubby slid the wedding band on my finger and I topped it with the fake engagement ring on the way to the hotel as against the conventional order of wearing the engagement ring first and the wedding ring on top in Nigeria. I have worn them in the unconventional order since my wedding in spite of curious looks when other women notice my finger. It takes courage to do the unconventional. I do get tired of explaining to people who ask why I wear them in that order though. One day, I tried to wear them the conventional way just to get a feel of it but I couldn't keep them on  that way for too long. For one, it felt awkward because I wasn't used to it. Secondly, it just looked better to me with the dazzling stone on top. None of these conventions is wrong. I have simply looked into both and gone with the one that appealed to my emotional personality. The rationale behind the Nigerian convention is that of timing. We believe that you are engaged first before you are married and the rings should reflect that order. Good thinking!  Only one Nigerian woman gave me a different reason. She believed in having the engagement ring on top but hers was too big so she wore her fitted wedding band on top to trap it in and prevent it from falling. The other convention which is common in western countries particularly in the U.S is based on a number of superstitious beliefs. First is that it is okay to take off the engagement ring but back luck awaits the marriage or spouse of anyone who takes off her wedding ring. So on the wedding day, the engagement ring is taken off and moved to another finger of the left hand or to the right hand so that the groom can easily put the wedding ring on the ring finger. After the wedding, because it is bad luck to remove the wedding ring, put the engagement ring under and top it up with the wedding ring, they would just move the engagement ring from the right hand or the other finger on the left hand and place it on the wedding band. However, this wasn't the one which appealed to me. Another reason is the belief that the marriage is more important than the engagement so the wedding ring should come first before the engagement ring is placed on top. This one got me! Lastly, the ancient Egyptian belief of a vena amoris (vein of love) is the reason why we wear love rings (engagement or wedding) on the fourth finger (I finally said it) anyway even long after this belief has been proven wrong by anatomists and physiologists. The idea here is that the wedding ring which is more of a symbol of love than an engagement ring should be the one worn closest to your knuckles and hence closer to your heart. There you go! Three to one. I have taken my pick. Be entirely free to go in the opposite direction of me, that is if you are by some miracle still reading this 'dissertation.'