I have been needing to get home for a while now. My roommates in the hostel have resumed, and everyone has begun identifying their mattresses so they can sleep on them.
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After we left the hostel during the first semester break, we were told that the hostel porters went to rooms and were removing mattresses they thought were not good enough to be in the hostel any longer.
My mattress was among those that were taken. I didn't know one of the mattresses taken from my room was mine. I resumed school and identified a bed that I thought was mine. I wore my bedcover on it and used it as mine.
I used it every day until Dolapo, a roommate, claimed it to be his after another roommate, who just resumed, took the one he had been using to sleep.
I was in distress because he claimed it around 11 p.m., when we were about to go to sleep. There was nothing I could do, no where I could get another bed, and I needed to sleep well that night after a stressful day.
I wasn't the only person using that bed I thought was mine. I and a friend shared the bed. My friend, Famosa, was actually the owner.
Dolapo was ready to take the mattress for the night and sleep, but I was already on it, prepared to sleep. He held the mattress by the edge, ready to take it to his space on the floor of the room, where he sleeps.
I was on the mattress, which was on the floor, ready to sleep, but I couldn't anymore because Dolapo claimed it to be his.
He told me to get up from the mattress so he could take it. I didn't get up. It wasn't my mattress directly; it was Famosa's. I waited for Famosa, so he would identify the mattress to see if it was his or not. I told Dolapo I was not standing up until Famosa was around.
I did this because I didn't want the mattress to be in his custody before my friend, Famosa, came around. In case we might need to drag it, I will be fully equipped with my friend to drag it together.
All I thought about at that point was the fact that I needed good sleep that night. After coming back by 7pm to the hostel after a stressful day, I couldn't relax or sleep at that time because I usually wait for everyone to be ready to sleep so we can set up the mattresses on the floor for everyone to sleep on. else you will be disturbing those still walking around.
Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash
Eventually I could sleep, but that was when Dolapo decided to claim the mattress, and I was not allowed to sleep. I was devastated. I didn't show my devastation; although I wanted to, I had to maintain composure so we could come up with a reasonable solution without blowing things up.
I had to have my friend around when we would be doing that because we sleep on the same mattress. He can't just come back and find out he has no bed to sleep on, and I was previously in custody of the mattress. We should be sorting this out together.
He returned to the hostel eventually, and so we talked it out. We couldn't be left stranded with nowhere to sleep, and you knew the mattress was yours since you resumed. And yet you slept on another person's mattress without uttering a word to us.
Now the owner of the mattress came and claimed his mattress immediately (as you also should have when you knew), and you want to collect ours, claiming it is yours also, and leave us stranded in the middle of the night? That was not good enough.
If it were to be yours all this while, you should have told us, so we would have sorted it out earlier without leaving anybody stranded at the last minute.
We came to a conclusion: he chose to use another small bed for the night since the owner went home. If the owner was around and the mattress wasn't available, where did he expect us to lay our heads for the night?
The next day, knowing I had no mattress in the hostel, I decided to hang out at my faculty for the night. do some work and sleep a little. Though it was very uncomfortable, it was the best I could get.
And so did my friend; he stayed around at the faulty for the night. He had a place in particular where he could stay, at an office. I hung around at a place we call the Relaxation Center for students.
The moment I got the chance to go home and pick up a mattress, I did. So, we would have our mattress, which no one could claim.
And since I got a mattress, we sleep better.
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