Desi reclined lower in her seat, tightening the strings on her hoodie as she fought sleep. She was grateful for the constant drone of subdued conversations in the bus, since it kept her from sleeping deeply.

After their discussion the previous day, Wale gave her their itinerary and agreed to pick her up at her bus stop. They had rented a bus and were going to drive from Lagos through Ibadan to Osun state. She would have felt guilty to be the reason they were making a detour, but apparently, there was a member of the gym troupe who couldn’t attend but lived in Ibadan. Desi was just surprised by how big Wale’s exercise cult was getting.

She called it a cult because no amount of explanation would help her understand this group of men who enjoyed inflicting pain on themselves in the name of health and muscle building. She liked to think that, for someone who spent most of her time sitting, she was healthier than the average person since she walked for about two hours every day and mostly had healthy eating habits, save for her obsession with candies.

One of the men in the front laughed out loud, and a few others joined him. Desi groaned internally and brought out her earplugs. She needed some silence since she was about to enter a space with many people. She had googled the camp before sleeping the night before, and it turned out it was a well-known camp for designers, held every quarter. They alternated between a camp for expert and beginner designers for each event. During the expert conference, famous Nigerian and African designers would gather, and the world-renowned ones amongst them would give speeches and share their work processes. 

The beginner’s camp, on the other hand, was for designers who had just started designing or had a few years of experience under their belts and wanted to learn more. Desi figured she didn’t fit into the camp for experts, but she wasn’t a beginner either. She noticed that one of her favorite designers would be attending the event as an instructor, and decided she would find a way to engage with them personally. This way, the camp wouldn’t be a total waste of her time.

The bus lurched to a stop, and she looked outside the window. There was a slight traffic along the road. They were almost at the outskirts of Ibadan now, and the day had broken fully. Wale had instructed her to be ready and at the bus stop by 6:30 am. Knowing him, he would leave her without a second thought if she wasn’t on time, and since she always slept extremely late, she had gotten barely three hours of sleep before jumping awake and hurrying out of the house. She showered and brushed her teeth at past 2 am so she would just wake up and go. As they neared Ibadan, it occurred to her that the registration and settling-in process would take so much time, and she would be unable to freshen up until after.

She heaved a sigh of slight regret, wondering why she forgot to bring breath mints with her. 

Just then, Wale came to sit beside her.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked gently, and she slowly peeked out of her hoodie, making him smile.

“I’m alright, I guess.” She shrugged, hoping he was convinced by her seeming nonchalance. She was nervous as hell, but she would never admit that.

“Abby said this trip was a punishment from Mr. T. You know you don’t have to live like this, right?” 

Desi ducked her head at his statement, and Wale chuckled, knowing he had hit a soft spot. When Desi announced her intent to work as a designer on one of their hangouts with Abby years ago, Wale had been extremely excited about it because of the business he was starting with another friend, which needed a designer.

Desi had politely declined, stating that she needed structure and a place where she could be taught and grow. A startup wasn’t that place. Of course, Wale had taken it in stride and never bothered her about it again, until he found out in one of their random conversations that her boss was a jerk to her for the most part. It was three years after his first offer, and his business had gotten some funding and become a dream workplace.

Wale had been very upset at hearing about her boss and insisted she come work with him, but Desi declined repeatedly. She didn’t want to admit that it was her pride, but deep down, she knew that was what kept holding her back from taking his offer. She never envisioned a life where her classmate and almost best friend would be her boss. And now that he and Abby were going to get married, Abby would be her boss’s wife. 

Although she felt petty and immature for thinking like this, she couldn’t help it. She had grown up watching what working for one’s peer looked like through her mother, and she didn’t want to put herself through that again. That was also why she endured Mr. T’s mean barbs daily. He was much older, so his age at least justified his actions in her eyes.

“Stop being so dramatic,” she finally responded. “Mr. T is just a cranky old man, there’s nothing bad about that.”

“Okay. But are you still growing in that company? Don’t you need new challenges or experiences? As an artist?” He asked the last part a bit saucily, and she gently pushed him away with a chuckle.

“Being alive is a new challenge every day, Wale. Trust me, I’m fine. If I weren’t, I would tell you.” Desi hoped he got the silent message in her response: ‘let’s drop this.’

He seemed to have gotten the message because he just smiled and patted her shoulder. “Alright then, I’m always rooting for you either way.” 

“Thank you.” She replied, trying and failing to hide the emotion in her voice.

Standing up, he cupped his hand around his mouth and announced that those who were getting off the bus should prepare to alight.

“Gosh. You don’t have to shout it. Now everyone will be looking at me when I get off.” Desi hated compounded attention. She could exchange glances with one or two people in a crowd of strangers, but if the crowd of strangers was staring at her, chances were she would trip over her feet and fall flat before them.

“There are three of you getting off, superstar. And look around, these guys don’t care about that.” Wale said with a wink and walked back to the front of the bus.

Desi rolled her eyes at him and took a deep breath, effectively getting lost in her thoughts again, almost immediately.

****

“Your accommodation is in the digit section and you’re in chalet 4, the one farthest up the hill. You can go in and freshen up now, orientation has been pushed to 10 am.” The front desk attendant was holding a key card with her house number on it in front of her and a leaflet with rules and regulations.

Desi took them and muttered her thanks, then ambled off to find her home for the next 6 days. The registration had been much faster than she expected, and now she had 2 hours to spare. She didn’t know what she had been expecting from the camp, but it wasn’t this. The camp was being held on a huge resort with the beauty of nature on full display. There was a garden with flowers of all kinds peppered around in a way that seemed random, but Desi knew was intentional.

Trees lined the roads and swayed in a gentle rhythm created by the soft breeze that was moving through the entire resort. The sun was already out, but Desi couldn’t feel its heat because the trees created sufficient covering. There was a lake in the distance, and off to another side, Desi could see animals walking around. She stopped to watch with her mouth open as a peacock strutted around and then opened up its tail feathers.

What was this place?

Just then, somebody bumped into her on their way up, waking her up from the trance she was starting to fall in. It was a man. He muttered a hurried sorry and disappeared into the next house beside the road. 

Desi continued her journey upward, making a mental note to explore the full resort. The accommodations were divided by digits and alphabets, each section having up to twenty houses. She had just finished walking through the alphabet section, and she could immediately see the difference between the sections. 

The alphabet houses were smaller and looked like they could take no more than two or three people. They were also closer to level ground as opposed to the numbered houses that lined the road up the hill. Those houses were bigger and spaced farther apart. She reckoned they were used for group events or as hostels for a high number of attendees, as was the case with the designer’s camp. The whole thing was so much grander than she anticipated, and now she was starting to feel somewhat grateful that Mr. T had forced this upon her.

She finally arrived at her apartment and confirmed her guesses. The chalet had six rooms in total with a general living area, a games room, and a pool in the back. The kitchen was so big that her entire apartment could fit into it, and there was a laundry room beside it with a huge washing machine and dryer. Desi couldn’t help the wide grin that was fixed on her face. She was definitely going to enjoy being here.

Since she was the first to arrive, she picked a room upstairs at the far end of the hallway to the right. The rooms were divided into two wings, each side hosting 3 rooms and a general rest area at the top of the stairs where the two hallways connected. Standing in front of her room door, she could see straight down across to the end of the other hallway. She imagined running down the hallway for exercise and chuckled to herself.

After taking a very happy, very cold shower, Desi put on a pair of short shorts and a big t-shirt, then headed to the kitchen where she saw that some food had been provided for the houseguests. It was just noodles, eggs, tea and coffee, some chocolates, some snacks, and lots of water, but Desi was impressed nonetheless. What exactly was this place? This was going to be a fun vacation for her.

Having decided to enjoy the time alone before her housemates came, she put some water on the stove to boil and hurried back to her room to get her earphones. These days, she was deep in the clutches of a K-pop addiction, so she put on her recent favorite song, Woke Up by XG, playing it on repeat. 

Back in the kitchen, she rapped along word for word as she moved around preparing instant noodles with some boiled eggs and a cup of coffee. She preferred iced coffee, but there was only cold water, so she made do.

“Little girl with a big mouth, uh, small group with a big house, yeah. Big watch on the wrist, no, uh, I just thought of the flow now, just now!” she shouted out the last part while mimicking a twerking move she had seen another rapper do. This was the best day.

Still dancing, she put everything on a tray and then turned to go to the dining section, but froze immediately. There was a man leaning against the door, watching her. The tray she was carrying started slipping out of her shaking hands, and the man leaped forward to catch it just in time.

“That,” he said with a slow smile, “is the best twerking I’ve ever seen.”