I’m writing a short post in honour of my friend Member Feese aka Membina | Bambi | Bambina. People say time flies when you’re having fun but I reckon Member proves that saying wrong. Time flies when you’re working hard to readjust to a new reality. Time flies when you’re soldiering on against all odds. Time flies when fun stops.

I cannot believe it’s been 5 years since we all heard about the bomb blast in the United Nations building in Abuja, where I lived at the time. 5 years since Anita rang me, in her typical anxious fashion, to check that everyone we knew was accounted for and safe, far away from the shrapnel and torn skin littering the UN building and its environs.

5 years since I assured her that everyone we knew was safe. Yes, yes even Member who had a school project that included interviews with development officials. Yes, yes of course Member was safe, Anita stop disturbing me; Member just went to the UN office yesterday, why would she go back again?? Yes, yes bye!

So why wouldn’t Member pick up her phone when I ring her after assuring Anita of her safety?

Why wouldn’t the rest of the Abuja squad answer when I’m all the way in Lagos for this wedding, starting to panic?

Why on earth, would Irede tell me they’re going from hospital to hospital in search of Member?

AND WHY IS N.T.A  REPLAYING AN OLD WILL SMITH INTERVIEW WHEN ALL I NEED IS INFORMATION FROM ABUJA?!

Hours later Member is found alive and the vigil that lasts months, prayer groups and support teams, lifelong injuries and irreparable scars begins.

5 years.

A particularly poignant memory in these 5 years is one where I’m seated outside a restaurant with Member, a couple of months after the accident. She told me of her plans to travel for yet another surgery. I asked, teasing her, “What for this time?!”Playing it off as though it was another excuse for a vacation. Trying hard to normalise what had, to some extent, become her normal existence.

“My ear drum burst.” She responded quietly.

And in the almost awkward silence her statement left behind, I started to laugh.

She joined in. Looking quizzically at me, I answered the question stamped on her face.

“Trust you to actually do what we think is impossible! We say “Stop shouting, do you want to burst my ear drums?!” I never thought I’d hear that actually happened in real life.”

Yet it has.

The impossible, the improbable, the abnormal has happened.

Yet Member soldiers on as though it was not only possible and probable…but planned.

Everyday she exhibits the power of a single moment to change a life, the irrepressible power of one singular life to catalyse a change. She represents to me, the chameleon’s only power: the strength to adapt. That capacity to start again, to thrive, to beat every odd given solely by the determination to succeed. To me, Member will always represent the power of choice, the strength to fight, the will to survive, the power to win.

That outstanding, irrefutable beauty of duping death at its own door.

Member Feese. All bravery. All defiance. All power.