It was a rainy Tuesday night, the perfect weather for cooking a sneaky, highly illegal pot of beans using an electric hot plate. In Room 105 of the female hostel, the rules against heavy electrical appliances didn’t matter when hunger was staring you in the face. Funmi had the pot bubbling beautifully on top of her locker, hidden behind a bedsheet.
Suddenly, a loud crack echoed through the small room. A bright blue spark flew from the wall socket, followed by a thick, acrid smell of burning plastic.
“Funmi, pull the plug!” her roommate screamed.
But it was too late. The spark hit a nearby mosquito net, and a small flame erupted. Before they could even grab a bucket of water, someone in the hallway saw the smoke billowing through the door cracks and screamed the word that every hostel student fears: “FIRE!”
The entire three-story building woke up in a flash. Nobody waited to pack their certificates or laptops. Girls rushed out of their rooms in towels, headnets, and mismatched slippers, sprinting down the slippery concrete stairs in the dark because the main fuse had tripped. It was a chaotic sea of screaming and running. By the time the security men rushed upstairs with fire extinguishers, Funmi’s roommate had already smothered the flame with a wet blanket. The fire was out, but the entire hostel spent the next two hours standing in the cold rain, waiting for the smoke to clear, while the porters went from room to room searching for the forbidden hot plates.
