The time I met a mammy of the water water...

By now, you must all know that I'm a Lagos boy through and through. I'm so Lagos that the rest of the country might as well be on a different continent. They aren't a part of my reality. However come Tuesday this will change. I'll be heading to Edo State, some where East of Lagos, to begin my year of National Service. It is a little sad, but I'm sure everything will go swimmingly. I'm Afam, I'm crazy, I'm reasonably good looking and I laugh a lot. I'm the sort of person that makes friends easily when I put my mind to it.

Anyway in Lagos, we've got our own mythology and fairy tales and stuff. My grandma, the one that's got dementia, the only grandma I've got left, drummed in tales about Mammy water, and Wee Willy Winky, when I was incredibly young. Before she moved into my old bedroom she lived on this property by the lagoon. The Mammy Water tale was supposed to keep my brother and I from jumping into the lagoon and the Wee Willy Winky tale was meant to keep me from pissing on my bed. I was a little bit of a weird bed wetter. It wasn't that I didn't wake up. I woke up, but I was far too scared to make my way to the toilet. It was at this juncture that Wee Willy Winky appeared. Grandmama Afam said to me on more than one occasion, "If you piss on the bed, Wee Willy Winky will get your penis." That terrified me even more, so I started pissing on the pillow instead. I was a disgusting child.

So when the question of what I would do for Halloween presented itself, I knew that I would choose between being a Mammy Water and being a Wee Willy Winky. I thought quite carefully about what exactly a wee willy winky was and I realised that I could never make that costume. Wee Willy Winky, is made up of three words that mean penis. And if you were to say that only winky be interpreted as penis, then it would mean a very very tiny penis. I'm a fancy dress king but I will not dress up as a small penis. That's one of the few things that's beneath me. I only had one other option left to me, and I took it.

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Not much is known about the Mammy water. Some say that they're mermaids that seduce men, and some say that they're demons that can only be vanquished by pentecostal exorcism. That means that the pastor has to give them the slap of divine providence, or baptise them with the blood of Jesus or speak in tongues until they lose their minds from not being able to understand what exactly the man or woman of God is saying. We don't like them very much here in Lagos. We fear them. If a Mammy water seduces you, she'll steal your penis and use it for rituals, or she'll marry you and sacrifice your children at her underwater palace. I suppose that they're the equivalent of a mermaid, but they're less Ariel, and more like the Alien from Species. They aren't meant to exist in the physical realm, which is why I was particularly stunned to see one sprinting out of the Atlantic ocean this afternoon.

Look at it run! You would have thought that they chased it from the underwater palace.

It must have forgotten something in the water, because it put its hand on its head as if to say, "damn! I forgot my human seducing devices."

So it isn't surprising that it ran back to get them. This Mammy water wasn't at all like the ones I'd heard about. Its bust was practically non-existent and it was too muscular to be classically beautiful.

After retrieving whatever it was that needed retrieving it settled on a rotting log and peered out into the distance. I immediately felt a tingling somewhere that I dare not say. I was drawn to it. At this point I knew it wasn't quite female... apart from if they get the Insanity video in the underwater world too.

I came closer, while it observed me casually. It was a disappointing specimen. I was starting to think that it had been kicked out for being ugly. How is this thing supposed to seduce a dude?

Undeterred by its physical failings, it began a ritual dance.

I asked it if it was Asap Rocky. It threw its hands in the air and leapt for joy, exclaiming, "You know my comrade." I said, " not personally, but the resemblance is uncanny." It asked where Asap was, and I told it that it'd turned up on the wrong continent.