I have been friends with Ijeoma and Nwamaka for a while, there are those who have known Ijeoma longer …..but somehow with Ijeoma it felt like we lived many different life times together. There is not a single topic I can recollect that we didn’t talk about and explore. We explored each one in great depth , whether we agreed with the other’s opinions or not! There is no event or memory we didn’t experience together, it became throughly inconsequential which one of us had the experience. I guess that seemed of little importance since every miniscule detail was discussed, dissected and addressed. We painted such vivid pictures with words that sometimes I can’t remember if I attended an event or I felt I did because of all the conversations we had about it. I struggle now to recollect if indeed I had watched a particular movie orTV programme. It is unclear sometimes who actually read the book. Our memories of them became the same, so it is difficult to imagine where hers stopped and mine began. I grew up the same way Ijeoma did in the Onyiuke family and she was a child in the Okpere family as we regaled each other with stories from our youth. I went to FGGC Onitsha and she went to FGC Warri too. I graduated from UI and she graduated from Uniben too. This was because each significant moment and many rather insignificant ones were talked about countless times. I knew all her childhood friends, her Uni friends, her old friends, her new friends as she did mine. She knew every member of my family and treated them like her own and the Onyiuke’s became my blood relatives too! When she moved back to Nigeria 6 years ago, rather than creating a gulf, it made us even closer. With the arrival of technology like BBM & Skype I didn’t miss her at all, she was only ever a click away! We explored all the latest clothing ranges together online or she came to the shops with me…… my trusty BB taking pictures and hers providing running commentary on each potential purchase. We had dinner together in front of our laptops, talked incessantly on the phone and even went to work together on several occasions courtesy of Skype! There were many 10 hour long Skype calls, times when she left me in her car on Skype while she popped out to the shops on her way home from work. She would say before she left “shout if someone is trying to steal you Aprocho!!” Our virtual existence merely another dimension, an extension of times we were actually together.