The trip lasted for hours, but unlike the movies, I couldn’t stick my hand or my head out. I sat in the front seat, next to my dad with my seatbelt buckled up. I could argue that my dad stared every five minutes to check if it remained buckled and also if the window stayed up with a little opening for ventilation. He knew I had an inquisitive spirit. I could only stare out the window for most parts of the journey from Mushin to Ikorodu in Lagos. Taking in the view of cars, on-goers, and any poster or billboard or anything that had an address or name to try to make sense of where we were. Sometimes I saw the name of a town or community, and I would wonder why people lived in such a remote area.
What I remember most, was a straight, long road, with fairly thick grasses on both sides, and a plethora of cars conveying the road. Sometimes, there was a divider in the road, other times, there wasn’t. Sometimes all I could hear were honks from my dad and other drivers, and the burning sound of them driving fiercely trying to manoeuvre the block of cars. It was the sound of furious drivers in traffic that also suffocated the songs from the radio. When the traffic refused to dissolve, car owners would come down from their cars and try to ascertain the cause. My dad left the car one time too.
“Don’t leave your seat!” he yelled before pummeling the door.
I couldn’t help but unbuckle my seatbelt and stare out the window tailing him with my eyes. When I noticed the traffic had dissolved and he was heading back, I returned to my prior position and buckled up. After that, it was back to the straight road with the never-ending road tracks and the scorching sun.
The new house was different, the environment even more so. Not at all like our previous house that was in a well-developed area in another city, with tarred roads and reliable electricity. This was in the middle of nowhere, encompassed by thick grasses and no electricity. I wondered why my dad had to buy land in a less developed place, but he told me “Don’t worry, it will all be fine.”
It will all be fine. That was what rung in my head when I cased the new house and its surrounding. The grass on our land had been cut, trimmed down to its lowest, but there were thick grasses on all sides of our land and the entire surroundings. It was the first time in my life to see so much green. I peeked down the street from the front of our land, all I saw was green stretching down along two separate two-foot-wide paths which I assumed were the road for cars. There were no neighbours ─we were the first to move in on the street. The next resident in the area was on the next street and the only thing that divided the streets was grass. We could see their small one-room building across from our house. Ours was a newly built, wide, and colourless three-bedroom house, the land of which it was apparently purchased at an attractive price
As though being in the middle of nowhere wasn’t enough, my mom made a joke about me playing football in front of the house, since the land was huge and our house was built to the back of it leaving the rest of the land open and free. Well, I think it was a joke because I was the only boy, and my sisters and I didn’t play ball when we lived in Mushin. My guess was, she was trying to make me less sad about the move. It didn’t work. Every day we had to power the house with a generator because we lacked electricity. Eventually, we had tree-like poles erected in the ground and connected light from a man who lived two streets away. Yes. Two streets away.
I hadn’t spent a year in the new house before I was shipped off to boarding school. I say ‘shipped’ because I didn’t have any say in it. I was nine years old then. My dad had researched the schools ‘great men’ attended and had come up with the crazy idea that if I attended one of these secondary schools, I would also do something extraordinary.
* * *
My first few years in boarding school were tough. The school was in another state ─Ogun state. It was Yoruba land and I was the Benin boy from Lagos. I felt completely out of place. It was as if I had landed in giant land. I tried not to feel inferior or intimidated by the fact that I wasn’t as tall as most people, however, the occasional ‘short man’ insults came, but I responded with ‘small but mighty.’
My happy days were visiting days when my mom or dad would come carrying a whole load of provision for me. Visiting days were once a month, and it was something I looked forward to every time. We would sit and talk for hours. I’d tell them how the term had been within the few minutes of our conversation and they’d update me on the situation at home, Lagos, and the country ─we did not have television or any form of electronic appliances for most of the years of my boarding school. We didn’t even have a shower back then.
It wasn’t easy coping in boarding school. Every male student in the same year would stay in a spacious room. It didn’t matter if we were ten or thirty. The iron bunk beds were arranged in the large hall-like room in a way that the room was occupied by everyone, their lockers, and still with space where some of us played football, against the rules. Every year we changed rooms. We changed bunkmates and sometimes bunk spaces. Sometimes I stayed down, other times up. If we weren’t careful, some of my mates ─those not used to small beds would roll and fall off the bunk beds while they slept. The results were usually bruised bodies or broken teeth.
I wasn’t tall like most people and my height increased slowly, while others stretched overnight. I made friends with mostly everyone, even the ones taller than me. Even though sometimes they would forget we were mates and tease the hell out of me. When I noticed that, I began to avoid conversations that would lead to a fight. I wasn’t a fighter. I instead showcased my breakdancing talent. I and a couple of friends danced on stage every year during the hostel’s version of an end-of-year party. I also learned a few stunts from one of my acrobatic seniors. I would backflip in the open with people watching. It all helped me make a name and image for myself, and it brought some love.
In my fourth year in secondary school ─SS1, I had to choose which department I was going to major in. After days of consideration of what my future ambitions were and what I wanted for myself, I came up with nothing. I watched classmates rush to choose the science department like science was ice cream and they had two spoons in their grasps prepared to scoop it all. I don’t blame them entirely for their decisions. There were unknowing dictators and influencers. For one, some parents telling their kids, “You’re going to be a doctor. You’re going to be an engineer. You’re going to be a lawyer.” They forced their kids to study things other than what they truly wanted. There were also teachers passing off as fortune-tellers ─telling students what they thought the students would excel at. Then again, there was peer pressure. When a supposedly smart person decided to study science, I watched a handful of people equally chose the science department. They all believed it was for smart people.
Back then I didn’t really like science. Both of my elder sisters were in the science department. Whenever we were at home for a break, I always saw the look on their faces when they were reading. I was not a fan of literature either. I didn’t really read books for pleasure. It was usually for study only. My parents didn’t teach me that and I didn’t pick it up from anywhere while growing up as a kid. So I thought literature was mind-numbing and I would spend my whole life reading about some guy, William Shakespeare and probably never understand anything he wrote.
After over-analysing and weighing everything, I chose the commercial department. It was not like I wanted to spend my life in a bank or something, counting money or whatever. I just didn’t want to go with the lot and go for science nor did I want to exhaust myself reading books and analyzing texts.
The commercial department turned out to be interesting. Learning about economics, trade and whatnot. However, it was in that year that things became tougher. It was then I became completely aware of and realized I was in a strange land, a Yoruba land and I couldn’t fully speak Yoruba. The good thing was I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t Yoruba. Many other students, ─both hostel and day students were from different ethnic groups and origins. Our teachers too weren’t all Yoruba. Suffice it to say, it was an institution filled with diverse people so I wasn’t bothered. Until things changed. It started with people having discussions in Yoruba and me being frustrated because I couldn’t fully understand, to people throwing words at me.
“You’ve been in Ogun state for more than three years now and you still can’t properly speak or hear.”
“I hear a little,” I would respond. “But you’re all too fast and you speak beyond the ones I understand.”
It was even more stressing when a teacher would explain something in Yoruba, thinking it would be easier than English, forgetting that not all the students understood Yoruba. Then we’d have to find someone to interpret or explain it to us if the teacher didn’t. Students who weren’t fluent in Yoruba would bond over ineloquence, and then make failed and funny attempts at speaking Yoruba.
Attending a public boarding school meant succumbing oneself to bullying. It meant giving the house masters, house mistresses and most especially the seniors, a free pass to maltreat one. The maltreatment wasn’t something that started with us. It was something we met. It was something I met. It had already been happening in the hostel before we came, so much so that it became a norm. We didn’t have to accept it. It had already been pre-accepted. One of my memories was when the bell was rung by the headmaster for us to wake up. I opened my eyes for a few seconds then closed them in an attempt to gather myself. I didn’t know when I started to sleep again. All I felt was calm, till I heard a shrill cry. I jumped off my bed and saw students fleeing from their beds and hurriedly exiting the room.
“Alfa is coming. Wake up!” Some scared mate yelled out.
I grabbed my slippers and sped out of the room, following the wave towards the door. When I got out I heard more screams coming from the room next door.
“I woke up this morning and rang the bell myself, and you people are still sleeping!” The voice was followed by the sound of a whip.
It was the first time I saw people being beaten to wake up. At the time I had no idea we were being abused or taken advantage of in boarding school. My awakening came towards the end of my secondary school years.
* * *
One of our house masters was called Alpha or perhaps it’s Alfa. He was dark, rarely smiled and had a grim face. His hands were mostly glued to a wooden cane, which he sometimes wrapped in white tape. He loved to shout when he could have spoken nicely. The only times his lips would curve was when he was planning something sinister. He loved to be feared. He was the one who always pursued us with a cane. He was the one who beat students mercilessly. He began to pick on short senior students at some point which put me on his radar. My friend Tomiwa was the first to be a victim. He was sick and came to the hall late for lunch. Yet house master Alpha ordered two boys to grab him and slam him onto a long wooden table only to brutally whip him.
Tomiwa reported to his mother ─even though bringing phones into the hostel was prohibited, some students still snuck in their phones. Tomiwa had a phone. When he returned to the hostel in a blend of sweat and tears, he grabbed his phone which was wrapped in plastic film and kept in the bottom of his travelling box. He turned it on and dialled his mother’s number. He spoke to her and told her everything that had happened. His friends that were beside him also spoke to his mother and confirmed the beating. She came to the school the following week, but the house mistress sided with the housemaster and twisted the whole thing.
We were in the dining hall when she arrived. By the corner of the hall in front of us, Tomiwa, his mother, the house mistress and Alfa stood. Tomiwa’s mother held him in her arms as she yelled with all her might. Alfa, on the other hand, stood without remorse, while the house mistress discussed with Tomiwa’s mother in a low tone. After a moment of quiet conversations, they left the hall. Afterwards, Tomiwa revealed that the house mistress blamed him for the beating and left out what actually happened so his mother couldn’t do anything. The egoistic housemaster only became more hotheaded. Soon he came for me. He was targeting seniors he thought were weak, one by one.
“Do you want to kill me? Huh? I almost hit my head on this stone. I could have died!”
He looked at me and said nothing. Instead, he went back into the room.
My heart almost flew out of my chest that day, but it didn’t. It was the first time I stood up for myself after being mistreated in a boarding school for years. It felt good. A part of me was scared yelling at him would put me in more trouble but it didn’t. Instead, my friends kept talking about what I did, how brave I was and how I did not let him treat me like Tomiwa. For days they didn’t cease replaying the scene. It made me wish I had stood up earlier, and I wondered how different things would have turned out. For me, it was a contributing factor to me staring fear in the face, and it didn’t stop there. It followed and still follows me.
When I graduated from secondary school a year and a half later, I was the happiest person on earth. It was like spending time in prison and finally being discharged. I suddenly felt on top of the world. I felt free like I could fly high in the sky and touch the stars.