When I stopped comparing myself to the likes of Mark and bill.


I quite remember my first experience of a computer far back in my Noble "private" school in Ekwulobia Anambra State, Saint Joseph primary school Ekwulobia. We had a computer lab which I think I saw its inside only once, it was more of a museum because very few were let in, in other to lengthen it's years on this faithful earth.



Before my class was let in, I remember we had to have a lecture in the class of how the computers looked like, and what the smaller diveces were called and their uses. I remember the mouse vaguely, and wondering what a rat was doing with a computer. My then computer teacher pulled two boys in front of the class, it was a combined class, the biggest boy in the class and the smallest. She said that computers were classified into two, small computer, pointing at the small guy, and big computer pointing at the bigger one. Till now, I still don't know what a big computer and small computer is.



After the preparation that seemed liked we were being prepared like warriors in Nollywood films by a chief priest , on our way to the evil forest. We were finally let into the computer lab. Only one desktop was switched on, and the teacher went straight to Ms word, to teach us how to type, apparently none of us knew how to, after doing what looked stranger than the cornflakes my uncle brought from "Obodo Oyibo". She called the school boy who became famous throughout the school for typing his full name in the computer, to come and display his expertise again. He did, as every other person looked at him with glowing eyes, as if he was ọkacha returning from Olympic victory, coming to play for the national team again. He ramped his name slowly into the computer as everyone erupted into applause, hai!
Nwa ma ife!



That was my first introduction into the computer world, then I "only saw but never touched", this little law followed me as I first came to Abuja, a small village boy who had to be threatened with blindness before he stopped walking barefooted everywhere, "you see all this blind Hausa people walking around begging for money? They became blind by walking barefoot in Abuja and something 'chuk' them under the foot". My late Aunt had a desktop which my cousins used frequently, I was only allowed to look but never touch.



The law also followed me into my second missionary journey in Abuja, as I moved from my Aunts house to my cousin's. Though in a little diluted form. My cousins son touched the computer frequently, and I watched him, and on very rare occasions I was allowed to touch, but I watched long enough to understand a little. Then came my beloved GSTC, my technical college, where we were thought computer in both abstract and in reality, I was taught Ms word, PowerPoint, Coreldraw , Autocard, and a host of others, both in lab and class. At that time I was in NTC 1, the equivalent to class one in a conventional senior secondary school. By which time I had already started counting how much "bear bear" I would have on my chin.



A year down the line, I embarked on my third missionary journey, though it was me going back to my late Aunt's place. I was gifted with a laptop by my cousin after he got a new one. Which helped me start my adventure into HTML and CSS. Then I was between 17 and 18yrs, It was around this age Uncle Mark came up with Facebook.