Beginning

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

My dad was a brown man. His preference for all things brown, not his skin colour, is how I remember him – brown suits, brown seats in his car. That and his strictness. Mum was really pretty and petite. She was of the forehead gang, like me, and a big talker. I was born into a family of six, which seemed to be the desired middle-class family model in the 80s: four kids and two parents. I was the second child; my older sister was born exactly 12 months before me, and then my sister and brother after me. My mother had me at St. Nicholas Hospital, Onikan, in Lagos Island, although we lived at Medical Compound in Yaba. I don’t remember much of my early years. My first memories are of Abuja, where we moved after my dad was transferred. He was a civil servant at the Ministry of Works and my mother was a teacher. They were both from the same village, Idanre, where they had met.

At the time we had a white Gallant saloon car. Dad would wake up very early every morning to wash it downstairs. Sometimes I’d watch as he washed and sang his favourite hymn.
Day by day, dear Lord of thee three things I pray To see thee more clearly Love thee more dearly Follow thee more nearly Day by day
He’d lift the wipers off the windshield and gently clean them before putting them down. He later bought a Peugeot 504, black with the expected brown seats, which became his car while my mum used the Gallant. My parents were industrious. Besides their regular jobs, they pursued other endeavours. Dad was taking classes after work so he could get a law degree. After he got the 504 he started coming home even later than usual. I remember once waking up around 3 am to the sound of someone entering the house. I checked and it was my dad; he had a face cap on. I asked why he was just coming home and he explained that he had driven his car as a taxi all night. He wore the cap to disguise himself. Of course, he sent me back to bed, but I remember praying for God to protect him as he went about while we slept. He eventually hired a driver to do the taxi bit so he could spend more time with us. Mum owned a shop in Garki, where she hired tailors to make and amend clothes. She also supplied drinks to a lot of the big hotels in Abuja at the time including the Hilton, Agura and Sheraton. Sometimes, after teaching at school she’d travel to Lagos overnight to buy goods and return the next day. We lived in Area 2 in Garki, on the third floor of a block of flats. Our neighbours were a motley mix: downstairs was a pastor, and beside him a family where the husband beat his wife every Saturday morning like clockwork. My parents would shut us inside the house so we wouldn’t hear. I remember riding my bicycle downstairs, between neighbours’ cars and around our block in Abuja where we spent our early childhood. Even riding
that bicycle was a luxury as mum was very wary of her children mixing with kids or neighbours that she didn’t know well. There was this man who had a bald head, the first bald-headed person I had ever seen. I used to spit on his head from upstairs. He’d think it was water and would wipe it off and keep going. I was lucky my parents never caught me because I would have been in plenty of trouble. Both my parents were strict, my dad especially. ‘I’ll tell your daddy when he gets home’ was a sure way to get us to behave. The fear of daddy and his famous brown belt was indeed the beginning of wisdom. I remember the first time he disciplined me. I had struck a match inside our living room and ended up burning a bit of the carpet, leaving our help with no choice but to report me to my parents. As if that wasn’t enough to get him angry, I lied about it too. So little Toke ended up on her knees with her hands up as she got flogged with the most dreaded thing in the world then – dad’s belt! We got scared every time Dad took his belt off and rolled it up. It was his brand of discipline and it worked like magic. But the magic only lasted for short periods; I still got into trouble. One time I joined the cultural group in school without telling anyone, and we had to go to Eagle Square in Abuja to perform. It was some national event and several schools were taking part. We were dressed in this cultural outfit that had mirrors all over, and we had dots of calamine lotion all over our bodies. We were preparing to perform when someone yanked me from the group, yelling at my teachers. It was my dad. I didn’t know he was in the audience and had spotted me. Another time, there was palm wine in the fridge at home. I had never tasted palm wine before and decided to treat myself. As I took the bottle from the fridge it slipped from my hands and broke. No one at home at the time shouted at me; they felt sorry for me because they knew I was in for it. I got the belt that night, and the experience made me terrified of palm wine from then on. My mum was no slouch in the discipline department either, despite being the one we ran to for ‘saving’ from our dad. She was a no-nonsense person, never afraid to speak her mind. My results came in one time with a comment

from my teacher saying I talked too much. My mum went to school to see my teacher. And in front of my entire class she scolded and flogged me – not very hard, but enough to let the message sink it. Dad was an elder in church. He held himself to a much higher standard and that filtered down to us. We had morning devotions and prayer sessions at our house every day, and even though I don’t remember mum being very religious I know she wholeheartedly supported his direction. Even as young as we were then, we understood that dad wasn’t stern because he hated us. He was a generous man; he spent as much time with us as he could, making sure to drop us off at school every morning. It was our bonding time. I always sat in front, in the passenger seat. There was a policeman at a junction we passed on the drive to school who was convinced that my dad had a habit of deep conversation with himself; I was so small the policeman couldn’t see me in the passenger seat. One morning on our usual drive, daddy stopped by and pulled the glass down so the man could meet me and see that he wasn’t mad, he was just deep in conversation with his daughter. Daddy enjoyed buying us gifts just because. He had a great sense of humour, and a smile that could light up a room.
***
In the 80s and 90s, if a family didn’t have younger siblings of the parents living with them then they found helps to assist with house chores or babysitting. There were five of us kids at the time, including a cousin, and we were all young so my parents needed help. My cousin had lost her dad, my mother’s brother, Uncle Leye, and mum had brought her to live with us after the burial. She was his only child and was two or three years old at the time. This was before my brother was born. There were two young women helping mum around the house. They didn’t compare to Aunty Maria, who had been with us from as early as I could remember. She was a second mum in many ways. She helped us with our homework, picked us up from school and just took care of us. But she had to leave because she had been with us for a long time and had to settle down
and begin her own family. Her departure brought Ruth and Grace. We didn’t like Ruth very much; she reported our every infraction to our parents. Grace was nicer. My mum needed two helps because things had gotten very busy for her with her business. Ruth and Grace used to take alternate weekends off. Unknown to my mum, a rivalry had developed between the two women and they stopped talking to each other. This was why one of them wasn’t aware when the gas cylinder developed a leak; because one failed to tell the other.

Source: http://sauta97..com.ng/2016/12/on-becoming-by-toke-makinwa-chapter-2.html

sauta:
Beginning

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

My dad was a brown man. His preference for all things brown, not his skin colour, is how I remember him – brown suits, brown seats in his car. That and his strictness. Mum was really pretty and petite. She was of the













forehead gang, like me, and a big talker. I was born into a family of six, which seemed to be the desired middle-class family model in the 80s: four kids and two parents. I was the second child; my older sister was born exactly 12 months before me, and then my sister and brother after me. My mother had me at St. Nicholas Hospital, Onikan, in Lagos Island, although we lived at Medical Compound in Yaba. I don’t remember much of my early years. My first memories are of Abuja, where we moved after my dad was transferred. He was a civil servant at the Ministry of Works and my mother was a teacher. They were both from the same village, Idanre, where they had met.

At the time we had a white Gallant saloon car. Dad would wake up very early every morning to wash it downstairs. Sometimes I’d watch as he washed and sang his favourite hymn.
Day by day, dear Lord of thee three things I pray To see thee more clearly Love thee more dearly Follow thee more nearly Day by day
He’d lift the wipers off the windshield and gently clean them before putting them down. He later bought a Peugeot 504, black with the expected brown seats, which became his car while my mum used the Gallant. My parents were industrious. Besides their regular jobs, they pursued other endeavours. Dad was taking classes after work so he could get a law degree. After he got the 504 he started coming home even later than usual. I remember once waking up around 3 am to the sound of someone entering the house. I checked and it was my dad; he had a face cap on. I asked why he was just coming home and he explained that he had driven his car as a taxi all night. He wore the cap to disguise himself. Of course, he sent me back to bed, but I remember praying for God to protect him as he went about while we slept. He eventually hired a driver to do the taxi bit so he could spend more time with us. Mum owned a shop in Garki, where she hired tailors to make and amend clothes. She also supplied drinks to a lot of the big hotels in Abuja at the time including the Hilton, Agura and Sheraton. Sometimes, after teaching at school she’d travel to Lagos overnight to buy goods and return the next day. We lived in Area 2 in Garki, on the third floor of a block of flats. Our neighbours were a motley mix: downstairs was a pastor, and beside him a family where the husband beat his wife every Saturday morning like clockwork. My parents would shut us inside the house so we wouldn’t hear. I remember riding my bicycle downstairs, between neighbours’ cars and around our block in Abuja where we spent our early childhood. Even riding
that bicycle was a luxury as mum was very wary of her children mixing with kids or neighbours that she didn’t know well. There was this man who had a bald head, the first bald-headed person I had ever seen. I used to spit on his head from upstairs. He’d think it was water and would wipe it off and keep going. I was lucky my parents never caught me because I would have been in plenty of trouble. Both my parents were strict, my dad especially. ‘I’ll tell your daddy when he gets home’ was a sure way to get us to behave. The fear of daddy and his famous brown belt was indeed the beginning of wisdom. I remember the first time he disciplined me. I had struck a match inside our living room and ended up burning a bit of the carpet, leaving our help with no choice but to report me to my parents. As if that wasn’t enough to get him angry, I lied about it too. So little Toke ended up on her knees with her hands up as she got flogged with the most dreaded thing in the world then – dad’s belt! We got scared every time Dad took his belt off and rolled it up. It was his brand of discipline and it worked like magic. But the magic only lasted for short periods; I still got into trouble. One time I joined the cultural group in school without telling anyone, and we had to go to Eagle Square in Abuja to perform. It was some national event and several schools were taking part. We were dressed in this cultural outfit that had mirrors all over, and we had dots of calamine lotion all over our bodies. We were preparing to perform when someone yanked me from the group, yelling at my teachers. It was my dad. I didn’t know he was in the audience and had spotted me. Another time, there was palm wine in the fridge at home. I had never tasted palm wine before and decided to treat myself. As I took the bottle from the fridge it slipped from my hands and broke. No one at home at the time shouted at me; they felt sorry for me because they knew I was in for it. I got the belt that night, and the experience made me terrified of palm wine from then on. My mum was no slouch in the discipline department either, despite being the one we ran to for ‘saving’ from our dad. She was a no-nonsense person, never afraid to speak her mind. My results came in one time with a comment

from my teacher saying I talked too much. My mum went to school to see my teacher. And in front of my entire class she scolded and flogged me – not very hard, but enough to let the message sink it. Dad was an elder in church. He held himself to a much higher standard and that filtered down to us. We had morning devotions and prayer sessions at our house every day, and even though I don’t remember mum being very religious I know she wholeheartedly supported his direction. Even as young as we were then, we understood that dad wasn’t stern because he hated us. He was a generous man; he spent as much time with us as he could, making sure to drop us off at school every morning. It was our bonding time. I always sat in front, in the passenger seat. There was a policeman at a junction we passed on the drive to school who was convinced that my dad had a habit of deep conversation with himself; I was so small the policeman couldn’t see me in the passenger seat. One morning on our usual drive, daddy stopped by and pulled the glass down so the man could meet me and see that he wasn’t mad, he was just deep in conversation with his daughter. Daddy enjoyed buying us gifts just because. He had a great sense of humour, and a smile that could light up a room.
***
In the 80s and 90s, if a family didn’t have younger siblings of the parents living with them then they found helps to assist with house chores or babysitting. There were five of us kids at the time, including a cousin, and we were all young so my parents needed help. My cousin had lost her dad, my mother’s brother, Uncle Leye, and mum had brought her to live with us after the burial. She was his only child and was two or three years old at the time. This was before my brother was born. There were two young women helping mum around the house. They didn’t compare to Aunty Maria, who had been with us from as early as I could remember. She was a second mum in many ways. She helped us with our homework, picked us up from school and just took care of us. But she had to leave because she had been with us for a long time and had to settle down
and begin her own family. Her departure brought Ruth and Grace. We didn’t like Ruth very much; she reported our every infraction to our parents. Grace was nicer. My mum needed two helps because things had gotten very busy for her with her business. Ruth and Grace used to take alternate weekends off. Unknown to my mum, a rivalry had developed between the two women and they stopped talking to each other. This was why one of them wasn’t aware when the gas cylinder developed a leak; because one failed to tell the other.

Source: http://sauta97..com.ng/2016/12/on-becoming-by-toke-makinwa-chapter-2.html

Thanks God bless u I wish I can find where to buy the book easily