PROLOGUE
He ran out dancing shaking his waist vociferously, with fat red beads lining the tiny waist that it covered his bare navel, and wielding a golden staff lined with feathers. He was shaking so much like one possessed that everyone thought he was going to tear in two, but then he danced more and more, swaying his arms and legs in mid air and coming down on his toes. Then he got closer to the people and began to spray the powder from his little brown calabash, smooth red powder, making little shapes in the air. Then he danced towards the king 0n the elevated podium and close to the common but hardworking, honourable and well respected men known to everyone who have come of age to be conferred with chieftaincy titles, shaking his monstrous staff all the way
“Yes! Yes!” he seemed to be saying, as I watched from a safe distance. He was Guba, the chief priest, the sole spiritual adviser to our king. Then all of a sudden clouds of dust began to form, and all we could hear was loud tumbling and rumbling, everyone scampered to safety as the cloud got closer. As the cloud gradually settled we saw them, huge black heavy jeeps pull into the arena, and as the doors slowly opened, big fat huge, heavy men with dark skin glowing like their cars, stepped out of the cars, with bulging stomachs drawing and crawling on the ground like their flowing traditional apparels. Our king ran to meet them, bowing and kneeling before them.
“What’s going on...who are these strange men?” everyone was murmuring, as he led them towards the elevated podium.
“Let’s go home Daniel...at least it will be my turn next year,” father said, dragging me away.

CHAPTER 1
“Pata pata” he came marching down the footpath that led to our house, as the bushes slowly revealed his face , I saw the same blank and impassive face with which he had come marching about a month ago, dressed in long short trousers that feared the ground on which he walked, with a funny hat on his head. Quickly I thrust the toothbrush against my teeth , I scrubbed violently but got no foam, clearly the paste I had gleaned and garnered from the walls of the empty MacLean tube was not enough to produce any. I thought of going to the kitchen to get some “salt” but the fear of father facing the intruder alone overpowered me as I splashed the remaining water from the rusty cup into my face and hurried off to catch up with him.
“Daniel dress up and go to school” father ordered me from the door mouth, raising his hand a bit for me to gain access to the room and quickly closing the opening, intentionally preventing the unwelcomed guest from entering the room.
Hurriedly I got dressed, squeezed my books into the paper sack lying at a corner of the room and rushed outside. As I set off for school, I took one long look at father with deliberation, and I could see his eyes were focused in my direction, and a smile dangling on his lips, apparently I would have my breakfast together with my supper.
As I walked down the path to school that morning, I could imagine the bushes waving at me, telling me they would be there waiting on my way back, somehow it appeared they had noticed my tattered uniform with my black pants sticking out obtrusively, my dishevelled hair, as they began to sway uncontrollably as I drew closer to them. As my imaginations took the better side of me, I walked briskly down the path unaware that I was already in the school compound, I took one last look at the lonely path and it occurred to me that the bushes had only taken notice of me because I too had taken notice of them. Walking into the school compound, a sharp breeze hit my face, and suddenly I felt alone, not alone where I was standing, but alone in my “state”, in my thoughts, I could not keep myself from wondering if I was going to meet father and our rooms the way I had left them, I had an inkling our ferocious landlord had brought something ominous with him. My thoughts raced to mother, she had left for the farm with the first light, and how I wanted to be with her and help, father had not been able to accompany her as he had sustained a cutlass injury on his right foot while weeding, and he had been very disturbed for according to him, mother couldn’t finish the weeding alone and if he didn’t join soon, that meant no planting of cassava alongside the other crops and that further meant hunger! “Was there another type of hunger?” my stomach murmured in protest slowing down my steps towards the open assembly ground.
School today was rather interesting, guess what? There was a fight amongst the big boys, the boys in primary six fought in the school field in the full glare of everyone, over the only ripe mango hanging invitingly on the huge tree just by the dustbin. Initially their friends tried to dispatch us the spectators, but as the fight intensified they joined their friends in the fray so that they had no time for the onlookers. They rained blows, kicks, slaps all they could muster on each other. Nose bled, lips dripped of blood, skin peeled, and one boy especially at the end of the fight looked like someone that had been dug from a grave. A boy from my class ran off to call the headmaster who came running down shouting, “separate yourselves!” at the top of his voice, but the implacable fighters were however too embattled to hear him. Some of us looked at the headmaster, some I know, scornfully for his apparent but precipitous lack of authority. I don’t know why, but i think I felt pity for our headmaster as I stood there with folded arms watching him try to separate the boys “how painful it must be to realize his entire efforts to create civilized boys from “villagers” was unyielding I reasoned, especially as the fighting ambassadors of our school were about taking their primary school leaving certificate examinations. The turn of events soon proved my reasoning wrong and those of the scorners right, for the headmaster ran off to his office and returned, with sleeves rolled up to his elbow and brandishing what looked like a flat plank rescued from one of our tremulous desk. In the paroxysm of his wrath he began to beat the boys with it, so that when he was done, the boys had sustained more injuries from their formator than they did from the fight.
We filed out from our various classes as the sound from the big wheel at the front of our school compound reverberated loudly in our “open” classes signalling the close of school for that day. It was 1pm as the sun sat lazily at the middle of the sky looking sternly at us with its bright rays. I couldn’t help but wonder how powerful the sun was, how it controlled our activities in the daytime, how his presence made us burn, made us dark, made us sweat, Tropical Africa! Wasn’t that what our teacher during elementary science had called it? As the sun beat my head mercilessly. I could feel cold sweats run down my cape to my waist , I suddenly felt uncomfortable even as my pace decreased. Wait! Wasn’t it possible that one could be made very much uncomfortable by the tormenting heat from the sun, that he unnecessarily became angry and possibly violent? Did this in anyway contribute to the fighting of today? If this was true “ how violent the sun and the dried air people would be” I wondered.
As I sauntered home, scenes of today’s fighting flipped hurriedly through my mind, the way our headmaster had battered those boys! hitting them with the plank until they fell to the ground waiving one hand in the air in submission. Even some of the teachers had clearly been displeased with his actions and one particularly had told him not to drag his discontent with the state of things in his household into dealing with school affairs.
“Shut up woman! That is how you women who think you have little education challenge your husbands and get into fights with them!” the headmaster caught up in a swirling vortex of emotions had surprisingly shot at the woman, suggesting he had been in a fight with his wife that morning.
As the disheartening scenes of the fight swam in the waters of my little soul, I dwindled from the friendly footpath, I really couldn’t tell if I was angry, but I was certain my young soul needed answers to some question; was the headmaster going to be questioned? who interposed between disconcerted teachers who wrenched anger sustained from domestic quarrels on children, and the unfortunate pupils in my public school? But were we really public? Probably! After all weren’t we expected to walk around with only pants to cover our unclothedness and no leather to cover the soles of our feet? Didn’t the “public figures” our teachers admonished us to look up to claim to have passed through same stage? But wait! Being “public” was obviously different from been a “public figure” just maybe this stage was necessary for those who wanted to become like the latter. But I knew virtually all the pupils in my school, so why weren’t their children with us? with patches in their shots and holes in their shoes? didn’t they want their children to be like them? maybe they wanted them to be “better”!
“ Some of the teachers are nice” I thought aloud as I cleaned the sweat from my forehead with the back of my palm. Mother had told me to tear a piece of cloth from one of her wrappers as handkerchief, but I had been too shy to carry it with me, now i searched effortlessly for it in the shots of my pocket, in frustration I turned back to my thoughts, I remembered vividly the episode of the boy who came to school with a big sore on his foot and though the teachers had rained abuses on his parents for lack of care, some of them had gone ahead to boil water in the house across the footpath to press the abscess . This notwithstanding, wasn’t there a standard? Did everyone just do what they thought was right? Didn’t father say that this was our problem? That we had no standard for development? That we worshipped every seemingly good thing thrown at us, telling ourselves we would get there?

I could see mother`s footwear at our doorpost as I approached our house, it was unusual for her to be back this early, fear gripped my soul as I thought of what could have happened, had she injured herself just like father? In apprehension, I walked with slow shaky steps into our room, there sitting calmly was mother and father, they appeared engrossed in their discussion quite oblivious of my presence as I stood there studying their faces .Mother said something which father responded to and they both began to laugh, with father pulling mother towards himself, obviously nothing was amiss! I murmured some greeting to them walking into the adjoining room as my conscience prickled me, “why did I always expect something to be wrong?”
“Daniel take some food from the pot”, mother called after me.
Amazement! Was the unfortunate expression to describe the feeling that crept up inside me, was I really going to have lunch?

“Useless man!” Steve shouted at father.
“Young man you cant talk to your father like that”, Mr Jimoh who lived in the room opposite ours rebuked Steve.
“Even if your claim that he can’t take care of you is right, you still cant talk to him like that”, he added.
“Well if he cant take care of me, he shouldn’t have given birth to me, isn’t that what the government says? that parents should give birth to the children they can cater for?”
“Look here young man, I know your father very well. He isn’t a lazy man at all, day and night he is struggling trying to cater for you and your brother, before the cock crows he is up, only to return until its sun set. So don’t blame him if things aren’t working out the way he planned them, he is obviously not a lazy man”, Mr Jimoh again defended father.
But Steve wouldn’t keep quiet, “I don’t care if he is lazy or not, all am saying is that he should perform his fatherly duties.”
“Young man! You are just fifteen years old, you know nothing about life, life is difficult, and mark it that no one, I mean nobody started out to be poor, so mind your mouth oh, unless you want your father to go and steal because of you”
“Well if stealing is what he must do, its none of my business.”
“What did you say?” Mr Jimoh asked Steve in utter disbelief as his mouth suddenly flew open.
“I mean what I said, let him go and do whatever his rich mates are doing to take care of me”, Steve finished and strolled out of the compound.
“Come back here! Come back here!” father who had been silent all this while and sitting on the little pavement outside shouted repeatedly after Steve. Mother too who had restrained father from beating Steve joined in shouting after Steve to come back though in a sonorous tone that was sure to stop Steve in his tracks, but he paid deaf ears to all their cries and continued with his majestic guy walk with both hands tucked into his trouser pockets. As he slowly vanished from our sight, mother turned at father, “get him oh! He is just fifteen oh! Don’t let him sleep outside the house oh!” At first father just looked at her with hate, I could tell that wasn’t him, but then as mother persisted, he made to walk into the house, but mother grabbed his shirt. “these children are the reason why I am in your house oh! They are the reason why I endure all this suffering! Please don’t let our troubles be for nothing oh!” she repeatedly shouted at father. All too spontaneous, like a flash of lightening, father raised his hand and struck mother across her face, she staggered back losing her grip on his shirt, and father strolled inside unhindered. As my eyes followed him inside, tears fell from them as I tried effortlessly to fight them back, I was sure this wasn’t father and that it wasn’t mother either, but i wasn’t sure of, was if the whole thing was really happening, yeah it did happen, just that it Was two days ago
I sat down looking at my food, I couldn’t touch it, I had become so inured to hunger and eating only super. I pushed the food aside, “I will eat in the evening” i told myself as I stood up to go outside, for Steve wasn’t around to play with anymore, he hadn’t been back since he left two days ago.
“Come back here, go and read your books!” I heard father shout after me as I made to sneak past him, for he never did allow me play. Moodily I returned to the room and sat brooding over my improvised school bag. I drew out my science notebook and flipped over the pages, the topic “machines” caught my attention, as I recollected the story behind it, I could remember vividly the day our teacher taught us about machines, how we had all paid attention to him, waiting with much avidity for a demo ,but he had rounded up the topic without any. How disappointed I had been, running home from school, dumping my school paper sack in a corner of the room, running outside and trying to create a lever with the bricks I found at the side of the house. How it had appeared I was making progress for other children returning from school occasionally stopped to look at what I was doing.
“Hey boy, go inside and read your books and stop wasting time on rubbish”, Mr Jimoh had said to me, but I had been too enthralled in what I was doing to heed his reprimand, so that I didn’t see him come behind me, until he kicked the bricks, my lever into thin air with his right foot.
“Get into the house!” he shouted at me .
“No one is interested in your little machines”, he added.
“I mean no one!” he repeated at the top of his voice and walked away.
Reluctantly I had gotten up, wishing father was around to stop Mr Jimoh`s violent intrusion. I still remembered the shock that had greeted me when I had turned around to see father standing there and doing nothing, tears rolled down my dusty cheeks and I had walked towards him intending to walk past, but he had reached out and his big hands and grabbed my thin ones.
“Daniel your little machines won’t take you anywhere, I sent you to school to pass and get promoted” he said to me and then asked me if I understood to which I shook my head, surprisingly mother had said the same thing when she returned home that day.
Today studying the same topic seemed alright, I had expected that I would catch a cold or get gose pimples for the lore now associated with the topic, but that wasn’t so, rather I felt happy reading the same topic, probably because it reminded me of the things I could do and couldn’t, and what peace this brought, still enjoying the peace that had evaded me all day, I dozed off into a quiet sleep, the kind that there were no restrictions in what I could dream of.
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I was woken up by some form of argument in the sitting room, for our apartment was made of two rooms, one housing our big bed, my mat, our wardrobe, cooking utensils and farm implements. While the other housed the two stools, our big chair, the old bench, and more importantly fathers books and ours.
“You have to let me go oh!” yeah, I could tell the voice even amongst a thousand people, it was definitely Steve’s.
“I can take care of him”, I also recognised the other voice, it was that of the grammar school teacher, Steve’s teacher. What he was doing at our house I couldn’t tell.
The argument continued for sometime unabated that I was beginning to expect it would degenerate into an altercation. Why I expected it, I couldn’t tell, but one thing I could was that altercations was what I expected these days from even the most friendly conversations, but honestly it wasn’t an expectation, it was fear! the noise, the fights, the quarrels, violence! too strong for my tender soul I guess. I was in luck, the whole discussion was affable, save for Steve’s obtrusive and galling remarks. I waited patiently for Steve’s teacher to leave before going to the parlour for that was what we called our little sitting room/library.
It was evening when the man finally left, it was getting dark outside, quietly I approached mother and asked her what they had talked about, she looked at my face, seemed to understand I was disturbed, “everything is fine Daniel” she said to me and waved me outside. I walked up to Steve who was looking out of the window, “Steve what did you talk about?” I asked him. He turned to look at me with blazing furious eyes, raised his hand above his head intending to strike me, but he dropped it just as fast as he had raised it, looked at me passionately this time, as if I had startled him initially.
“They won’t let me go away” he whispered to me.
“Who?” I inquired.
“Father and mother” he answered, and walked outside, and from the window I could see him stroll out of the compound.
“Can I come?” I shouted after him, for I knew where he was headed. He stopped in his tracks appearing to consider my request, he nodded as a sign that I could accompany him, and continued in his tracks, and swiftly I ran out after him.
I settled very close to the television screen , folding my limbs and fixed my gaze at what I was there for. A wrestling match was on show, and I savoured every second of the exciting match, until hell broke loose.
“You want to enter the TV?”
“You are deaf?” I couldn’t tell if that was a question or statement, but what I could was that, whoever was been addressed was definitely in soup, for Mr Gabriel was always unnecessarily furious and violent whenever he returned late from work and found the neighbour’s children watching TV in the house. Mr Gabriel was the owner of the house and more importantly and royally, the TV set that caught the fancy of some few children including us who lived houses away from his.
For some few seconds I couldn’t hear a thing, my ear whined and my head ached painfully, as I writhed in pain that sprouted through my entire nervous system, I saw my assailant, Mr Gabriel! In that state of complete helplessness and vulnerability, I saw my attacker again raise his hand to deal me another blow, as the blow came, I closed my eyes to receive it as quickly as possible, for several seconds my eyelids remained shut waiting for my punishment, but it never came. Surmising that it wasn’t to come, I opened my eyes slowly but the horrible sight before me made me close them again.
“Sorry sir! Sorry sir” Steve yelled out in pain pleading as Mr Gabriel and his big sons pounded him with all their might. When finally one of the neighbours came to Steve’s rescue, he was nothing but a wreckage! He had gotten a beating for daring to stop Mr Gabriel from beating me up.

NOTE; All rights reserved. no part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of this author.



(c) (2014)sixtuslight.

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As we walked home, or more apt, as I walked and Steve limped, I couldn’t help crying, indeed I felt sorry for myself, even more than I did for my big brother, my hero! I felt sorry for myself for been there, for wanting to watch TV, for wanting a little pleasure, for wanting to watch TV, when I knew my circumstances didn’t permit it!
“Don’t”, Steve said to me as I opened my mouth, for he knew I wanted to apologise. We walked on in silence. Surprisingly the walk from our house to MR Gabriel that barely took a minute especially when we were rushing, there turned into a long walk. Did pain and hurt slow down time, why pleasure hastened it?
“I lied”, Steve said breaking into my thoughts
“About what?” I asked.
“That mother and father wont let me leave”, he answered.
“I could run away to live with my teacher, at least he has a TV set” , he added with a wry smile dangling on his lips.
“Well why don’ t you”, I asked.
“I can’t, it is you who wouldn’t let me leave” he answered and patted me lightly on the head, I kept quiet and just walked on.
“Please don’t tell father and mother what happened”, it was Steve talking again when I had expected him to be licking his wounds.
“Why? Aren’t we suppose to tell them everything?” I asked innocently.
“Do you think they will ever allow us to go to Mr Gabriel’s house again” he asked with his eyes locked in mine.
“Don’t you want to be able to say something at school when your mates are talking about what they saw on TV?”
“Okay”, I murmured after much hesitation and walked straight into the house.
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It was two days later that Steve went away to live with his teacher. I couldn’t tell if mother and father had finally acquiesced to his leaving, or if he had left without their approval. A day after they went to see him in his new house and when they returned that evening, father was particularly reticent and moody, and mother wouldn’t say anything to me as she plagued father to reveal what was wrong with him. I understood clearly what mother didn’t that father had lost “something” surprisingly mother wouldn’t deduce this though it stood out from the few words he muttered to himself.
“You mean another man will have to raise my son, when am not dead?” father lamented for a greater part of the night talking into thin air.
I couldn’t sleep myself, as I rolled from one side of my mat to the other, which was made from cement sacks sewn together. I could imagine what father was going through. I really doubted if I could, for I reckoned I was still too tender to, but if mother who was grown had no idea at all, it could only mean one thing, that though I wasn’t yet a man, I was a male by gender and could comprehend what the female folks couldn’t, I don’t know why, but I smiled when I came to this conclusion.
I tried counting the lizards that clutched lazily to the woodwork that held the sheets of the zinc. I really would have loved to count ceilings but there was apparently none to count, our house was not ceiled but that at least made us generous, for we sheltered an uncountable number of lizards who in turn blessed us generously with their droppings. Blessings! For our people considered their droppings blessings, but honestly if this was a blessing, I had rather be cursed!
Sleep eluded me ridiculing all my attempts to capture it, again I looked at father, for the fifth time, he was sleeping peacefully now, or so it appeared, for one couldn’t really tell what haunted him in his sleep, considering what put him to sleep in the first place. I looked at him again, how little i knew about father, the man I loved so much, and even how few where the joyous moments in the little I knew about him.
From my records, father was the very last child of his family, a very large polygamous family, he therefore stood a little chance of been noticed by his father who was more conscious of expanding his empire. Grandfather was a renowned herbalist who almost got a new wife on every effective treatment he administered, and how many “effective treatment” the man accomplished in his lifetime!
Surprisingly, despite the lack of attention from my grandfather, father had surprisingly gone to school at a very tender age, and seemed to have done very well, for according to father, he was labelled as “the boy who has his father’s brain.” It is told that he was initially not admitted into the school, for his arm stretched over his head could not get to his ear, being the basis on which it was determined if a child was enough to go to school, father was initially rejected.. his alleged refusal to stay away from school until he was old enough fortunately endeared him to the school head who concluded that father be allowed to attend school even though he wouldn’t be registered formally until he was old enough. So that was how father started in form one and surprisingly, taking the exams with the “qualified pupils” he had unexpectedly topped the class.
Father had not only equalled his seniors in school work, but even more in strength, even as a child his seniors dared not challenged him to a fight for they knew he would topple them and feed them with mud. He personally recounted to us how hw had toppled his cousin who was 5 years older than him, and while he was still on top his unlucky victim feeding the fellow with mud, the boy’s father had come rushing down.
“He will kill you when you get off him!” the man had screamed at young father in frustration, after much unheeded pleadings with father to get off his son.
“Are you the one that helped me fall him in the first instance?” father had retorted.
We all laughed whenever father told this story, those few times when we sat down together. Though the stories of his escapades were quite hilarious, almost incredible, I believed father completely, father wouldn’t lie to us, even if he did, what else was there for one to believe? A pity the side effects was only that my strength was measured on this basis.
“You are too lazy” he would say to me as we worked in the farm.
“You work with your head instead of using your hand”, he would add leaving me wondering how one worked with his head which is on top of the shoulders. Then he would turn to Steve and look at him with so much admiration that his face would glow with pride as my brother pulled the weeds mercilessly behind his legs.
“That is my son!” father would exclaim.
On other occasions, when father recounted tales of his childhood, he would suddenly become angry, with bloodshot eyes ,wave his hands above his head like what he wanted to say pulled at his very soul.
“That is how they ruined my future!” he would exclaim with a croaky voice.
“They knew it! They saw my star from the very beginning”, he would lament, he would remain quiet for some time, then all at once, like an erupting volcano, he would spring up from where he sat on the big chair, point his strong but then shaky fingers at us, and just as he tried to control himself, his deep roaring would only come as a soft whisper from the very base of his throat, “that is why you must never get close to them”
This was a routine roughly engraved in my memory, myself and Steve would then be taken through the list of our distant relatives, how dangerous they were, how unsupportive, and how important it was to maintain a safe distance from them if we wanted to succeed in life. As explained by father, his prodigy caused him troubles in two fronts, first his academic excellence and brutal escapades soon endeared him to his father who before now cared less, which secured him a place in the old man’s heart, but this didn’t attract any frown from his siblings for they were grown and well to do.
“But now they have become poor and want to tear me in shreds!” father would exclaim in the middle of his tale.
“Yes! They claim father thought me the ways of the herbalist, and now I have sidelined them he would add.
Sitting there very close to father and listening attentively to him, amidst his angry exclamations, pity was what I felt for him. For indeed we never received any visitors, not even the so called siblings who were making funny demands from father, they didn’t help us yet they wanted to worry father to death. Did they think father was really making money from grandfather’s trade? why were they not around to see that father wasn’t enjoying? to see that he always declined invitations to ceremonies because he had no proper dress to wear? to see that he virtually slept and woke up in the farm? How unfair! I felt father’s pain, he knew he was completely befuddled by the circumstance, his next utterance always confirmed this
“My father offered to teach me but I refused”, he would say staring out of the window
“Did I agree to learn, did I learn it?” he would ask, directing his question to no one in particular.
On the other hand besides the problem from his siblings, father claimed that the jealous people of his village had destroyed his destiny and his bright future they could foresee by evil means. I was forced to believe him, for the concurrent incidents that had characterized his life appeared orchestrated. For instance father explained to us that he was employed once, a grammar school teacher like Steve’s. But that he was retrenched shortly afterwards. I honestly don’t know what that means, but father explained that sometime ago in his state, the government woke up one morning, claimed they were short of funds in running the government, and decided to reduce the work force, father told us that teachers and doctors alike from a certain level, meaning those who were employed from a certain period were sacked.
“And I had to be in that group!” he would exclaim again.
This was exactly why I agreed with father, that he was haunted, why was it that he had to be in that group, couldn’t he have passed the red line? Couldn’t he have been employed just a year earlier than that evil year?
At this stage he would take a break from talking about himself
“And that is why this country is going nowhere!” he would exclaim
“Imagine after sacking us, they dismissed us with nothing”
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! he would exclaim again with his face completely pale and truthfully hopeless.
For me, I have never blamed those who sacked father, instead those who haunted him were completely to blame. But today as I rolled on my customized cement mat unable to sleep, I stopped to consider the possibility that he wasn’t haunted as he regularly fed us, if he had just been unfortunate to fall in the unfortunate group. But then what right had the man who sacked them, someone had to bear responsibility, didn’t father say this was our problem>? That no one took the fall for anything? Yes! He was the sole person to blame, he was responsible, even if father was really haunted, the thousands that were retrenched, were they haunted too? Probably! I was twisting on my “mattress” now, my young soul again needed answers, the man must have really been evil, if he claimed there was no money, why didn’t he sack himself? “ But of course someone had to govern the state”, my young mind offered apologetically. In disappointment, I sat up, for I knew it was true, but I desperately wanted to blame the man
I laid back paving way for reason, as sleep gradually subdued my anger, I wondered if after the state became rich again, if they till date ever employed any new set of workers, why father and his colleagues were not the first to be offered employment, after all they were still formally engaged conditioned on the availability of sufficient funds.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to be judgemental, for I have always questioned our head teacher’s right to judge which pupil to flog and which not to. For most times, we who witnessed the fights knew better who was wrong and who wasn’t. So I had rather leave the witnesses or in this case the victims to judge “our heroes past.” Father was a witness so I aligned myself with his reasoning, “this was why our nation was going nowhere”, I couldn’t quite place his proposition in our present circumstance for I was but just a child, but even I had a sense of reasoning, of knowing what was possibly wrong or right, one that could not been hijacked even though it could be silenced. I agreed with father if he said there was so much dirt to clean so much unreserved apologies to be made, so many people to appease, so much trust to be gained again, for if taking what Mr Gabriel did two days ago, he didn’t apologise or agree he did wrong, or at least something bad didn’t happen to him since there was no way we could go up against him, I definitely never would wish him well, or work with him wholeheartedly without first looking for how to be “more powerful,” so I wouldn’t be disadvantaged. And how was Mr Gabriel any different from father’s demons (whoever they now were) I wondered as I dozed off.
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“Ouch” I screamed as mother mistakenly touched my wounds. I tried to draw back in an attempt to hide the almost now healed wound at the back of my foot, but my efforts turned futile, for mother had noticed the withdrawal, in confirmation she touched the exact spot.
“Ouch! Ah!” I yelled out in pain
“Where did you get the injury ?” mother asked when the anticipated question was “what is it?” I looked directly at her face, I have been caught, and I couldn’t lie to her.
“I.....I.....I fell”, I managed to say still looking into her face, hoping I wouldn’t get any beating for my own injury
“Where?” she asked, as she rinsed my local sponge in the big basin where I stood stark naked, my beautiful bathtub.
“On my way from school”, I answered, fortunately she said nothing more, instead she lifted me up and carried me into the house.
“ I wonder how you still carry that big man”, I heard father say after us as I rested firmly on her strong shoulders.
“He is still my son”, mother replied father.
I felt happy when mother still didn’t say anything about my injury, but impeccably rubbed palm kernel oil on my rough skin and dressed me up.
I was ten years old, I really did want to remonstrate most times about mother bathing me, but really never found the guts. In a sense, the precision and dexterity with which mother executed the job made me enjoy it, but my little pride as a little man was at stake, for mother didn’t just bathe me, she bathed me outside! Inside a basin! In the full glare of my mates! for it was a Saturday affair when mother wasn’t going to the farm and no one was going to school.
When Steve was still around, Saturday was when we had a little respite from our timetable drawn by father governing everything we did, except how we ate and the TV leaves stubbornly embarked on by Steve to which I was an accomplice. Now I was here alone and the unwanted timetable solely hung on my shoulders.
“There is no use checking it” I sighed and walked past the place where the timetable was pasted on the wall, for indeed it was engraved in my heart like the ten commandments was in the hearts of the Israelites. I knew my schedule for that morning quite alright; first I had to brush my teeth, for I have always thought what I ate and swallowed brushed my teeth, so father have had to include it in the timetable to aid my compliance.
“We need a law to do everything in this country, because it is only punishment that elicits our compliance” I remembered father saying as he pasted the timetable on the wall.
“Are my eyes deceiving me?” I asked myself for it appeared the timetable wasn’t there anymore, I had only caught it with the side of my eyes.
“It isn’t there, is it?”
As I stood backwards to the wall, I took my time to turn around to face it, I relished this very moment when I knew the implications, if just by chance the timetable wasn’t there. Finally, I turned around and a blank wall stared at me, and I think my heart missed a beat; quickly I raced down the long corridor that separated the column of rooms,
“Father Father the timetable is not there”, I said to father shaking and panting from the race.
“I removed it”, father said calmly and walked past me. Standing there startled, I still couldn’t help smiling, freedom! Here it was.
But I was quite oblivious that though the timetable wasn’t there any more, I have been conditioned to live by it, and for a very long time, I would indeed live by its tenets, the absence of punishment or the fear of it notwithstanding.

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“Come along Daniel” mother said to me.
“I don’t want to keep those children waiting.” I didn’t ask her where we were going, for I knew where. Mother taught the children of Dr Johnson every Saturday, the man whom people said owned our street, and the owner of the gigantic house at the beginning of the street, which really made me, believe he “owned” the street. Mother taught his children arithmetic and English language, which I didn’t see any reason for, it wasn’t a secret that they attended the big school owned by the mission, I have passed by that school once, and I knew by instinct that it wasn’t to be compared to the one I attended, so if I who attended my “school” didn’t need any extra lessons, what did the children need it for? Oh! Father didn’t own a street, but wasn’t the school owned by missions? Did father have to own a street before I merited attendance? Oh! The school was run with funds and not with bare hands, and father didn’t have that. Of course! They weren’t making any profit from the school at all! But didn’t the headmaster say he attended a mission school run by the mission and didn’t pay a dime? Oh! Those schools had grants! But weren’t our own people solely in charge of the grants now? This particular school was owned by a black man!
I remember vividly the first time mother asked me to accompany her to this house, how stunned I was and how I had looked forward to seeing mother teach, for I reckoned she didn’t know how to, I grew up thinking she was illiterate, but she had proved me wrong that day. It was Steve who later explained to me that mother was a graduate from the Teacher Training Institute and that she was in fact looking for a job. After then it had been quite easy following mother to her little school every Saturday, since no embarrassing situation awaited us.
I never missed a moment to admire the big house whenever we were there, it was a two storied building, with a huge fence around it and barbed wire shining like an amour on top of it, and to think there were huge dogs almost taller than me caged away inside the same compound, was the man scared of something? There were tall trees almost surrounding the entire house and casting a weird shadow around it, inside the large compound, the wall of the house had various paintings on it and almost disappearing into the back of the house was a sculpture of a man and a woman holding a child, for some reason I thought the sculpture was Dr Johnson’s family, but the man had two children. The flowers in the house were always well trimmed and when he came out he would feel them with the tip of his fingers from his always gloved hands. The mansion had a huge corridor opening into the main building, and from there one could see the large sitting room just below the beautiful rounded staircase and what I particularly liked about the mansion was the shade created by the little palm plants in the well mowed grass under which Dr Johnson always sat sipping juice as mother taught his children. And you could hear his walking stick tap away in the tiled corridor when he got up to go inside after whispering something to mother, and I always wondered why the man couldn’t talk out, did his wealth emasculate his voice?
At first, I simply used to imagine myself walking down the tiled corridors of that house, sitting under the shade of the palm, sipping juice like Dr Johnson, and wielding his silvered walking stick. Soon my imaginations and admiration stretched into this new feeling I couldn’t quite place. It was a little longer before I was to know that what I felt was jealously, for no matter how hard I imagined, I was never to walk down the corridor, sit in the prodigious sitting room or sip juice under the cool shade of the palm trees.
Today, as we drew closer to the gate, I withdrew surreptitiously and allowed mother to go in alone, for what I felt today was different, not jealousy but something bigger, hatred! Hate for those figures of what I wasn’t, what I couldn’t have and what I couldn’t do.
I was too glad when mother came out shortly after going in
“They want to rest today”, she said to me, and we marched back home.
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I could hear people shouting as we approached our house. As we drew closer to the house, I saw a woman wailing, she was Mama Gift who occupied the room after ours.
` “Mama Gift what is it?” mother went to her and tried to calm her down.
“Mr Jimoh,” she said in muffled tone and pointed to him, just as our gaze followed the direction of her pointed finger to the man who sat on the corridor with a bowed head.
“He sent her to buy cigarettes for him,” the woman lamented, shaking her head piteously.
“What did he do?” mother asked a bit alarmed now. The woman didn’t answer but just pointed to her daughter. We turned to look at the direction of her finger again, and this time shuddered from what we saw. There standing was Gift, and blood dripping from her thighs.
“What did you do?” mother rushed to the man and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. The stout man just bent his head as mother pulled at him and wouldn’t say anything. Was that an admission of guilt? If it was, how disappointed I was, the same man who had scolded and admonished us! Could his being duped of the money he had saved all his life as a bricklayer by 419 a week ago be responsible for his present actions?
“You are going to pay for this!” mother screamed at him.
“How?” Mama Gift asked helplessly.

CHAPTER TWO
“Daniel how are you?”Mr Thomas waved at me.
“Good evening sir”, I greeted him with a look of surprise on my face, for it was already night.
“Is my boy inside?” he asked referring to father.
“Yes....”
“Doubting Thomas come inside”, father suddenly emerged from the room, ushering Mr Thomas in.
Mr Thomas was the only friend of father known to us, and from the way they played, I reckoned they were very intimate. According to mother, Mr Thomas was a teacher in a private school in town, and just like father, he had been retrenched. But whenever he visited father, mother would argue with father, asking him what they talked about, but trust father, he never disclosed a thing, instead he would look out of the window, as if he was trying to restrain himself from shouting
“Because I don’t have money does not mean am no longer a man, woman mind your business” he would reply mother leaving me wondering what “not having money” or “been a man” had to do with what mother asked him.
Today, as Mr Thomas took his leave, I put my fingers into my two ears not wanting to hear their routine argument, I waited for a while but heard nothing, then I removed my fingers from my ears and looked towards mother’s direction, surprisingly she was smiling with father, I found myself smiling too though I couldn’t tell why. Sensing something big was going on, for we hardly smiled in unison in our house, I rushed inside, and as I came close to the parlour, I could hear mother and father whispering to each other, it appeared they were making plans, the whispering continued for a while, and then suddenly I heard shouting,
“Still he is not to be trusted”, mother shouted at father.
“Why don’t you ever listen to me, because am a woman right? Why can’t you just see that he has always been jealous of you?”
“Woman, that isn’t true”, I heard father say.
“Okay listen, has he ever been here when we celebrate? Isn’t it when we quarrel that he comes here to settle us? I tell you he looks down on us!”
“Well he is never here to celebrate eth us because we never do”, father replied her and walked towards the parlour. Slowly I withdrew from the curtain that hung loosely on the nitel of the door seperating the two rooms, for I have been peeping from that position, seeking to know why exactly we “smiled” earlier.
Two steps from my vantage position, father suddenly turned around, “Mama Daniel we will be fine, let’s just pray this one works out” I could hear him say to mother.
“Alright” mother replied.
Then father returned to the bed, for I could hear the springs cringe and wince under his heavy weight. I kept on listening and I heard mother giggle
“The d.o.c.t.o.r s.a.i.d”, I think I heard mother whimper through gasps. Father withdrew and marched towards the parlour angrily, kicking everything that stood in his way like I would have done if Steve refused to play with me. This time around I don’t just withdraw from the curtain but disappear completely as I heard father curse, “To hell with the doctor” he muttered bitterly .
A few days later, father started to prepare for a trip and sometime after, he revealed that he would be travelling to Abuja for a job interview, so that’s what the whole murmuring and fuss had been about!
******************************************************************************
Our house was located at the outskirts of the town which was close to the headquarters of our local government. Mother had warned us repeatedly that there was nothing big about “town”, but I honestly didn’t believe her because whenever anyone announced he was going to town, everyone’s attention was drawn.
Most people who live in our street buys water from Mr Abraham’s house during the dry season. The others either have wells or have water brought to them, like Dr Johnson who people say works at the university, so that a white tanker with E.T.F Project inscribed on its shining body supplies him water. According to what we were taught, it is dry season, so that morning, mother asked me to grab a jerry can and go buy water.
“They have killed the whole system, when I was younger, we didn’t have to buy water but fetched water from government taps”, father complained shaking his head bitterly as we watched me drag the can along.
“And where is the person to take the fall for it? wasn’t it under somebody’s watch the system collapsed?”, I could still hear father. I shook my head too, I was angry that I had to buy water, but tried not to show it before mother. When Steve was around, he had been the one to buy water and I jogged behind him, I really didn’t anticipate that things would get this bad, but of course I had only expected that I would be the proud owner of my cement mat. Still a little bit puzzled on my new responsibility, I marched off to Mr Abraham’s house.
“Hey” I heard someone call behind me, and I turned around to discover it was Martins my classmate, instantaneously I increased my pace, trouble was definitely looming, for I had reported him some days back to our class teacher as the thief who had stolen her chalks, and he did get a beating for it.
“Where are you hurrying to?” he shouted after me.
“Oh! You are scared? Of course our teacher isn’t here”, he added tauntingly walking straight to me. I tried to turn away from him, but wherever I turned he was there smiling and his hands tucked away in his short’s pockets. It was obviously no use turning away from him, so I stopped to face him, wondering how he planned to execute his revenge. He looked straight into my eyes and I tried to look away in my obvious trepidation.
“Oh! Teacher’s boy, you are shaking like someone just removed from mama bornboy’s ice-cream cooler”, he taunted and I heard people laugh behind me. Turning around, I noticed for the first time that John, Philips and the rest of his crew were with him, it all made matters worse! He came closer and pointed a finger menacingly at my face.
“I will beat you up”, he threatened
“So this is how he wants to go about it” I muttered to myself
“What did you...”
Before he could finish, I bolted like lightening with only one thing in mind, “go tell mother.” My move must have been too impulsive, for my tormentor only discovered I had escaped, half way down the tracks and mere steps away from the finishing line, our parlour!
“Daniel what is it?” mother inquired as I almost barged into her.
“It is Martins he won’t let me pass,” I answered still panting. At once, like a general, mother marched off with me. When Martins saw mother with me, he fled with his friends, leaving my can behind. Mother’s job done, she turned around to go, much to my disappointment, the whole thing had only been a delay, I still had to buy the water and drag the can home.
As I approached the house, I tried to decipher exactly why I had run away, though I wasn’t sure, I could imagine mother giving me a chunk of meat for doing the right thing. However, it turned out that I had done the wrong thing, for all I got from mother was not chunk of meat, but a proper scolding for being a coward
“I know when that boy was born, you are a year older than him!” mother shouted at me, as I bit my finger, hoping the scolding would end soon, but she continued nonstop.
“I have always argued with your father that you aren’t a weakling, but your unequalled cowardice today proved he had been right all along...”. she went on and on making me look not like an ant, but an elephant who was afraid of an ant. For the first time in my life, I found myself begging mother, not for anything, but not to tell father about today’s happenings.
“Please don’t tell father”, I pleaded with her. She didn’t say anything more, instead she looked at me with scorn and walked away, even as I swore to redeem myself.
Few days later, I ambushed Martins on our way back from school in front of everyone and that turned out to be the worst mistake ever. Evaluating the fight now, I dare say that I was more powerful and stronger than Martins, but he was obviously more daunting. So many times I had raised my fist to strike him but didn’t deliver any blow as my conscience prickled me, I couldn’t bring myself to hit a person like me, but not so for Martins, who left swollen akara balls on my face, for we were at war and injuries were expected.
After the fight, I was destabilized completely; I desperately wanted to be placed somewhere, but where? For last time, it had been okay to call me a coward, but now, deep down I knew I wasn’t a coward anymore, but then what was I? In my predicament, I headed for home, bearing my armour, my uniform that had stood resilient throughout the fight, for its previous tattered state made it quite impossible to tear no matter how hard Martins pulled at it.
“Just curse me mother,” I said to mother who apparently started by my presence, straightened up from the cassava tubers hje was peeling. She ran her eyes over me and seemed to understand what had happened. To my amazement she pulled me closer to herself.
“You are a good boy Daniel”, she said to me rubbing my head gently.
“You are our pride”, she added.
I looked at mother enthused, and all I could mumble was a thank you as I strolled into the house.
“The uniform was already torn,” mother called after me.
“You bet it was,” I muttered perfunctorily.
Later that day, mother presented me with a new uniform drawn out of one of her big basins. Though I was grateful for it, I felt sad. I wished she had left me with my camouflage, because with the new uniform, I was in for trouble with mother. The whole desk in my school were merely an assemblage of strong buttocks troubling wood and nails, so it was only a matter of days before the new uniform would walk the path of its predecessors.
**********************************************************************************
Father dressed up hurriedly as we stood aside and mother looking askance at him.
“Hope you aren’t forgetting anything?” mother said to him.
“This is the tenth time you are asking me that question,” father replied her.
“That’s because you are dressing up hastily,” mother said smiling a little, as her face glowed with admiration.
“And I already told you I didn’t.”
We walked father to the junction as he wouldn’t go to the bus stop claiming the fare was costlier there. From along the road he boarded a bus bound for Abuja, with mother and I waving after him until the bus went out of site.
“Don’t worry Daniel, when your father gets a job, he will bring Steve back to the house,” mother said to me as we walked back to the house.
Two days later father returned from his trip. He appeared very happy and didn’t even remove his clothes before opening a conversation with mother
“It was both oral and written,” he said to her trying effortlessly to remove his big shoes from his right foot without first removing the lace. Mother cast me a weird look and in a jiffy I was down unlacing the shoe.
“Uhmh,” father grunted as I pulled the shoe out of his foot.
“It was quite simple” he said to mother as he bent low rubbing the tip of his toes, apparently the shoe had been too tight.
They continued their discussion as I munched the chin-chin father had brought with him quietly.
“They asked us to come check in a week,” I heard him tell mother.
Still munching my chin-chin, I walked outside. Looking around, I could see where my friends, our neighbours’ children were gathered playing. I walked towards them with the sachet of chin-chin dangling gleefully in my hand.
“See what father brought back from Abuja,” I said to them proudly and just as I did, I realized I had violated father’s strict instruction not to tell anyone that he went to Abuja for a job interview. I looked around cautiously, luckily only my playmates were around.
“You have already disobeyed your father...no one would know if you say something more,” something from within said to me.
“And we are moving to Abuja soon,” I said to the already amazed children who were busy staring at the sachet bearing their greatest desideratum. Ignoring but enjoying their attention, I walked around in imaginary circles with my shoulder raised well above my head, and the little mouths of my admirers hanging agape.
“Daniel! Daniel!” father called me inside making my accession simply too evanescent.
Dinner that evening was exciting, mother stocked the soup with the funny smoked fish that father bought on his way back from Abuja. Father asked me not to eat too much, that it wasn’t ideal for one to eat too much when one was retiring for the night. But I doubted him, since evening was the time we actually “ate.”
“Pon Pon,” the horn of father’s big car blared out.
“You will be late for school,” he called for me as mother emerged from nowhere and entered the car.
“What is he doing,” I could hear him ask her.
“He is going to a new school, please let him dress well,” mother replied and I could hear them crackle with laughter.
Shinning in my new uniform, I stepped out of the house which was quite bigger than Dr Johnson’s.
“Now I was going to beat his children in examinations,” I said to myself as I opened the car door. Undesirably, as soon as i stepped into the car, my eyes flew open, sadly I had been dreaming! I stretched my legs intending to cover myself up with my mat, but I think I kicked a plate, for the noise reverberated through the entire room. I looked round me, and the now empty plates that had served me my supper stood there staring at me. Apparently father had been right, don’t eat too much before going to bed! I had dozed off where I sat eating supper. In my bewilderment, a mosquito stung me on my uncovered thigh and I raised my arm to strike it, but something cracked in my palm, solid eba on my palm! I hadn’t even washed my hands!

*******************************************************************************
Father has always said that mother is a very hardworking woman. He said that she is the reason why we have food in the house. In truth it is harvest season and there is so much food in the house presently. But going by the classification of the food we were taught, the cocoyam, yams and garri we have in the house unfortunately all fall under the same category of carbohydrate. Though mother says she is aware of this and explains that it is the rationale behind the beans she seldom buys from the market, which according to her is very expensive. I looked outside the window and I could see the cocoyam plants almost covering the whole compound, with the shade of its leaves casting a weird shadow on our playground that afternoon that, creating a figure that seemed to be contorting. I walked outside to get a clearer view of the indistinct shadowy figure.
A car pulled over just along the path leading to our house, a very big car! A man I didn’t recognise stepped out of it and walked towards me. I could feel my legs shaking beneath me, for mother had explained that men in big cars sometimes went around snatching little children and using them for rituals. We children called such men “bomo bomo” though none of us had actually seen anyone, but then did one actually wish to see such things? I sincerely wanted to run but it seemed my feet were firmly rooted to the ground where I stood.
“Hello boy,” the man from the big car finally got to me.
“Good afternoon sir,” I greeted him shaking like a leaf, expecting him to whisk me off.
“Are you Monica’s son?” he asked me.
“No,” I answered and he appeared surprised like he was so sure I was Monica’s son, whoever she was. He turned around and headed towards his car to my greatest relief.
“What is your mother’s name?” he asked me stopping abruptly in his steps.
“Mama Daniel,” I answered confidently, a bit sure he wasn’t “bomo bomo.”. He tied to hide it, but I think I saw it, he was stifling a laugh, making me wonder if my mother’s name was funny to him, for it wasn’t to me, except people in big cars found such things funny.
“Come show me your room,” he said to me and I led him there mechanically just as mother emerged from the room.
“Good afternoon sir,” mother greeted him.
“Are you Mrs Monica?”
“Yes sir,” mother answered genuflecting slightly. He turned to look at me and I turned away. Mother blinked her eyes and I walked away, for she had indicated that she wanted to talk to the Mr Monica alone.
They talked for some time, affording me the opportunity to play with my friends, though I watched them from the corner of my eyes. The man walked back to his car, he stopped by mother’s cocoyam and I heard him say something to mother, but he didn’t wait for her to reply, he entered his big car and sped off.
All day mother was smiled and laughed, even making jokes. It was evening now, and I could see father walking down the path, I ran off to meet him. Collecting his bag, he pats me lightly on the head but holds on to his cutlass, he always did. Mother came out too to welcome father, it was unusual for her to, for she always did welcome him right at our door mouth.
When father is done with his “hot” water bath, it was time for supper. As we sat eating, mother starts talking, “a man came by the house today,” she said to father. I looked at her, she doesn’t blink at me, so I stay put and take the time to corner some wares in the soup.
“What did he want?” he asked a bit harsh.
“Do you know him before?”
“So what did he want?” he asked again before mother could make a reply to his earlier questions. I observed a little anger in mother’s tone when she spoke.
“I am the person who has something to say to you...that’s why I hardly discuss anything with you” she said to father looking away from him.
“Well you don’t just start a discussion with a man who has been under the unbearable heat of the sun all day, with...”
“With what?” mother cut in.
“With a man came to the house today,” he mimicked her.
Mother’s face momentarily went pale, and when she turned to look at father, it was with bloodshot eyes.
“You...know...me” she garbled amidst quiet sobs that touched my soul. Mother was sobbing, a tear fell from my eyes too. I listened to their conversation. I can’t say why mother was sobbing, but father sounded harsh, he must have meant something with those words known to mother alone. Father had to say something to her, like an apology, but he didn’t.
“Mama Daniel,” he said to her in an authoritative voice.
Mother raised her head immediately and the quiet sobs vanished as quickly as it had come.
“I am sorry sir,” she said to father, who nodded and continued eating, and so we ate on in silence.
“I am really very tired,” he said to her breaking the sounds of the spoons hitting the stainless plates.
“I understand,” mother replied.
I looked at them completely dazed. Am not sure, but I have heard it from some quarters that men don’t apologize to women, was it what this whole drama playing out before me, was all about? Throughout that night I heard strange noises in our, like someone was searching for something. In the morning, I asked mother if she had heard any noise, but she told me there was nothing to worry about. She appeared to be in a very happy mood, singing all the way from the kitchen to the bathroom, even father was humming. I wanted to know what was going on, so I sat down on the bench outside pretending to put on my stockings. As I sat there, mother emerged from the room clutching a file. She looked very serious and didn’t even notice me sitting there. I heard her mumble some prayer as she slowly vanished from sight.

**********************************************************************************
Our compound was looking very different. It had been too days since the file incident and mother and father had been behaving strangely. Mother in particular had been extra happy, and no one told me what was going on. So it was indeed worrisome that I had returned from school that day to find that the whole coco yam plantation had been cleared. I had heard of thieves harvesting people’s crops in the farm but never thought they would bring their trade home. I could imagine the house empty with the children gone to school, the adults to work, and a thief combing the plantation with a hole, and escaping with mother’s labour for almost a whole year.
As I approached the room, I could hear father and mother talking, I hadn’t expect father to be back from the farm that early. How stunned I was when I entered the room, for there sitting comfortably in a corner of the room was a stockpile of coco yams, so it wasn’t a thief after all.
“Good afternoon sir...good afternoon ma,” I greeted.
“Welcome,” mother said to me and went back to talking with father, who appeared not to have noticed my arrival. I looked at them again as I lowered my improvised school bag from my shoulders, they seemed so happy, talking and laughing away, and I felt happy for then too.
“Take some food from the pot,” mother said to me and again returned to talking to father. I did as commanded and sat down eating slowly. I had just returned the plates when mother called me, “go get Mr Luke’s wheelbarrow,” she commanded.
I honestly couldn’t tell what was going on, I was only given orders these days, but whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I got the wheelbarrow and almost immediately, mother began to load it with the coco yams. And when she was done, she asked me to follow her with the loaded wheelbarrow.
“Where are we going mother?” I asked her.
“We are going to that man’s house.
“Which man?” I asked again.
“The man who came to the house that day,” she answered.
“Oh! Are we going to give him all the coco yams?” I asked.
“Yes Daniel, he helped me get a job with the government.”
“A job?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you have been very happy?”
“Yes Daniel,” she answered and started to whistle.
“He said Dr Johnson told him about me, that I was a good teacher and was looking for a government job,” she added.
Deep within I felt cold, I became quiet and calm as I struggled with the loaded wheelbarrow, how unjust it was to hate Dr Johnson and his family. They didn’t do anything to me, i should have known they would help us, and even if they didn’t, what right had I to judge them, none am sure.
“Did he request for the coco yams?” I asked mother in an attempt to turn away from my inner guilt.
“No he didn’t,” she answered.
“But he did mention that he liked coco yams the day he came to see me, and that it was scarce in the market,” she explained.
“So is he going to pay for it?” I asked.
“Of course no,” mother answered firmly.
We were at our benefactor’s house now and luckily for us, he was at home. He waved us inside but I stood rooted outside, I didn’t want to get jealous of his house, for he was a good man.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said to mother.
“It’s nothing sir, and thank you sir,” mother replied genuflecting slightly.
The man looked in my direction and waved at me, but I didn’t wave back, I just looked at him with grateful eyes, he seemed a god to me. I wasn’t to blame for calling him a god. Was I? After all we didn’t have people coming by to help us every day, did we?
“Thank you sir,” I found myself saying to him and hurrying off with the wheelbarrow. But as I went along, I couldn’t help wondering why I had thanked him. Mother said he helped her, but he didn’t go to school for her, did he? It is still help, there are many out there with the sane qualification without jobs, my conscience prickled me. That evening, mother cooked another heavy supper and I ate heavily, and I slept off where I had my supper, even dreamt, with hands unwashed, and I did kick some plates!
In the morning, mother started to prepare for work, it was going to be her first day and she didn’t want to be late. When I was ready for school, I sat down on the bench outside the house waiting for her. A woman came out of the house, I don’t think I had seen her before, so I looked away. I looked at the woman again, wait! She looked like mother. Unbelievable! With the shiny hair, I thought I heard mother talk about some hair oil. Oh! The coat, like our teacher’s, her high heels, how beautiful mother was, the mother I had known all my life simply in farm clothes. If that was what a job did to people, I had rather everyone had a job!
Since mother got a job, things had relatively improved, a little change in the pockets of my uniform, fish in our soup, and more importantly, mother and father abandoned their little quarrels. Mother continually promised that things would still get better, so that all I did when alone was fantasize about how our improve lives would be. That afternoon, I had just returned from school and curled up in the parlour building castles in the air when I heard someone ask for mother
“Where is Mrs Monica?” I could hear a woman scream outside and a neighbour pointed her to the direction of our room, but I was deep into my daydream and didn’t want to be part of reality at that point. Mother had just brought home a television set in my reverie when I heard her call me
“Daniel see who is at the door,” her voice rang deep in my thoughts, and reluctantly I got up to answer the door.
“Good evening ma,” I greeted a fat woman standing at our door, though I couldn’t see her face clearly for the folds of her neck almost covered her face. She didn’t answer but ran her eyes over me derisively, then she turned around and offered the same look to the soiled tattered cotton that hung loosely on our door post and muttered something to herself.
“Where is your mother>?” she asked me and just then mother emerged from the room.
“Good evening ma,” mother said to the plumb woman and I looked at mother stupefied, for mother is obviously older than her despite her bulk. Wasn’t the younger person supposed to greet the older first?
“Are you Monica?” she asked coughing a little and ignoring mother’s greeting.
“Yes ma,” mother answered.
“I am the wife of that man,” she said suddenly producing a hand fan from her big handbag and begins to fan herself with it, even as she cast a weird look at the un ceiled roof above her head and bites her lips.
“This place is awfully too hot,” she said.
“Oh! that man who got who a job,” she added with emphasis on the job. I looked at mother, her face had reddened, she was obviously angry but trying desperately not to show it. she dropped her head and stared at the floor.
“Okay,” she could only say in a broken voice.
“Yes, and you gave him coco yams,” the woman said.
“Yes,” mother answered and I could see beads of sweat drop from her face into her wrapper tied firmly to her chest.
“We don’t take things from people.”
“He didn’t ask for them, I gave it to him in appreciation for what he did for me,” mother replied her.
“You don’t understand!” Mrs coco yams shouted and mother raised her head and looked directly into her face for the first time.
“What I mean is that we take things from people, but we pay for them. Even if that wasn’t the case, from what I see here,” she paused and her eyes rove over the whole place and finally settled on mother’s wrapper which she seemed to have pulled off with her eyes, for mother suddenly grabbed the knot with her hands.
“From what I see here,” the woman continued.
“I think it will be unfair, and even God will not be happy with me if I don’t replenish your loss, am a Christian you know, a very good one,” she added contemptuously.
“I don’t count it a loss ma, as I said before, I gave them to him in appreciation,” mother replied astonishingly calm.
“I don’t think so,” the woman said and dragged out some naira notes from her hand bag.
From where I stood, I could see how resolute mother was as she folded her arms across her chest, “I don’t want any money for them,” she said. The woman’s face reddened and I could even smell how hot it was, she insisted but mother stood her ground. She must have surmised, and rightfully so, that mother wasn’t to be moved, for she suddenly turned around to go.
“As I said before, am a Christian and will do the right thing, its obvious you need the money,” she said, dropped the money at mother’s feet and stormed out of the house. I could hear a car engine start, she brought a car.
As soon as the woman went out of sight, mother bent down and gathered he money, and counted it. She said nothing to me as she went back into the room. I thought she didn’t want it? I asked myself.
Later that day, mother called me and handed me the naira notes, “go give it to Baba,” she said to me. Baba was the old childless widower who lived some few blocks away from our house. I ran off to the old man’s house.
“My mother asked me to give you this,” I told him and handed him the naira notes. He looked at me with his clean white sunken eyes making me shiver slightly.
“God will bless her,” he said
“And all those who knows that an old man will eat, God will surely bless them,” he added but I could barely hear him for I was already running down to the house. I could hear father talking and I wondered what he had brought for me from the farm.
“I don’t blame her,” I could hear mother say to him as I walked into the room.
“Mmhh, father muttered.
“Opportunity, opportunity, that’s what they have,” mother said repeatedly with her voice ringing into the evening breeze.
“Papa Daniel you aren’t saying anything,” mother said to father, whose concentration was on the farm clothes sitting on his laps as his needle went in and out of it, with his reading goggles sitting firmly and quietly on his huge nose.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked her without looking up from his sewing, and mother completely taken aback by his attitude.
“You said you already dealt with it,” he added.
“I am your wife and deserve some closure,” mother said getting up and adjusting the knot of her wrapper.
“See woman am tired, alright?” father said to her.
“After all not everyone has an office job like you,” he added.
Mother stood up dazed, she looked down at father with bloodshot eyes fuming with rage. She opened her mouth to say something to him but didn’t.
“Alright sir,” she said after a while and sat down. We sat in silence until someone knocked on our door and mother arose to see who it was. It was doubting Thomas, we greeted him and went outside. Mother headed for the bunker outside that served as our kitchen and I followed behind. A little while after, Doubting Thomas steps outside and he waves at us.
“Bye bye sir,” mother called after him as he disappears into the darkness. When mother finished the cooking, I helped her to carry the containers of ingredients into the house. There standing just over the window in the darkness like a ghost is father.
“You scared me,” mother said to him, but he didn’t respond.
“Daniel light the lantern,” mother said to me, and after a little groping in the darkness, I laid my hands on the box of matches but it didn’t light. Mother grabbed the matches from me forcefully and even in the dark I could see her growl at me.
“fake matches!” she cursed after many unsuccessful attempt to get it to light, saying nothing more she flings the box out of the window and draws out another from the cupboard with which she successfully puts on the lantern. Holding the lit lantern, she walks closer to father.
“Mama Daniel I didn’t get the job,” he said as mother approached him.
“Am sorry,” mother said and her face dropped.
“It’s okay,” he said and wrapped his arm across mother’s shoulders.
“And your friend?” she asked
“He didn’t either.” He answered and mother’s face lightened up and she embraced father.We sat down to eat and ate in silence for a while until father broke the silence with a light cough and then started talking.
“Mama Daniel,” he sid and mother raised her head and stopped eating
“I did well in that interview though,” he said to her and she nodded.
“Even the interviewer commended me, and was surprised that I hadn’t a job at my age, that I was still going for interviews.”
“Papa Daniel you are intelligent, everyone knows that,” she said to him, placing her arms warmly on his shoulders.
“That is the problem!” he shouted and flung mother’s hands off his shoulders leaving her to wonder what she had done wrong.
“That is exactly the problem!” he shouted again, adjusting the folds of his big wrapper as he went towards the open window. Mother washed her hands and I knew I had to stop eating as we waited for father’s next outburst.
“”If I am intelligent, how did I fail?” he quizzed.
“Papa Daniel,” mother said evenly to him.
“This people are at it again, they just won’t live to see my progress,” he moaned.
“Papa Daniel please don’t work yourself up, even if that’s the case, we would manage, we have always done so,” mother tried to placate him, she went to him and wrapped her hands around him.
“Okay,” father said to her after a while and patted her lightly on her shoulders. At least it ended there I reasoned, but not for father, who turned around to talk to mother, “even if, since they said they won’t leave to see me progress, they will die for me to progress,” he said.
“Yes! That’s exactly what would happen!” mother exclaimed in affirmation.
“But how did they even know?” he asked mother.
“We didn’t tell anyone, did we?” he asked mother and looked towards me, my heart missed a bit as his eyes pierced into it, spontaneously I looked away. Fear gripped my young soul, for if anyone told anything, it was definitely me who had told my playmates about father’s trip to Abuja. My heartbeat increased and my whole body suddenly became hot with beads of sweat parading my inners and fear tearing at my chest, my conscience prickled me again and again for giving away my family’s fortune.
“Daniel clear the plates,” mother said to me jacking me back to consciousness, slowly I stood up to clear the plates.
“Papa Daniel, you know that they can see everything,” I heard her say to father as I washed the dishes, and for a moment I felt relieved. As I stood there, I couldn’t help wondering why my parents feared dark forces so much, wasn’t it possible that their fear of it was the cause of our problem? Didn’t father say that what one feared was always present with him

Few days later when I returned from school, father was gone, at first I didn’t notice for he always returned from the farm in the evenings. As the day got dark and father wasn’t back, I got apprehensive and walked up to mother to inquire about his whereabouts, and she told me he had gone back to Abuja. I felt relieved and even more contented without asking her about his mission there, for I still couldn’t trust myself not to reveal it to my playmates.
Few days later, father still wasn’t back, mother too became apprehensive, she paced up and down the room and ate nothing all day. As it grew dark, we sat on the bench outside the house waiting anxiously for father’s return, but he didn’t come home. I can’t say if we slept outside that night, but I remember waking up there. Lazily and half-heartedly, mother bathed me in the morning and impelled me to go to school. For some reason, I was happy going off to school, I think I wanted to escape from father’s absence and the sadness that loomed in the entire house. As I walked down the foot path to school that morning, I realized exactly why I had wanted to go to school, I wanted to be alone, to walk down that lonely path alone with my thoughts, to cry where mother wouldn’t see me, where I wouldn’t cause mother to cry, didn’t she tell me I was her strength?
When I returned from school in the afternoon, mother too was gone, I looked around the house for her but she was no where to be found. Lonely and feeling dejected, I sat down on the corridor and began to cry and shout, “where is mother oh! Where is she! Oh mother! Mother!” I wept. Through my tear filled eyes I could see people pass by, they looked at me and turned their faces away almost immediately. I didn’t blame them, there was simply nothing spectacular about a little me, a little boy wailing. How was I any different from those children who cried and wailed every afternoon for food. My song for mother wasn’t even as melodious as that of Pat, the little girl who live two blocks away, who cried every evening when her mother and father fought over what to eat, neither was it as melodious as that of Samson whose parents had been killed by arm robbers in the market, or that of little John whose father had been kidnapped or even that of little Jane whose parents had been killed during the riot. We all had reasons to cry but slowly it dawned on me that my neighbourhood was used to cries and wailings, so I forced myself to keep quiet and soon slept off resting my head on the concrete pillar that divided the house broadly into two parts.
Mother woke me up, and how surprised I was to see her, even more surprised to see father whom I couldn’t immediately recognise for he was shirtless and had a swollen face. Mother explained to me that father had been incarcerated for days for beating up Mr Thomas, that she had only become aware today, and that she had to leave the house to bail father. I really couldn’t tell what bail meant, whatever it meant! But it didn’t seem any different from catching someone and making him pay money before he was set free. Didn’t little John say they had to give money to his father’s abductors before his father was set free? And they had kept him for days too before his “release”? what difference was there between the police who abducted father and those who seized John’s father? I didn’t care, they both had reasons, only apparent difference was that one used uniforms and the other didn’t.
It was some few days after that father was able to talk to us, he explained that he didn’t regret beating up Mr Thomas and that he regretted not having the chance to have beaten up the policemen. He boasted that he didn’t mind rotting in the cell instead of giving them a dime, that his persistence to be taken to court and not to offer them anything made them keep him for two days. He suddenly turned to mother who turned away with tears in her eyes.
“What did you do?” he shouted at mother who didn’t say anything but just kept on weeping.
“Mama Daniel why did you do it?” he screamed at her.
“You mean I paid a bribe,” he lamented.
“No you didn’t,” mother replied amidst sobs.
“What was it then?” father asked.
“Papa Daniel can’t you see?” mother said and he looked up at her.
“They were going to keep you in there forever,” she said to him.
“I still don’t care,” he replied firmly.
“Papa Daniel please I beg you let’s put this behind us and move on,” she tried to soothe him.
“I paid a bribe oh,” father kept on lamenting.
“Now we are all the same,” he added.
“Mama Daniel you shouldn’t have,” he insisted.
“Okay, then stop blaming you, blame me,” she said to him, making him look up at her again.
“Then I regard you as one of them,” he said and his face suddenly went pale and dim, like he couldn’t help regarding mother as bad.
“Yes Papa Daniel am corrupt, we all are!” She shouted at him and stood up.
“But at least, if you would only remember that it was my first salary,” she said as more tears rolled freely down her cheeks.
“I did what I had to do and don’t regret it at all,” she added and walked into the bedroom and I could hear her coughing and sneezing. The same mother who didn’t cry when father had being missing. Father was right, she was indeed a strong woman, but why did she cry now? I hardly could tell, but from the way she looked at father surreptitiously when he wasn’t looking, and dropped her head when he did, I think she felt she had disappointed father. Then, somehow I realized that in all these, it wasn’t me nor father but mother who had suffered the most, pain shooting right from the bottom of her heart.

CHAPTER THREE
“Wake up Daniel,” mother touched me lightly I struggled up and walked to the parlour though I could barely see where I was going for I was sleepwalking. I looked out of the window that had been open since the previous night for the heat, it was pitch dark.
I looked around the almost unlit room with the dim light from the lantern, mother had put a quantity of kerosene in the lantern that evening likely to take us to the middle of the night when power was expected to be restored. But that haven’t happened and I could see the wick of the old lantern smouldering. Father sat on the big chair with his wrapper folded into his loins.
“I had a dream its God warning me,” he said.
“Yes He talks to me,” he added as we fixed our gazes at him.
“Let’s pray,” he said and then knelt down, mother followed and I knew I had to kneel too.
“Father God we bless you for this revelation, we bless You for your protection and provision,” he paused to look at us and quickly we chorused “Amen”
“I thank you for these children you have given us, and more importantly because they are going to be great men,” he paused again and we did the needful.
“Father whatever they are planning again, it won’t manifest,” he continued.
“We shall fulfil our destinies, we shall leave this house to a better house, I shall get a good job, and be able to take care of the responsibilities you have given me, and those who are in need, especially those my siblings even though they abandoned me when they had, grant all these our request in the name of your son our Lord Jesus Christ,” he finished and we answered Amen.
“I almost forgot to pray for our country, Heavenly father please direct out leaders right, let them let You rule this country through them and let them know that they are there not for themselves but on behalf of the masses, especially those who are suffering,” he added and we chorused yet another amen.
I wanted to go back to bed but I couldn’t sleep, how thrilling it was to know father shared my dreams of a rich life, so everyone wanted that, yes we all wanted a better life, but the happenings of some weeks later taught me that until we got there, surviving was more important, no matter how bad our pride was hurt.
There was an old woman, who lived in our neighbourhood few blocks away from our house, she was about eighty with the grey hair running almost the length of her entire body. Surprisingly, every market day she called a motor cycle and with so much effort climbed on it and headed for the market, though she lacked nothing for she had a well to do son who lived in the city and unlike many, visited her and took care of her. Her son’s name was Hon. Godfrey, who when he visited had to pass by our house to get to his mother’s. As his cars rolled past, I and the other children from the street would come out to stare at the motorcade, with our oil stained pot bellies and slacked pants almost reaching our kneels and with our mouths agape as we followed the cavalcade from a safe distance until it stopped in front of the house. Hon. Godfrey would then without saying a word or looking at our direction, like we weren’t there, step out of the car and the gates of the big house would then be shut. That was always the last we heard or saw of him, till it was time for him to leave at which we would again escort his motorcade up to the end of the street.
The old woman too never said anything to anyone. Father told us that her family owned our house and that our landlord managing it was her cousin. I don’t think anyone in our neighbourhood liked the woman for she was always in a quarrel with someone especially the women and their children who played in front of her gate, throwing things at them. But none dared to insult her because of her son, instead everyone greeted her either in clear words or murmurings.
The day came that the old woman died and the whole street went agog.
“Now they will know that we are important,” they all said
“We will see who will attend her funeral.”
Few days away from the ceremony I returned from school to meet that our earth road had been graded. The day came for the burial and the whole neighbourhood suddenly became an enigma of white canopies. Everyone waited anxiously and acrimoniously to see who would occupy the canopies. Some few hours later, some policemen in uniforms and with stern looking faces started to arrive and no one had to be told to stay indoors. From windows and shutters we watched guest gradually fill the empty seats till some had to stand. We heard them crackle and giggle though we couldn’t understand the strange language they spoke, apparently they were from the city where Hon. Godfrey worked.
That night, no one in the street slept for loud music blared and shook the place. When we awoke in the morning, it was a Saturday, the whole place was filled with plastic chairs and some girls in uniforms came and cleaned the place up. Before noon, the music started again and soon the whole place was once again crawling with guest. Gradually, the people began to crawl out of their houses, they filed behind the canopies and stretched out their hands to reach for food but several times, the serving girls would beat their hands down and with their poked noses and fair faces scream at the invading locals, that the food wasn’t meant for them. From where I stood close to the window, virtually everyone in the neighbourhood were out of their houses and scrambling for food. Many were unsuccessful and resulted to fighting with those who were lucky enough to be given food by the serving girls, but many a time the stewards would throw water with which they cooled their drinks at the invaders and they would scramble to safety but would return soon.
I turned around to look at father who sat on the bed with his head buried into his loins. Mother sat quietly beside him with a pale face and worry written all over it.
“Daniel don’t ever scramble for food,” she said to me.
“Yes ma,” I replied.
“You deserve better than that,” she said pointing towards the window. She got up, adjusted the knot of her wrapper and headed towards the door.
“Where are you going?” father asked raising his head from his laps.
“If they won’t let us cook in our own kitchen, then they must give me food for my son,” she said and flung the door open. As she walked out, father sprang up and ran after her, but she shut the door and barricaded it with the bench. Realizing he could do nothing, he joined me at the window as we watched her advance towards the stewards.
We saw her say something to them and immediately one of them ran off and returned with food in three disposable packs, mother collected them, but wouldn’t turn around, she said something to them and again one of them left and returned with three can drinks. Mother collected them and finally turned around and walked towards the house smiling broadly at us at the window. A policeman started to walk towards mother who didn’t see him coming, father screamed and my heart leapt into my mouth as the man got to mother and tapped her on her shoulders. Like a flash, she turned around and kicked him in his loins, the man bent down writhing in pains, and when he stood up to look at her, she wasn’t there.
Inside the house, we ate in silence until mother said something to father and they both began to laugh. To say the truth, the food was tasty and I devoured it within a twinkle of an eye. When we woke up the next morning, everyone and everything was gone. Am not sure if anyone said something after the episode, but that was the last we saw of Hon. Godfrey, and a little while later, the house was turned to a pure water manufacturing factory by the person who bought the house.
I didn’t know what Hon. Godfrey did wrong, if not talking to anyone or inviting anyone for his mother’s burial was his way of doing things. I suppose it must have been because he was better than us that we cared, for if he was our equal am sure we wouldn’t have cared. But father had been quick to point out that he wasn’t better than us.
“One rich man in the midst of so many poor was poor too,” father had said but I didn’t believe him for we all had shown that we were hungry people or like in mother’s case, needy people.
“That if you kicked a man when he was down just to feel strong, you were all the more weaker”
“To think that he is the person representing this constituency in the House of Representatives is unimaginable,” father had lamented.
“Politicians!” he blurted out. Still I didn’t think Hon. Godfrey did anything wrong,he didn’t kick us, he was only a figure of success? Wasn’t that what father wanted me to be? Wasn’t that what he had prayed about? But if he was government, it was definitely my first contact with it, and how that first contact formed me.

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I sat down sieving the milled cassava flour.
“Daniel set the fire,” mother commanded.
“You are going to fry this one,” she said to me as I stood up reluctantly.
“Mother I have many assignments to do today,” I said suddenly realizing the heat and smoke from the fire was when mother fried it.
“How are you going to learn then?” she asked shoving me aside and bending low to set the fire. Just then father marched into the compound, he had returned too early from the farm.
“What happened?” mother asked him, with angst.
“Watch over the cassava from those fowls,” she called after me as she rushed after father who didn’t answer her question. I too had grown apprehensive, so I picked up pebbles for any intrepid fowl and went towards the window.
Mr Caleb was murdered in his farm this morning by ritualist,” I heard father say to mother, who fell on the bed holding her mouth with both hands.
“How do you know that they were the one who did it?” she asked him with muffled gasps.
“They cut out his tongue and removed his teeth,” he answered, drawing mother to himself and holding her tightly.
I never knew Mr Caleb, but his death brought many changes, mother wouldn’t let father go early to the farm and would go looking for him as soon as the sun was going down. On my part, I was not allowed to go to school alone, mother had to take me to school first before hurrying off to her school. However the tension soon wore off and before long our normal schedules returned.
In my final year in primary school, father got a job as a teacher in one of the private schools in town, but he still kept his farms, rushing back from school daily and heading straight to the farm only to return in the evening. It was in one of father’s such return in the evening that Mr Francis first came to live in our house, in Mr Jimoh’s previous rooms. That evening as I sat outside the house waiting for father, a lorry crawled slowly into the compound, coughing and jerking.
“Daniel help them bring down the things,” I turned around to see father. I stood still looking at me, he seemed to have realized I was incapable of doing what he had commanded, surely not with the weakling I was, for he climbed into the lorry himself, holding out the things for me to drop down instead. When the lorry had been relieved of its load, I made to return inside but father called me back to take his cutlass for the first time while he went with the Francis to help them settle into the two rooms across ours that they were to occupy.
The Francis family was a family of two children, Cynthia and Patrick. That evening as they settled down, I could hear them speak the same language we had heard Hon. Godfrey’s guest speak, apparently they were from the city. Father proved me right for when he returned, explained that they had to relocate to their home town since things were not going well for them in the city, but as our experience with them would show, it wasn’t that things weren’t going well for them, rather things were not going at all for them.
Mr Francis was a very gentle and affable, so was his genial wife and children. They lived happily and were always in high spirits. In a little while, we shared our evenings together, sitting outside the house and the cool evening breeze would bath our faces as father and Mr Francis reminisced about their stay in the city. When we returned inside, father would continue with his recollection
“It was in an attempt to get a job,” he would say to us.
“I even had to work as a house boy,” he would say with so much nostalgia in his voice.
It was only after a week of the good evenings that trouble started. I had an inkling something was amiss when none of the Francis family came out to enjoy the evening with us. We stayed out for a little while and then returned inside. We had only just retired when we heard someone scream, father sprang up from the bed but sat back down and folded his arms across his breast.
“Idiot that is what you are! That’s exactly what you are,” it was definitely Mrs Francis shouting, but at whom?
“I will never forgive you for dragging me into this kind of life,” she screamed again, and at this point we understood whom she was insulting. Though she poured invectives on him for some time, we heard no reply. Father laid back and we all went to sleep. Every evening just as we went to bed, Mrs Francis would start up to insult her husband and he never did reply her. In the morning, the man and the woman would greet us in their regular cheerful manner as if nothing had happened. Am not sure what their problem was. But whatever it was, it was definitely enough to ignite such wrath in such a peaceful woman, for indeed Mrs Francis was an epitome of gentleness and meekness, so that whenever I greeted her, she would smile so much at me that I would feel shy.
Mother said that Mrs Francis was a very beautiful and young woman and that her marriage to Mr Francis who appeared a bit old seemed out of place. Soon, her quarrel with the husband degenerated into fighting him and father would rush to their room to rescue the man from her firm grip on his shirt and when he returned, he would sit in the bed with his head buried deep into his loins then he would spring up and pace up and down the room with clear fury in his eyes, for whom I never could tell. One evening when father returned from his rescue mission, he sat up and talked to mother.
“Am tired of paying a blind eye to what is going on,” he said to her and she straightened up from the clothes she was folding and paid attention to father.
“What do you mean Papa Daniel,” she asked him.
“Mama Daniel, these people need food,” he answered.
“Did they tell you that?” she asked and returned to folding her clothes.
“So we are to leave them to die?” he asked her looking directly into her face and she looked away
“We both know they have refused to tell us the cause of their incessant quarrels which to me is glaring,” he added.
“What are we going to do,” she asked turning around to face father.
“I think we should give them a part of our farm, it’s no use getting them a new farmland since it’s well past the farming season,” he said
“Alright sir,” mother nodded in agreement.
“But Papa Daniel it would be a month before they can harvest anything from that farm.”
“That means we would have to help them with the little foodstuffs we can manage until it’s time for harvest.”
That evening, father tied some tubers of yam together, mother packed some Garri into a basin, some pepper and onions into another and they gave me a gallon of palm oil to carry along with them, as we marched off to give them to Mr Francis. It was the first time I was entering the room, there was a thick red rug on the cement floor, with big chairs sitting on it, in the corner were some books. A portrait of Mr Francis dressed in some sort of uniform sitting on a big chair in an office decorated with the national flag and pictures of the president, with a a telephone receiver dangling on his left hand, hung on the wall. In another corner of the room was a pendulum clock that struck out obtrusively in the bare room. Elsewhere in the room was a huge white refrigerator and just beside it was a huge TV set far bigger than any I had previously seen.
“Father won’t let us put that in,” Cynthia broke into my thoughts as my eyes rove over the whole room with admiration.
“Oh!” I managed to say still eyeing the huge fridge.
“He wants to sell it, that’s why,” she explained.
As I stood there watching Mr Francis thank father, I couldn’t help but feel pity for him as he knelt down repeatedly, but father warned him to stop kneeling if he didn’t want him to leave and he stopped. Later that evening, Mrs Francis who had not been around when we visited came to thank us.
“Am sorry we didn’t...”
“Don’t worry I understand,” mother Interrupted her as she tried to explain something to her.
“Am still in shock,” I heard her say.
“I still can’t believe it...” she kept on talking to mother until far unto the night when she bade mother good night.
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“Daniel off your clothes and go wait for me inside the basin outside,” mother commanded for it was a Saturday. I complied, walked towards the basin stark naked and climbed into it waiting for mother. I don’t know why I turned around, but I did and there looking at me was Cynthia. Impetuously, I climbed out and ran into the house, speeding past mother who was approaching the basin menacingly with soap and water.
“Daniel come outside.” Mother shouted after me but I didn’t. She repeated the order but I was resilient as I waited patiently for her to come spank me.
“What is wrong?” she asked me as she sat down on the bed. But I didn’t reply, she went out and I heard her say something to Cynthia.
“You can go have your bath in the bathroom,” she came back and said to me.
“Thank you ma,” I said to her realizing she had just handed me an invitation into manhood. It was the first time I was stepping into the supposed bathroom and I realized it was better called a mud pit for the little room consisted of a big flat plank placed on the ground for one to stand on, and a wall around it made of palm fronds. I hung my shorts on the palm and bathed hurriedly spitting continuously so that my mouth almost went dry when I was done. With disgust, I poured the whole water in the iron bucket on my head, put on my shorts and ran out of the bathroom. In earnest, I didn’t enjoy the experience at all and would have preferred bathing in the basin or at least in the open compound, but I wanted to be a man and the mud pit was where men bathed! If that was what it took, I was certainly ready to be a man, but it wasn’t, for as I reached for my jar of palm kernel oil, I sensed a sting on my buttocks, another in my lower abdomen, and yet another in my groins all in qui ck succession, ants! I had not bothered to check my shorts when I reached for it from the palm fronds.
“Ah! Ah!” I screamed repeatedly looking at mother, but she looked away and I could see a smile dangling on the corner of her lips as she left the room.

Days rolled into weeks and we never heard any quarrel from the Francis family again. In the evening they would come out of their rooms and sit with us at the front of the house discussing. For some reason, I felt shy whenever Cynthia was around and would try desperately to avoid her gaze, as she smiled broadly at me. She had big round eyes and dark long hair that rested on her shoulders, she looked exactly like her mother, and that meant she was beautiful, since her mother was beautiful according to mother. Her brother Chris was my age, making him my preferred playmate, but he was much quieter than I and when we talked, he would stare aimlessly into the dark ugly sky, then he would look at me and tell me to stop talking.
“Papa Daniel I don’t know how to go about it,” Mr Francis said to father as we sat outside on one of such evenings and as I tried effortlessly to get Chris to play.
“What class did you say they were?” father asked him.
“Cynthia was in j.s.s 3 and Chris was in primary six.”
“Well its simple, Daniel is in primary six too, so Chris can join him in his class.”
“What about Cynthia?” Mr Francis asked with so much worry written clearly on his face.
“What about her?” father asked a little bit surprised.
“I don’t want her in that public school.”
“Why?” father asked
“I mean the school is meant for boys and girls.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“How?” father asked
“Cynthia is a very pretty girl,” he answered.
“So?” Father asked with his voice raised a bit.
“I cant just enrol her into that public school,” Mr Francis said with bitterness in his tone and shaking his head vigorously.
“This isn’t what I planned for them,” he added and suddenly became tremulous and shaking all over.
“You will have to make do with what is available Mr Francis,” father said to him and patted him on the shoulders.
That was how Patrick came to my school and for some reason I couldn’t quite comprehend, Cynthia was enrolled into one of the private schools in town. I had heard Mr Francis complain alright, but it didn’t make sense to me at all, for some unknown reason the man was scared of his daughter attending a public school, but for what reason, father’s discussion with him didn’t reveal. Clearly, Patrick stood out in our class and soon everyone came to notice him. He spoke good English and fluently too, while the rest of us struggled to speak good English, we didn’t attempt the fluency part at all, certainly not with our huge accent bias. No matter how he tried though, myself and my colleagues dominated the environment till we wrote our final exams, for he was a city boy and unfortunately the local school was made for local brains which only me and my colleagues had.
At home, the Francis were fast settling down, they accompanied father to and fro the farm, and father claimed they were doing fine. Then one even ing father returned from the farm and had his bath as usual but there were stains of blood on his farm clothes. Mother came in almost immediately, and there it was on her face, anger, consternation.
“Papa Daniel what happened in the farm,” she asked father repeatedly, but he wouldn’t answer, he just bowed his legs into his loins. Fear gripped me after such a long while and I feared father had hurt himself.
“Papa Daniel please talk to me oh,” mother pleaded with him but he didn’t bulge.
“You wouldn’t imagine what Mrs Francis was saying just now.”
“What did she say?” father asked and mother looked into his raised head like a miracle had happened.
“She said she is tired of going to the farm,” mother continued.
“She said she is no longer going to that cursed farm, that she had had enough,” mother revealed.
“And to think we were trying to help,” she clasped her hands adjusted her wrapper and replaced her hands on her waist.
“She injured her leg in the farm,” father said calmly.
“What did you say?” mother asked shocked.
“Mrs Francis cur her foot with the farm in the whole today,” father said to the already disturbed mother.
“That’s what happened,” he got up and went towards the window. Mother was stunned, she went to sit by the bed shuddering.
“Did you apply anything...” she said stuttering.
“Yes I applied some leaves, but I dare say she lost no small blood, my whole clothes is stained with it,” he said and mother wheezed.
“Oh poor woman,” mother muttered.
“Mama Daniel do you know that Mr Francis was an immigration officer?” father said to her.
“No I didn’t.” She replied.
“Well he was laid off by the little gods we have in our country,” he said and the same fury I had seen in his eyes a few days ago returned.
“That reminds me,” he said and mother looked up at him.
“Please help me with some money, he complained that his children don’t have anything to write with in school,” he said to her.
“I really feel for him, he had to sell some of his things to get the girl enrolled into a private school,” he added.
“Cynthia?” mother asked.
“Yes,” father answered.
“I will get the money oh,” she said rushing towards one of her basins.
“Not now, tomorrow,” father told her.
“Why not?” mother asked and I could see compunction all over her.
The next day, father came home with some beautiful notebooks and biros, though I was glad he was giving them to Patrick and Cynthia, I still couldn’t help but feel jealous, after all apart from my parents, no one ever bought me anything!
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Apart from making farms, father made improvised traps in his farms, and most times would return with dead captured animals having deep cuts on their carcass. According to father, the area of the cuts depended on where the trap met the unfortunate thing when it went off. The meat from the animals added relish to our meals. The animals from father’s trap ranged from hare, rabbits, squirrels to deer. At other times the trap would mysteriously catch birds and I quiz father on how a flying bird met its death in a stationary trap. Ours meals were therefore frequently nourished with bush meat and as I grew older I lost my appetite for such delicacies. I could imagine other more fortunate children biting away into delicious beef, cow meat as father called it.
One evening, as usual father gave me a big chunk of bush meat from the unfortunate rabbit that had crawled into his trap some days back. With resignation, I walked outside with my chunk of meat holding it by its fangs for father had given me the fore limb of the animal.
“What is that?” Patrick came running down, I was a bit cynical of his interest in my affairs and took my time to answer him
“It’s called meat,” I finally said to him as frostily as I could.
“With hands?”
“No with legs,” I retorted. Imagining how annoying he was, for no doubt he got better meat that evening as I had earlier heard his mother frying fish.
“What meat?” he asked irksomely.
“I don’t know,” I snapped at him. I made to return inside but he snatched the meat from me and ran away with it.
“Good riddance,” I muttered.
“Daddy Daddy,” Patrick shouted repeatedly and Mr Francis came running outside.
“What is it?” he asked his son
“Its bush meat,” Patrick screamed out in chirpiness.
“Where did you get...” he paused and looked at me and I looked away crestfallen with his involvement.
“Daniel,” he said collecting the meat from his son to examine it.
“Sir,” I answered.
Father who had by now finished his meal came outside and discerned what was going on almost at once.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t know you liked it,” he said apologetically to <r Francis who in embarrassment quickly returned the piece of meat to his son.
“Oh...my...son,” he stuttered.
“You take bush meat?” father asked reaching for a bone that stuck in his gums.
“Who doesn’t, just that its big man food,” Mr Francis replied.
“Oh!” father exclaimed.
“I tell them every day that it’s very expensive in the city,” he said looking towards my direction.
“Yes, it’s because things are no longer as they used to be that we don’t buy anymore,” Mr Francis joined father.
Just the next day, father came home with a Grasscutter and after roasting and butchering it, he sent a part to Mr Francis, who came running down, beaming with smiles and thanking father repeatedly in his characteristic manner. That day, I ate the meat with a new sensation, with the knowledge that I was a “big man” and eating what others couldn’t afford, I don’t know why, but that very fact gave it a new tingly pizzazz that made me devour the meat speedily. When I was done with the flesh, I came out cracking the bone, and Patrick joined me shortly though we did it independently of each other, but from that day our friendship received a boost and I was always to hold him in great esteem.

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At school, Patrick became my best pal and we studied and soon moved to my seat with my previous seatmate too glad to switch seat, for according to him, I always too serious and scared him. Patrick was a very friendly person and full of life except for times when he behaved as he had previously done, that I feared I had misjudged him initially. We would talk for hours as he told me about his stay in the city, then he would suddenly become dull and quiet, and I would wonder what I said that was out of place. One day, he walked up to the teacher’s desk and said something to her and continued to talk to her in low whispers.
“Get out from here,” our teacher suddenly yelled at him
“Why do you think you are a peculiar child, why can’t you learn to live like the others,” she continued to shout at him.
For the rest of that day, Patrick was morose, staring into thin air. He seized me by the throat when I touched him and repeatedly warned me to stop talking. As daring as I was, I disturbed him to reveal what was wrong with him, but he revealed nothing and left for home before the close of school. As I walked down the lonely path from school alone that afternoon, I tried to imagine what Patrick had said to our teacher that made her so mad at him. As I searched for an answer, I didn’t look ahead of me, so that when I looked up, fear gripped me, there in broad day light was an indistinct figure with four legs, four hands and two legs. Cleary frightened by the ghost stories that resonated in my mind, I walked towards the figure with caution, for the lonely path was the only road that led to our house.
As I approached the anomalous figure, it began to take shape, so that when I got to it, I saw exactly what it was, a boy and a girl fastened to each other locked in an unholy embrace and kissing away into the hot afternoon sun under the cool shade of my innocent bushes. As I walked the remaining distance to the house, I thought of what to do, I knew what they were doing, I knew why Mr Francis feared public schools, but she wasn’t in one! I thought of telling Mr Francis what I had seen, but I concluded I wasn’t for Cynthia had been nice to me, and besides I liked her.
Walking into the house, I could see so many foot wares by our door post, making me wonder if another “distinct figure” awaited me. Opening the curtain, there sitting like a real ghost was Steve and beside him, his teacher. I greeted them and walked into the bedroom, and yet to my amazement, in a corner of the room were Steve’s little belongings. They talked for some time, and soon Steve’s teacher took his leave. On the man’s departure, I ventured into the bedroom.
“Steve,” I said to him.
“Don’t dare call me by my name,” he said sharply to me to my incredulity, for I had called him by his name all my life.
“Sorry,” I apologized.
“Sorry for yourself,” he shouted at me and walked outside, Leaving me standing there and wondering if he was the same Steve I had known all my life, the same Steve I had so greatly longed for his return.
It was in the evening i saw him again, we were all seated in the parlour when he walked in, as soon as he saw father, he retreated.
“Come back here!” father shouted at him, and reluctantly he walked into the sitting room once more.
“When last did you see me?” father asked him.
“Of what use is that,” he replied tapping his right foot on the cement floor.
“Has something climbed your head?” father asked him.
“Do I look like someone something has climbed his head?” he shot at father whose face suddenly reddened.
Father stood up and began to pace down the room. Mother and I kept silent and watched him keenly. His temper cooled down after a while and he sat back down.
“Steve what happened?” father asked him.
“I don’t know,” he answered and something pinched my stomach for father had stood up and was fuming again.
“I am not going to ask you again,” he said to him and sat down.
“I beat up some boys,” he answered after a while.
“How many?”
“Five of them,” he answered.
“Come and sit down,” father created space for him on the big chair and he sat down.
“Am listening,” father said to him. He hesitated for a while and then began to speak.
“That man treated me like an animal,” he blurted out and I could sense he was very angry for his whole body contorted with rage.
“I was hardly in school,” he said and father looked at him.
“What kept you out of it,” he asked him.
“I was always in his farm,” and father kept quiet.
“My son you are supposed to be in S.S.S 2, is that your present class?” he spoke up.
“yes sir, I managed<” Steve replied smiling. Again father kept quiet and silence descended on the entire room. Giving room for the chirping of insects, I looked out of the window, it was dark.
“Go remove my farm clothes,” father turned to me, and I dashed out to remove the uniform I had hung on the line to dry out father’s sweat.
“So why did he bring you home?” I heard him ask Steve.
“He was tired of me,” Steve answered and father stared so hard at him, that my plucky brother looked away.
“No...I told him I wanted to be regular in school, so he got five of his students to teach me a lesson,” he added quickly.
“He sent them after you?” father asked clearly alarmed.
“Don’t worry father I dealt with them,” Steve added standing up and gesticulating on how he fought the boys.
“Sit down!” father shouted at him and he did.
“Is that the story he told you?” he turned to mother.
“No, he said Steve was beating up boys in the street and their parents were complaining,” mother answered.
“Steve how come?” he turned back to Steve.
“Father am not lying, Steve said to father looking straight into his eyes.
“I won’t lie to you,” he added emphatically.
Instantly, father sprang up, dashed into the bedroom, and returned brandishing his cutlass, the shiny cutlass caught the beam of the lantern and I could only imagine how sharp it was.
“I will teach that man a lesson,” he said and dashed out into the darkness. Quickly we ran after him begging him to retreat. Mother ran back to the house banging the door to Mr Francis room and pleading and shouting for help to restrain father. She seemed to have been unsuccessful in her quest for she returned shortly and joined in begging father to retreat.
“Papa Daniel,” you will kill that man oh,” she pleaded, but father paid deaf ears and marched on.
“I will only teach him a lesson,” he threatened.
“You know what happened the last time you beat up Mr Thomas,” mother reminded him.
“I don’t care...I will sure teach that man that, am alive and will take care of my children myself,” he swore.
“That idiot,” he cursed.
We just walked on with father and soon we were in the next street. Mother was weeping uncontrollably but somehow I didn’t cry. I had known father and I knew he wasn’t going to retreat, but could only be delayed.
“Father,” I said and he looked at me.
“Steve’s teacher lives in town and we both know we won’t get to his place tonight, why don’t we deal with him tomorrow, I will carry your cutlass for you,” I said to him persuasively and cold shivers ran down my spine even in the cold breeze of the night as I suddenly realized how childish my statement was, but father stopped abruptly
“Okay tomorrow then!” he said to me turned around and marched back home as we ran after him to keep pace with him.
At home father sunk into the big chair panting deeply and loudly.
“Mother, father hasn’t eaten,” I reminded her.
“”I don’t think he will eat,” mother replied
“He will if I serve him,” I said and mother nodded in agreement. I brought the food to father and he looked up into my face, bowled over.
“Thank you Daniel,” he said to me and started to eat. As I waited on father, he gulped down cups of water and devoured the food in a hurry; indeed the race he just ran deserved such rush. I looked at him keenly, he looked so strong and I knew no one dared restrained him against his wish. A tear fell down my cheeks and others followed but I just let them fall as I focused on father’s face.
**********************************************************************************
Steve settled in our house and didn’t go back to his teacher and continued his education in our house. Life went on with The Francis stopping their fights completely, even as Cynthia’s immoral escapades continued unabated becoming almost a daily affair. It was always a soul troubling sight to behold and the male victims soon began to vary. I kept quiet and never did tell anyone though I kept on wondering if I was the only one who passed by the lonely path of horror. A day came however, that circumstance nearly pushed me to tell on her, but for the noise that restrained me.
We were in the parlour one evening when we heard someone shouting, and we all rushed outside. There in Mr Francis’ clutches, with neck twisted and breathing heavily was Steve whom we could barely recognise with his swollen face.
“What is this,” father shouted at Mr Francis, pointing his fingers at the wreckage, but the man held tightly to his captive and saying nothing to father.
“Mr Francis let go,” father shouted at him and moved to rescue Steve from his tight grip, the man loosened his hold and father helped Steve to his feet.
“Let me explain,” the man pleaded with father who was busy trying to drag Steve inside the house.
“Mr Francis it’s okay,” father said to him patting him on the shoulders and the man heaved a sigh of relief.
“Am very sorry,” he shouted after us as I joined father lift Steve inside the house. Mother got some water and washed the dust off Steve gently removing his shirt.
“Papa Daniel are you not going to do anything,” she asked father bending low to dip the soaked rag into the bucket with which she massaged my brother’s face.
“The man is a good man Mama Daniel,” father replied.
“So?” mother asked.
“I mean just look at him,” she pointed at the moaning Steve who moaned loudly in confirmation of his injuries.
“Shut your mouth you pig!” father shouted at him and he stopped moaning.
“He must have done something,” he turned to mother.
“To warrant this,” mother asked raising her hand and inadvertently touched Steve’s swollen head, who yelled in pain.
“Sorry,” mother said to him.
“You better shut your mouth,” father shouted at Steve and he kept calm and began to sob quietly.
“We must do this on equal footing,” he turned once more to mother.
“What equal footing?” she asked drying her wet hands on her wrapper.
“Mama Daniel, we mustn’t make them feel like they owe their lives to us,” father answered her.
“I could already see remorse written all over him just now,” he added.
“Remorse for this?” mother retorted.
“Mama Daniel please...”
Just then there was a knock on the door and Mr Francis and his wife came in. Immediately they went on their knees pleading with father. Father begged them to get up and when they wouldn’t, he knelt down too.
“If you won’t get up, I won’t either,” he said to them and reluctantly they got up. He ushered them into the big chair and spoke up before they could say anything.
“Mr Francis am a man, and if our system has made us feel lesser than that, that we can’t take care of things, i can’t make you feel that way too...” he paused.
“I simply won’t, I believe Steve must have done something,” he added.
“Yes he made advances, serious advances towards my daughter,” the man revealed.
“They are all I have now,” he moaned and bowed his head shaking his right foot
“I thought as much,” father said and mother suddenly withdrew from the room, and I could hear her grumble and murmur as she retired to the bedroom.
I left the men talking and retired just like mother, and just as sleep took over me, I heard the Francis bade goodnight to father. I felt sorry for not revealing to them that it was Cynthia who made advances to boys and not the other way round. Then i realized the opportunity did not present itself and finally slept off in peace.
As one would expect, the relationship between father and Mr Francis did not waver at all, neither did my friendship with Patrick, but Steve was the most affected. He suddenly became humble and quietly went about his business talking to no one.
**********************************************************************************
Father returned from school one afternoon and announced that we were moving. At first I didn’t understand until mother explained that we were moving away, that father had secured an apartment in town. The way mother called the “apartment” made me conclude it would be better than our present rooms and I began to look forward to moving. We were to leave in two weeks.
As I prepared for my primary school leaving certificate, I still couldn’t help fantasizing on our new apartment. The Francis knew about our intended move and they became low spirited, except for Cynthia who was never at home.
A week before we were to move, I returned from school one afternoon, and sank into the big chair in father absence, after calling out unanswered to Steve who was supposed to be at home, been done with his exams. Suddenly, Steve came rushing inside sweating profusely and with just his shorts on, but didn’t seem to notice my presence.
“I got her, I got her,” he shouted repeatedly and then began to whistle and hum, jumping up and down in ecstasy.
“Who?” I asked. Completely startled, he turned around to see me sitting on father’s big chair. Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated my return from school, he shot me a hard look.
“Mind your business,” he said to me, taking his little towel and bathing soap, he went out to bathe, whistling and humming all the way. He returned shortly and met me in the same position.
“Do you know how to catch a city girl?” he asked me.
“I don’t know and don’t want to, I answered.
“Anyway...,” he paused and bit his fingers.
“It could come in handy someday, buy her things from the city,” he rev ealed.
“Your business,” I said to him.
“Hungry boy,” he said mockingly laughing hysterically.
“Go get some food from the pot,” he said to me and I sprang up at once and went to the bedroom. I opened the pot only to see it was empty even as Steve’s annoying laughter rang in my ears. In annoyance I flung the pot cover aside and the rattling sound swallowed his laughter.
A week later, father brought a lorry to the house and we loaded it with our belongings. When we were done and ready to leave, mother and father joined the driver at the front while Steve helped me up the lorry, on top our belongings. As the lorry crawled out of the time-honoured compound, we waved to the Francis, until they were out of sight, but I could see the tear on Patrick’s face glimmer in the hot afternoon sun and I could feel something yet in my eyes.
Just after a week of our arrival to our new house, mother came rushing home, crying.
“Cynthia is pregnant,” she revealed. From that very moment, Steve changed; he wouldn’t take his meals and talked to no one. Father bought him pills from the chemist but his condition didn’t improve after taking them. At first I reasoned he was pretending in other to escape from farm work since both he and father were on holidays, but then as he began to emaciate, I was constrained to believe he was actually ill.
Then mother came home one day and revealed that Mr Francis had arrested the boy who impregnated his daughter.
“And he was from her school,” she revealed.
“What did you say,” Steve asked with his red and sunken eyes jumping up. Mother repeated what she said and at once Steve got up from where he had been lying for days. He went to have his bath and when he returned, he asked for food which he devoured hungrily. We looked at him in amazement as he began to talk, trying to fathom the sudden turnaround in his health. Much as we tried though, we couldn’t explain the miraculous healing, probably only Steve could, but that was the last we saw of the strange illness.

CHAPTER FOUR
“I told you he won’t come,” father said to mother mockingly
“He is busy,” mother replied.
“Busy?” father asked.
“He is a very busy man,” mother defended our church pastor whom she had gone to invite to come bless our new house.
“And how long have you been going there, seven good times and he has been busy,” father said to her.
“Papa Daniel...”
“Of course he is busy visiting the same people who steal our money to buy him cars,” father shot at her.
“He is busy, the same man who was down our street visiting the owner of the big house yesterday, of course we don’t have money to give him so he wont come to us,” he said to her.
“Mama Daniel I have always told you that the God I serve answers my prayers with or without an interposer, I told you we should pray for the house ourselves, but no, you wanted the man to come perform miracles,” he said again.
“Mama Daniel, our God answers a quiet simple prayer from a humble heart without looking at the weight of his pockets,” he finished and went inside, and that was how we settled in our new house with neither a simple prayer nor the pastor’s hot one.
It was not long after we settled in our new house that an unknown cousin of ours came to live with us, with the circumstances surrounding his coming very suspicious. I remember a taxi pulling up at the front of our house one night, and a tall figure stepping out of it; it was our cousin, Emma who came with no single belonging. He turned out to be a very quiet person, his whole conversations were in slangs he spoke sharply and avoided talking to me. Steve seemed to have taken a quick interest in him, he reciprocated and they soon became best pals. Besides been a very queer person, Emma was a very scary guy with a bald head, big bulging eyes, a pointed nose, and huge cheek bones that struck out conspicuously from his face.
Before his arrival, father had warned us to keep away from him, so when father was around, Steve would avoid Emma, but as soon as father stepped out, he would run to him and they would fall deep into funny conversations. I never did blame him for running over to Emma and never understood why father would want us to keep away from him, when he was right at our noses, after all he was from the city and had many fanciful tales to divulge.
Emma was a very tall and slender person and when he walked, he would push his whole body forward all at once and his buttocks would shoot out. Within a week of his arrival, I began to notice the presence of strange girls around the house. They would wait outside the gate walking up and down until Emma came out and eluded with them. Soon it was Steve coming out to receive the girls.
One day I returned from school earlier than usual with a severe stomach ache having struggled all the way trying desperately not to mess myself up. So that when I finally got home, I flung my school uniform aside and rushed off to the toilet. When I had eased myself, I heaved a sigh of relief, sweating profusely I put on my uniform. Just then I heard people laughing in the other room, I had rushed across the same room to get to the toilet without looking. I was shocked for only Emma was supposed to be at home and he wasn’t insane to be laughing all by himself. Just as I walked inside the room again, I staggered back for the room was awfully hot and I couldn’t see a single thing. I rushed to open the window and like something that had been retrained, air gushed inside and momentarily cooled my sweat.
“Shut that window,” I heard Steve shout at me from a corner of the room, I was shocked for I didn’t expect him to be there.
“Why?” I asked and he came towards me, raised his hand to slap me, I closed my eyes but he didn’t slap me, he just stood there fuming with rage and stuttering in slangs. I turned around and saw two girls waving at me, in a corner of the room were some bottles of alcohol and under Emma’s legs were packets of cigarettes. Impetuously, I ran outside and Steve ran after me.
“Daniel Daniel,” he called.
“Leave him let him go, you are almost eighteen, if he wants to tell on you, that is his business,” I heard Emma say to him, and Steve withdrew and I could hear him laughing once more as I hurried back to school.
With Emma around in the house, I saw little of Steve, as they did everything together. From the corner of his eyes, Emma would eye me suspiciously as I brought him his food.
“Take the meat inside the plate,” he would say to me when I came back for the plates.
“No,” I always did reply and from nowhere Steve would jump at me and rescue the meat from the plate. I couldn’t really tell how I felt about Emma, but if a feeling of wanting to crack his head on the cement floor was what they called hate, I must have really hated him for what I contemplated was not “cracking” from which he would easily recover but “smashing” from which he had no chance of survival.
Few months later, Emma’s parents came for him. Mother must have known of their coming, for she prepared a sumptuous meal which they refused to eat. They carried straight faces and ignored mother’s incessant greetings like they were annoyed with her. Within a twinkle of an eye, they said something to father and disappeared with Emma. I was very happy that he was gone, and that we had the meal to ourselves. Just as I gnawed the rice, mother walked in.
“Where is your father?” she asked me and I pointed to father who suddenly appeared behind her
“Papa Daniel,” she said to him, but he kept quiet and went to sit on the chair bowing his head into his laps in his usual manner.
“They didn’t eat anything,” mother said with bitterness in her voice.
“i know,” he responded.
“What is it...is everything alright?” mother asked him
“I harboured a criminal,” he moaned and we could see he was crying.
“Papa Daniel,” mother said and went to sit by his side.
“I don’t get...I mean that’s not the story they told us,” she said.
“He was evading police arrest, that’s why they brought him here,”
“From justice,” he bemoaned. The room went quiet and father returned his head to his laps.
“But...” mother paused to look at Steve who just walked in, eyeing him suspiciously.
“He is family you wouldn’t have turned him in.”
“I would have, if I had known” father retorted.
“He is no family of mine, my family doesn’t commit crimes, he is a criminal,” father blurted out springing up from the chair.
“Where are you going?” mother asked him
“To the police, they sure can’t be far gone,” he answered and began to dress up.
“He won’t get away.”
“Papa Daniel he didn’t commit the crime here, it was committed in the city,” mother tried to persuade him to give up his quest, but he wouldn’t be deterred as he bent low to tie his shoe lace.
“What are you going to do father,” Steve asked him.
“Am going to report that criminal, Emma to the police,” he answered fully dressed up.
“He is your family!” Steve shouted at him.
“He is no family of mine!” father shouted back at him.
“Don’t people commit crimes every day, how many of them get reported by anyone or even their own family?” Steve blurted out.
“And so” father asked.
“That’s the thing about you,” Steve said to him.
“What thing?” father asked walking closer to Steve with calloused hands as his face reddened.
“This your whole right and wrong thing,” Steve said and his chest expanded.
“Can’t you see that everyone cares less about the right thing? I don’t care if he was a criminal or not, all am saying is that he was a cool guy,” he continued.
“And so?” father asked as his closed fist opened and his face went pale.
“Even if he killed someone,” he added, tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and looked out of the window. Father appeared stunned, he didn’t say a word but just kept staring at him with his mouth open.
“What did he give you to eat?” he finally spoke up.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” Steve replied,
“So?” father asked
“It is you who has issues, and I advise you to clear them up before it’s too late,” he said to father.
“Steve!” mother shouted at him.
“Don’t Steve me,” he shot at mother.
“You are so blinded by your poverty that you cant live in our society, cant you see that no one gives a damn about you and your funny principles and theories,” Steve shouted at father.
“Me poor?” father asked slowly pointing a finger to his chest.
“Whatever, just solve your issues and don’t disturb those who don’t have with them,” Steve finished and walked outside, and I knew it would be evening till I saw him again. Father stood there with mouth open watching Steve walk away. Finally he closed his mouth and went to sit down.
The food before me went cold and I packed it away. I hated Emma the more, I swore to tear him into shreds if I ever got hold of him, but that wasn’t to be, for the last we heard of him, his uniform had swallowed his sins; he joined the police. I dare say he repented, but what if he didn’t? What if he just got sophisticated and legal? I couldn’t tell, maybe those who employed him should.
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Father enrolled me into a private school for my secondary education and lunch suddenly disappeared from our meal menu as quickly as it had crawled into it.
“Good afternoon ma,” the whole class greeted in unison as a slim tender woman walked our class after two weeks of resumption in my new school.
“How are you,” she asked
“Fine ma,” the whole class chorused again.
“How was your night...” she kept on asking questions as we responded. Soon I got tired and sat down for in my previous school we greeted our teachers simply and individually, in fact when we liked. The woman shot me a hard look but I sat down still as she walked up to me.
“What is your name?” she asked
“Daniel ma,” I answered looking away as she rove her eyes all over me that I could feel them pierce through me.
“You skinny thing,” she shouted at me and I looked at her fixing my gaze on her face.
“Go outside,” she shouted again and I scrambled out of my seat.
“Such irritating and nauseating attitude!” she shouted. I looked at her and sincerely I didn’t know what I did.
“Go kneel down,” she shouted at me again and I went to kneel at the front of the class. She seemed very angry and returned to addressing the class. Someone must have irked her again for she flew off the handle completely.
“You want to want to join him? I know you, you are from our primary school,” she said but I couldn’t tell who she was addressing for part of my punishment included facing the blackboard where I knelt.
“It’s you who will pay for this,” she came up to me, taking hold of my shirt and dragging me towards her office. I showed no resistance for that was what I was used to and not routine greeting.
In her office, she gave me the beating of my life and I cried profusely. She b eat me with fresh canes and when one broke, she withdrew another from another from the drawer under her desk, for the canes were the type that could be folded without breaking. I dare say I had seen much more beating in my former school, only problem was that I was never the victim until now.
“I am the only teacher besides the principal who flogs in this school, the others are all scared of beating rich kids,” she prided herself as she fogged me with all her might. When she was done with me, she asked me to kneel down in a corner of her office and I complied instantly.
Someone knocked shortly and a woman came into the office.
“What about the letter?” I heard her asked our teacher.
“Oh I forgot, don’t mind me oh, i have been busy,” my tormentor said and reached for her portentous drawer, making me quake.
“Busy with what?” the visitor asked
“These notebooks, I have to mark them,” she answered.
“Whose notebooks?” the woman asked.
“Its for those children, those primary six children,” oyr teacher answered.
“But I thought you were in the secondary session.
“Yes oh my sister,” our teacher replied.
“So what’s with the notes?”
“Their teacher resigned, so I have to join primary six to my work presently,” out teacher answered.
“Oh I see, the usual problem with private schools, inconsistent teachers and understaffing,” the visitor said shaking her head.
“It’s the government that has not regarded their own, my sister,” our teacher said sympathetically.
“Anyway what about the letter?” the visitor asked.
“Please come back for it in an hour,” she said to her and the woman took her leave. Our teacher went back to marking ignoring me, so I coughed a little to gain her attention but she just bowed her head into the work.
“Do you know how to write a letter?” she asked me without looking up from her marking and I kept quiet.
“Do you know how to write a letter?” she asked again, producing a white paper from her desk.
“I will try,” I answered and stretched out my hand for the paper, she hesitated a bit and then handed me the paper telling me hat to write.
“Are you going to write like that?” she asked me.
“You asked me to kneel down,” i replied and focused on the task.
“Please get up,” she said and I got up
In a short while I was done writing and handed it to her. She stopped marking to peruse it, and I could see her face lighten up as she read it. finally she folded it and kept it inside her drawer.
“What primary school did you attend?” she asked and I told her.
“I should have known,” she said.
“That’s the problem with these public schools, their children may have the brains but always lack character.”
“It isn’t your fault, thank God you left there early<” she said to me but I looked away and hardened my face.
“Am very sorry I beat you,” she said to me, but I kept mute and just kept staring into thin air.
“Am Mrs Angelina,” she said to me.
“Okay,” I said and it seemed to surprise her.
“You can go,” she told me and I walked out of the office and slammed the door with all my might.
Much as I tried, i sucked in class for I stayed on my own heeding father’s warning.
“Daniel, do not go and imitate those children oh, their parents are rich oh, study your books oh,” father always admonished me.
Studying was what I had come to personally enjoy with or without father’s admonishment, I liked books because they were what kept me company since father would never let me play or purchase a TV set. But soon, with the attention Mrs Angelina was giving me in class, I started to appreciate father for keeping me from playing, fir what a feeling it was to be treated higher above ones equals!

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Our new house was a self contained apartment with two rooms, a kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Its windows were of louvers glass. It was ceiled and painted. It had a high brick fence surrounding it with lots of trees in the compound.
Almost every evening, father would come out, holding one of the iron poles that supported the ceiling and talk to us.
“I had to give everything to get this house,” he would say and our attention would be drawn.
“I am making sure you have a good place to grow up in,” he say and stare hard at us.
“It’s sure a good place to raise children without interference,” he would then step down from the corridor and walk towards the black gate, admiring it like it was supposed to keep away all those who wanted to interfere with our growing up.
I liked the house, not because of what father said but because living in the enclosed house, stepping out in the morning to school, made me feel important just like the others who lived in the fenced houses in the street.
“Come back here,” mother would shout at me as I made to steal away to school.
“Go back inside and clean your shoes, and comb your hair,” she would yell at me.
This was what it took to get me prepared for school every morning. Honestly, I saw no reason why I should, since it didn’t aid my studies, for indeed those who appeared neat in my class never did answer any question in class. To make matters worse, father soon got an iron but Steve saved the day as he would spend the entire day ironing his stuffs, from clothes to pants. I never did iron mine as long as they were not dirty or torn, there were better things father had inculcated in me, studies! Mother soon granted me partial autonomy in choosing what to wear.
At school, Mrs Angelina made me sweep her office even though we had a class prefect whose duty that was. Soon she began to inquire about my family, but I was smart enough to reveal nothing about my parents and with good reason, Steve. I felt shy telling her both my parents were teachers! It sounded eerie to me. I did feel ashamed of where I was coming from, but I don’t think I wronged anyone by it, for if I wasn’t ashamed of where I was coming from, there was no reason to ensure where I was going was different. And wasn’t this what father wanted, a change? Didn’t he give me a reason to be ashamed of whom I was, until I was no longer? Wasn’t there really a better way of impelling me to be hard working?
Mrs Angelina was a very pretty woman, very slim and tender so that she almost fell when she walked. The other teachers respected her very much and more suspiciously the principal too. She came up with different programmes and none dared challenged her even if they were inconsistent with the school calendar. One of such programmes was her routine debates, which was always between the senior classes. Then one day she walked into our class and announced that there was to be a debate between our class and that immediately after ours. She picked a girl tp represent our class.
“We need a boy...you,” she pointed at me and left the class before I could remonstrate.
Debates were wonderful and exciting when you weren’t directly involved. I mean when it was not about you, one could jeer, clap, laugh and in ridiculous cases hiss, but I was involved in this. Judith was the name of the girl our teacher had chosen and she came running into the class flaunting her arguments she was to memorise in a paper. Fearing the worst I headed for our teacher’s office to ask for my own argument
“My own,” I said to her with hand outstretched as she looked up from her desk.
“Your what?” she asked.
“What am going to say<” I answered boldly.
“You can prepare something,” she said smiling at me as she walked out of the office.
“Shut my door,” she called out to me as I stood there in utter disbelief, wondering if I hadn’t mistaken her asking me to clean her office, as kindness. Then I thought about Judith, she was always so smartly dressed and good mannered, smiling and curtsying when she greeted, obviously she was from a wealthy family. My face had tightened as I thought about her and our teachers help to her, Mrs Angelina was punishing me for not being like her. It wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t like her, like what? I couldn’t tell, but I could tell I felt Judith was better than me and I immediately disliked her. I wanted to see what was written on the controversial piece of paper so I called her and read through it.
“Thrash!” I exclaimed when I had gone through it, for sincerely I could come up with something better than that, only I would need assistance with my grammar. Surely our teacher must have known better! So why did I feel disliked cheated and pigeonholed? I guess I felt Inferior.
The debate came and passed and according to the judges we won, but I don’t think we actually won, for Mrs Angelina was one of the judges. After the debate I returned to class hurriedly since I had no money to buy anything, father had told me that morning that he had no money to give me. So I sat down to study as people ate around me, and didn’t see Mrs Angelina walk in.
“You did well today,” she said to me.
“Thank you ma,” I said to her waiting for her to leave but she didn’t.
“Are you hungry?” she asked me, but I kept quiet not knowing what to say. She looked at me keenly, nodded and walked out. Few minutes later she was back with a bottle of coke and some biscuits which she dropped on my desk and left without saying a word. I continued studying and tried not to pay attention to what she had dropped on my desk, but my stomach began to bite like the things in front of me were visible to it. Impetuously, I reached for the bottle of coke and cranked it open with my teeth. I took a sip at first, and then in one big push, I poured the liquid down my dry throat. Turning to the biscuits I eyed them from a distance and just like the coke I suddenly reached for one and devoured it. The remaining biscuit stared at me inviting me to take a bite, but I didn’t, I wanted Mrs Angelina to come back and meet it there, I wanted her to respect me, I didn’t want her to think I had been too hungry. She didn’t come back for it, instead of leaving it there, I tucked it into my school bag as I headed for home at the close of school.
I think I really did well in the debate for many unknown faces waved at me the next day at school. I guess it endeared me to my seniors too, who when they raided our class always left me unharmed. I was even more shocked to realize my participation in the debate had when me favour in the sight of our principal. For one day Judith came running into the class.
“The principal is calling you,” she said to me awakening me from my hungry slumber, I had only bowed my head on the desk waiting for the break period to be over, I must have slept off I thought and got up lazily.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“IN his...” she stopped midway as our principal walked into the class.
“Good afternoon sir,” we greeted him.
“Are you Daniel?” he asked me.
“Yes sir,” I answered rubbing my eyes in an attempt to stay awake.
“What i s wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing sir,” I answered and dropped my hand.
“Do you know my daughter?” he asked me.
“That is her,” he said and pointed towards a girl who sits in the opposite row, sulks her fingers and sleeps during class, clearly I was amazed.
“Sir, Ruth?” I asked, for that was the girl’s name. He looked around the class, it was quite empty.
“You can leave,” he turned to Judith who stalked out.
“I want you to take care of her,” he said and I looked up to his face for the first time.
“I want you to teach her,” he said and I just kept staring at his face.
“Teach her and I will take care of you<” he told me.
“Okay sir,” I managed to say wondering if it was possible to take care of his sulky daughter who could beat me to it. He made to leave but turned around and spoke to me.
“By the way why aren’t you out for break?” he asked.
“I...” I stammered. He dipped his hand into his pocket and handed me a naira note. I wanted to reject, but the fear of been whipped if I rejected it, the monster himself offering money, conquered me.
“Thank you sir,” I said to him and collected the money.
Just as if the evil ones wanted to ruin my privilege, the principal went out of school the next day and our “seniors” came marching down our class. They started by seizing the sandals and all accoutrements that did not comply with those recommended by the school, then for some flimsy reason, they began to beat some of my classmates. I was deeply disturbed and tried desperately to keep my cool for sitting just behind me was a very plumb and huge boy with the wrong shoes, wrong belt, wrong hair and I dare say wrong head bearing the hair. Then they came for my seat mate who according to them was smiling at them.
“leave him alone,” I shouted impulsively at them, realizing what I had done, I sat down quickly but it was too late.
“What did you say?” one of them who was known never to smile asked me nut I kept mute.
“I am going to ask you one more time?” he threatened and came towards me.
“Can’t you see James?” I blurted out, pointing to the wrong man sitting behind me.
“Do you mean am blind?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered and looked away.
“Well I will teach you am not,” he said to me turning around to look at another senior.
“The principal isn’t in school,” the senior whispered to him. Then darkness suddenly enveloped me, he had given me too blinding slaps in quick succession.
“Idiot!” I yelled at him as soon as I could open my eyes. He grabbed my shirt and attempted to beat me up but the others restrained him.
“Hope you learnt a lesson,” he taunted me, I was so enraged that I spat in his face. He flung all those who held him aside, dashed at me and pounded me with blows. When he was done, he stood up and adjusted his belt, but I wasn’t done as I came out of the sit and stood there.
“Return to your seat,” he shouted at me.
“No I won’t,” I shouted back at him.
“Your business,” he replied. I stood there eyeing the big piece of plank separated from one of the broken seats. I imagined cracking his head open with it, I imagined suddenly developing muscles and beating him up, but my thoughts stayed with me, only in my imaginations! I returned to my seat as the seniors left the class, I must have proved enough bounty for they ignored those they had lined up for beating.
My classmates came around to console me, but the more I heard their “sorry...sorry” the more the tears came out. I didn’t know what to do and for the first time ever Steve’s rascality seemed to come in handy.
“I will call my brother for them,” I blurted out.
“Yes,” my mates shouted in unison.
“Thank you Daniel,” the boy whom I had defended said to me, and like magic the tears disappeared all at once and light shone into my young soul.
The next day, Mrs Angelina summoned me to the principal’s office and when I got there I met the senior who had assailed me the previous day kneeling down.
“Good afternoon sir,” I greeted the principal.
“Is this the boy who beat you yesterday?” he asked ignoring my greeting
“Yes sir!” I answered.
“Good, you can go back to your class,” he said, and I went out of the office but I hid behind the door as I sensed something was amiss. Then it started.
“Please sir...pleases sir,” I heard the senior beg the principal and wailing loudly, but monster just went on lashing him with his monstrous rod and slowly I crept away. As I walked back to class, guit heat me hard and I immediately felt empty inside. Unlike yesterday, I wasn’t so sure anymore if the senior deserved that kind of punishment, the fact that the principal had not asked me to tell what happened only heightened my guilt. Mrs Angelina had been there too! Back in class, I couldn’t focus on what our maths teacher was teaching, from nowhere fear crept into my soul, I don’t know what I was scared of, but I felt so afraid that when the closing bell rang, i gathered my books and sped

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Sometimes I wondered if Steve was the same person I had known few years earlier. He had changed completely. He insulted father whenever he liked and most times they fought with father always subduing him. Steve to me liked father, but he was who he was and wouldn’t allow his love for him get in the way of who he was or who he had come to be.
Almost all the houses in the street we lived had fences around them so that we had no relationship with our neighbours. One day myself and Steve were walking down the street when a man suddenly rushed out from his compound and accosted us.
“Why are you peeping at my compound?” he asked holding tightly to the belt around my brother’s waist.
“You are thieves surveying the area, so you know when to attack,” he alleged still holding on to Steve. With his other hand the man brought out a phone from the pocket of his trousers and began to talk to somebody.
“Oga bring your boys down now, I have some people you must take into custody,” I heard him say to whoever was on the other side of the phone.
“Please leave my brother alone, we were just passing by,” I begged the man.
“Stop begging him Daniel,” Steve snapped at me.
“He shouldn’t beg? Wait till the police comes for you,” the man threatened.
“Seems you are the only one who has them as home service,” Steve said to him and began to laugh hysterically.
“Thought we were all equal citizens,” Steve added and continued his laughter.
“Yes I know what I give them,” The man replied confidently.
“Just wait,” he added holding firmly to his grip on Steve which was slipping.
“Wait are you serious?” Steve asked stopping abruptly in his laughter.
“You thought I was...” the man suddenly jerked as Steve hit his hand forcefully away and took to his heels.
“Run along Daniel,” he shouted and I began to run too, and soon we were inside our compound as I hurriedly secured the locks of the gate. When I turned to look at Steve, he was crying.
“Am tired of this life,” He blurted out.
“Where one is treated as shit because he has nothing,” he said and tried to wipe the tears missed with the sweat from the race from his face.
“I am not talking to you,” he snapped at me as I drew closer to him.
“I will surely make money,” He added and got up from where he had been seating, as he nodded severally to himself, “Yes!”
But he didn’t have to wait too long to get someone to register his frustration, for Father came home some days later soaked all over with mud water.
“Papa Daniel what happened?” mother asked running to him.
“Don’t mind that boy, he mistakenly splashed water on me,” father answered.
“Which boy,” Steve asked appearing from behind the house.
“That boy down the street who rides his father’s car,” father answered him. Instantaneously, Steve sped out of the house, flinging the gate open. Sensing where he was headed, we rang after him. When we caught up with him, he was beating up the said boy, with the said car running and its driver’s door open
“You think because your father has money, you can mess with other people’s father,” Steve kept on saying as he dealt him blows after blows. Quickly, father pushed Steve aside and helped the boy up.
“You mean your wretched father,” the same boy who had been wailing a while ago under Steve’s punishment, shouted as soon as he could make use of his mouth. Father didn’t mind the insult, he held on tightly to him to keep the prowling Steve away.
Two blocks away, a gate flew open and a pot bellied man came running down our direction.
“Kinsley,” the man kept on shouting
“What happened,” he asked painting when he finally got to us.
“This asshole and his silly father tried to beat me up,” Kinsley answered the man.
“I will get him arrested, just wait for me,” the man threatened and got into the waiting car.
“Please sir,” father went on his kneels begging the man. But he shut the door even as father begged him the more. The man stepped out of the car, and looking straight into father’ face.
“It’s obvious your son did not take after you,” he said to father.
“Your son is lucky to be alive,” Steve said standing dauntingly.
“Shut your mouth,” father shot at him.
The man appeared to be in thoughts, je looked from father to Steve and again father.
“I will let it pass,” he finally said and sped off with his son. As we walked back slowly to the house, Steve just kept on boasting, making me impugn on his motive for beating up the boy.
“Steve Steve,” mother shouted at him when we got back to the house.
“Stop shouting my name,” he shouted back at mother.
“I don’t give a damn about your name, all am saying is that you should stop embarrassing your father,” she shot at him in a frenzy.
“Stop bringing problems to this house,” she shouted at him.
“It’s you who is a problem to this house,” he lashed back at mother.
“You are mad, obviously very mad,” mother insulted him.
“Stop insulting me,” he said to mother and went to sit by the corridor.
“And if I don’t?” she shouted at him and marched towards him menacingly.
“Go and sit down, you won’t listen” he shouted at her as she approached him.
“Don’t talk to my wife like that,” father who had been quiet all along shouted at Steve making me wonder why Steve’s mother was only now regarded as his wife.
I stood there watching them quarrel and trying to figure out why Steve had turned on mother, for his quarrels were always with father.
That evening father called Steve and asked him to sit, but he didn’t say anything he just kept staring into thin air.
“Please if you have something to say to me, just say it,” Steve broke the silence and father looked up.
“You don’t know what is wrong with you,” he said to Steve.
“Nothing is wrong with me, you said you have something to say to me, that’s why I came, since its apparent you don’t, am leaving,“ he said to father and made to leave.
“Sit down!” father shouted at him and he sat back down.
“You of all people can remember when I didn’t take nonsense from no one,” father said to him and he looked away.
“It’s children that make a man do what he isn’t supposed to do, I have suddenly become very timid to afford you the chance to grow up peacefully,” father said looking from Steve to me.
“It wasn’t that I was afraid today, I could have torn that man, his son and even their car to pieces in a jiffy,” he said with a shaky voice.
“I am not a fool,” he added and stood up.
“Behave yourself Stephen,” father called Steve’s name in full.
“We are in a rich neighbourhood,” he added and went to sleep.
I looked at my brother and he appeared remorseful as his face fell, but just as it had fallen, it brightened up again.
“Just maybe you shouldn’t have changed,” he muttered and went off to bed.
Father’s advice that evening seemed to have provoked the demons in him, for he got worse, beating me up on the slightest provocation, but I never did report him to father or even mother. Then one day just as he was done with me, and I lay on the corridor, mother came in.
“What did he do?” mother went straight to Steve even without asking me who beat me up.
“I don’t know,” he retorted.
Almost at once they began to quarrel. From wgere I laid I saw Steve go inside and return with some of mothers clothes which he flung them over the fence. I wished I could stop him, but I dared not as his face eyes sparkled like red coal. Mother begged him to stop but he ignored her and when mother went over to him, he struck her across the face.
“You ingrate!” mother spat on him. Just then father came in, he went over to Steve and struck him so hard that he collapsed then he picked mother up and took her inside.
“I will kill her,” Steve who was beginning to regain consciousness began to threaten.
“Your very business, I am tired of your unwillingness to live,” he fired at Steve
“It’s your wife who doesn’t want to live,” Steve fired back
“That woman is the very reason you didn’t marry my mother,” he kept on shouting
I could hardly believe my ears, so he was my half brother after all. I stood there dazed as father emerged from the house with Steve’s belongings.
“You are leaving my house today, I have had enough of you,” he shouted at Steve, but mother clung to him pleading with him to stop.
“Papa Daniel please don’t drive him away, he is your son,” she pleaded with him.
“What would people say, they would say you drove him away because of me,” she said to father.
“They won’t say anything,” he shouted at her.
“Papa Daniel please for my sake,” she knelt down pleading with him.
“You can stay if you want to,” he turned to Steve and kicked his things out of the way as he marched inside.
Steve stayed, but a few days later he packed his things and left the house. When he left, I cried my eyes put though I couldn’t tell why, but I did love him as my brother, half or not. I never ceased wondering what changed Steve so much, he used to be so caring and lovely!
Few days after Steve’s departure, father called me and asked me to sit down.
“I have just one thing to tell you,” he said to me and my ears rose eager to hear what he had to say.
“You have a life different from Steve’s,” he said to me.

CHAPTER FIVE
When I was a child I was afraid of the dark, but I was told that I would conquer that when I came of age and how happy I was. How glad I was to know there would come a time when I would be able to play in the dark for what lay therein never ceased to amaze me. But no one told me that as I grew older, a new one would replace it, no one told me that growing up meant one would get scared of that which was not in the present, and which he wasn’t sure of, another dark. Father had entrusted me a responsibility to make him proud and I took it with all seriousness. It was a small affair to me as long as it involved passing exams and getting good grades. But wasn’t father very intelligent? Did I or our system require something extra to make him proud? I couldn’t tell. This no doubt made father’s charge burdensome, he required no one to compromise why our system favoured it as he himself had made me to understand, and how he expected me to strike the balance that he couldn’t, time would tell. One thing Longed to tell father was that life hadn’t presented him equal opportunities, so how was I to know which I would be presented with.
As I grew up I never stopped wondering what I would become in this set up of ours. To tell the truth I was scared of what tomorrow held for me. Father was right I didn’t want to be like him, certainly not with all the fights, quarrels, insufficiency, I mean the entire roll of what I couldn’t do or have no matter how bad I wanted, inhibitions and limitations of learning to accept respectfully and contentiously ones background. Every fear of tomorrow itself brings with it the inability to live in the present, and I wasn’t to be an exemption. I may never be able to understand how this fear accompanied me everywhere I went and everything I did, which in time came to define who I was. And to all of us who had to bring something home, our fear would become our defence to the very life itself we sought to bring home and to everything it would throw at us. Our fear, our inferiority, our need to show we were something in this set up where been “something” meant a lot. We just had to show we had something.
In my case, when one of my classmates told me he could buy my family, I retorted by I could beat his entire family in any exam, but for some of our teachers, they had to measure up with something different. A particular incident in school taught me this. The incident concerned Mrs Angelina. I always knew she was no ordinary woman from the way she carried herself and more so the respect that accrued to her from the entire staff of the school. I came to find out who she was the day I got to her house.
Mrs Angelina after the senior incident invited me to her house to help draw up a debate argument for her primary six pupils. I expected father not to allow me, but the fact that I and no one else in the entire school was assigned the job seemed to have swayed his decision.
“If you and no one else was assigned the job, it simply means you are very good at it,” he had remarked smiling broadly at me.
As I walked down to my teacher’s house, I don’t know why but I suddenly wanted to place her somewhere. I think it must have been in an attempt to ensure I didn’t appear odd, if I had to put up a defensive attitude or otherwise. Her house was a storey building and just like ours had a high fence surrounding it. the compound was a very large one with the building sitting almost at the middle of it, but I didn’t get to see the interior since she was out waiting for me.
“Good morning ma,” I greeted her.
“How are you Daniel?” she asked.
“Fine ma,” I answered.
“How is your...” she stopped midway in her statement as she turned to look at a boy who emerged from the house with a ball firmly clutched under his arm.
“Go back inside,” she shouted at him.
“Mum I got to play,” he replied her and sauntered towards the gate, stopping abruptly before me.
“You look really like the son mum wants to make out of me,” he said to me making me wonder what type of son his mother wanted him to be and to which I was a perfect “walking” example.
“Your look is just too serious man, try smiling a bit,” he said to me and patted me on my shoulders, making me wonder no more, but he was wrong, for I was smiling, that was how I smiled.
“And I just can’t live that kind of life,” he turned to his mother, shaking his head resentfully like he pitied himself, and stalked out of the compound.
“Sam Sam come back here,” our teacher shouted after him.
“That’s my son,” she turned to me.
“He is your age mate,” she added, but I didn’t believe her for back at home, the boldness with which we spoke our mind to father or mother determined how old we were, he definitely was Steve’s age, of course he was with those broad muscles compared with my thin ones. Just then a pot bellied man came out of the house.
“Where is sam?” he asked out teacher.
“He went out,” she answered.
“To where?” he asked her as he touched the edges of the well trimmed flowers with his fingers. But Mrs. Angelina didn’t respond as she looked away.
“You are defending him again. Its obvious he went to the football pitch,” he said to her.
“Honey,” our teacher called and he looked up from the flowers.
“You know it’s good he plays a bit today, I mean its Saturday, don’t forget he has been busy the whole week, having home lectures even after school hours,” she said to him as she walked up to him and put her arms around his broad shoulders.
“And so?” he asked sternly and she was forced to retreat.
“Honey I was only just saying...” she stopped as he walked back towards the house.
“I didn’t grow up like this!” he turned around and shouted at my beautiful teacher and she shuddered, even as cold shivers ran down my spine. She turned to look at me and I looked away, sorry I was there in the first place.
“That’s my husband,” she said calmly to me and I was even sorrier I had witnessed the family proceedings. She went inside and returned with the same white papers I had become accustomed to. She gave me the topic of the debate, THERE IS UNITY IN DIVERSITY. I settled down quickly to scribble some arguments. It looked simple at first but as i proceeded I had to tear almost every write-up for they seemed to lack that special touch. I had done this for sometime when it occurred to me that I had been busy doing nothing for hours and as my teacher stepped outside I bent down to start afresh. Just then the gate flew open and Sam came in sweating, with the ball that had gone out under his arm now folded neatly in the pockets of his shorts.
“Did you have to wait till the ball was gone,” I heard Mrs Angelina say to him.
“Good afternoon mum,” he passed by me and shot me a hard look.
“There are some oranges in the dining, you can have them after your bath,” she said to him.
“No mum, I want to read through something,” he replied.
“As you wish.”
Just as he went inside, the sky suddenly darkened and in a jiffy the rain poured down angrily on the already soaked ground from the rain two days earlier.
“Get inside,” she shouted loudly as the drops from the rain attempted to swallow her tiny voice. Quickly I gathered my papers and rushed out of the little pavilion I had been into the house. I had expected to be greeted by their very prodigious sitting room, but I was only ushered into a “waiting room” and I kept wondering if her husband was a private doctor.
From the waiting room, I could hear someone talk in a low tone but quite audible enough to filter into my waiting ears.
“Honey please leave him alone,” Mrs quietly mollified her husband.
“Stay out of this,” he said to her.
“So you are back?” I heard him ask Sam.
“Yes dad,” Sam replied.
“So you quickly grabbed your books to appease me?”
“Appease?” I heard Sam ask his father.
“Yes, trying to make me look pass the fact that you disobeyed my warning not to go out to play football.”
“Am not trying to make you look pass anything, I know when to read.”
“You know when to read and when to play,” he mimicked his son and began to laugh hysterically.
“Look at this idiot that has sat comfortably in tenth position all his life,” he said almost in the centre of his laughter.
“And so?” I heard Sam ask.
“And so? Aren’t you ashamed to be an average student?”
“Am not dad, I simply cant get into any competition with anyone like you do in business.”
“Competing you call it, am the owner of a major oil company in this country and I know how I got there...”
“Yea I know, form your hard work,” Sam interrupted his father.
“Sorry dad am just not ready for that kind of life.”
“And where are you going to?” I heard the man ask.
“To my room of course...and dad, your hard work built your oil company or your rich politician friends that come here every day?”
“Come back here,” I heard the man shout at his son.
“Are you done?” Mrs. Angelina suddenly emerged from the sitting room with a pale face.
“Yes ma,” I stuttered, surprised by her sudden presence. Our eyes met each other’s and she quickly looked away, was she embarrassed that I had heard their hushed conversations?
“Take this,” she handed me a can of soft drink and collected my write-up. I hesitated in collecting the drink, but I did, for it appeared now wasn’t the time for such pranks.
“Thank You ma,” I said collecting the drink. She stretched out her hand again and handed me some naira notes.
“For your transport,” she said and vanished into the house before I could thank her.
With great efforts I controlled the urge to see there and then how much my teacher had given me, so that when I finally did some few blocks from the house, it could cover my fare home ten times. It had stopped raining, looking forward and behind, with no one approaching or looking, I pocketed the money and walked home, father didn’t teach me to waste money!
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Back to the incident at school; now I knew why Mrs Angelina dressed in expensive clothes, but she wasn’t the only one who did, for there were many of our female teachers who dressed as expensive as her. Most times some sales girls would come around our school to sell designers clothes and some of our female teachers would immediately form a cavalcade around the girls, looking and chatting gleefully as they made their selections. But unlike all her compatriots who trekked to school from God know where, Mrs Angelina was the only one who didn’t trek to school. In fact unlike her, they often looked out of place in their designers clothes, for Mrs Angelina’s thin elegant figure, fair complexion, long braided hair and, womanish mannerisms made her clothes all but fitting, So that I feared deeply the other teachers attempted to measure up.
My fears were confirmed one day when a man in faded jeans, a big T shirt and big boots rushed down from a motorcycle and dived into our school compound. He came marching towards our class and demanded to see our “oyinbo” teacher, to which our stunned class prefect told him we had none. He appeared befuddled, scratching his head impatiently and made to leave, but he turned back abruptly and asked to see the principal and our now frightened prefect led him away. But he soon resurfaced and just kept on asking for our oyinbo teacher.
“Since he wouldn’t say anything meaningful, I will deal with the matter myself,” I heard him mutter as I sat there in the front roll peering keenly into his estranged eyes, with his chest heaving heavily up and down the tick T shirt.
Alarmed, the whole class shouted at our class prefect to go call someone. Scampering away, he attempted to run off unnoticed by the huge man only to run into our Physical and health Education teacher at the door, rumpling her colourful dirndl.
“Gosh! What the hell!” she yelled at the prefect, assuming a queens accent we all suspected she feigned. Just then she shifted her gaze from our sorry prefect whom she was almost tearing apart with her bulging eyes, and let it settle on the strange man.
“Matthew...you are here,” she stuttered almost suddenly appearing awkward and clumsy.
“Yes I am!” the man yelled at her.
“Where is that oyinbo teacher spoiling you?” he shouted at her.
“Please let’s settle this at home,” our teacher seemed to plead with him, quivering.
“No Paulina, you aren’t concerned with settling this, you just don’t want to be embarrassed,” he shot at her, waving his calloused hands menacingly across her face.
“What is that raucous conversation...” Mrs. Angelina walked into the class, as we laughed out loud giggling, for we all admired the way she spoke, especially now.
“Oh!” she exclaimed when it dawned on her what was going on.
“Good afternoon sir,” she greeted the man, who ignored her as he just kept staring at her.
“My...husband,” our P.H.E teacher managed to say.
“So you are the oyinbo?” the man mumbled.
“No am Mrs, Angelina,” she said and extended her hand to shake him, but he hit her hand away.
“Look here oyinbo, I have a simple message for you,” he said to her and she looked at him.
“I know you probably have a rich husband, but am just an okada driver, and I even hear we would be stopped soon,” he stopped and sighed so heavily that the papers on my desk were blown away, like he pitied himself so much.
“So my wife is not in the same category with you at all,” he continued.
“Matthew,” our P.H.E teacher said soothingly to him, from where she stood in a corner of the class folding her hands across her chest, begging her husband with her bulging eyes not to say more.
“Shut up!” the implacable Matthew shouted at her and turned back to Mrs. Angelina.
“We are managing oh, but all she does with the little money she is paid her, and even what I give her for the house upkeep is to buy clothes, a different one every week,” he said and put his hands on his head.
“Am finished,” he moaned.
“We are in debts, even our kids haven’t paid their fees,” he said.
“Please madam I don’t mind kneeling down for you, please leave my wife alone, for my sake and our children’s,” he begged, going down on his knees.
As I sat on my seat watching the drama unfold before my very eyes, pity was what I felt for the man and long after he left our class, his tick shadow still stood there. Our P.H.E teacher had been embarrassed no doubt, but it was apparent to all, even though we were yet young, that discomfiture was all she had felt, no remorse. However when the sales girls came later that day, only Mrs. Angelina walked uo to them to select some clothes, smiling mischievously as the other teachers gathered together watching her from a safe distance and talking in low tones.
As the session progressed, I began to know my classmates better though I kept mostly to myself, they seemed to get along with each other without me, visiting themselves. But none came to my house as I must have shut them out unintentionally and unknowingly, and I surmised that no one knew where I lived, so that I when I didn’t go to school for a week, been down with fever, I was shocked to see Mrs. Angelina appear at the front of my house.
“Good afternoon ma,” I greeted her and leaned on the gate as I could barely stand.
“Don’t you want me to come inside?” she asked and I opened the gate lethargically.
She pushed me aside and marched inside the compound.
“Get me a glass of water,” she said as she strolled into the house uninvited and sank into the big chair in the sitting room. I hurried off and returned with an iron cup of water.
“Give me my water,” she stretched out her hand eyeing me suspiciously as I made to clean the oil that had sttled at the edge of the cup from my lunch of boiled yam and oil.
“What happened to you?” she asked and gulped down the water unhesitatingly.
“I have been sick,” I answered.
“Fever?” she inquired further.
“Yes ma,” I replied.
She sat there for a while without saying anything. I searched desperately for something to say to her, but my rain seemed to have been affected by the illness producing nothing to say. She stood up and straightened her clothes in her usual manner, then she reacged for her bag and handed me ome naira notes.
“Buy drugs with that,” she said to me.
“My parents already bought me drugs ma,” I said defiantly.
“Well buy something with it,” she said.
“I have nothing to do with it ma,” I replied.
She looked at me for a while, “make sure you are in school tomorrow,” she said to me and left without another word. I stood there wondering why I had resisted her gift, I knew father wouldn’t want me to appear needy, after all he did buy me drugs, probably it was because I didn’t want her to look down on me or if somehow my classmates heard about it.
She had asked me to be in school, I guessed it was another debate, still a bit cold, I dressed up and made for school the next day, when I arrived at school the cold had vanished, I guessed it was the 30 minutes trek to school that did the miracle. But the cold resurfaced almost immediately, a deeper one in my heart! When I was told that Williams my seat mate had died while I was absent from school. Judith told me that Williams was asthmatic, that he had a feat in school and was rushed to the Government teaching Hospital in Mrs. Angelina’s car.
“But those dammed doctors were nowhere to be found!” she blurted out.
“Just the student doctors and the nurses,” she added and began to cry.
I wept too though I didn’t know exactly why, I sure was sorry Williams was dead but I was more sorry that I hadn’t even known him though he had been my seat mate and even the entire class had known about his medical condition except me. I felt miserable and selfish, all so much for been serious and knowing why I was in school, I just went on weeping so that Juliet had to beg me to stop. I didn’t really know how to describe how horrible how I felt but I was unable to focus in class the whole day, so that as soon as the bell for closing went off, I grabbed my bag and ran home.
When t returned from school that day, I met mother and father outside the house, I greeted mother but ignored father, I wasn’t sure but it did seem I wasn’t pleased with him.
“Are you blind?” father shouted at me.
“No sir,” I answered stopping abruptly in my tracks.
“Please papa Daniel, he has been sick,” mother tried to pacify him.
“Did the sickness get to his mouth too?” he yelled at nother.
“Good afternoon sir,” I said to him, looking at him for the first time. It was then I saw he was dressed smartly in a customized polo tucked into his sparking trousers with a face cap protruding out of his broad face, party outfits!

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Father had joined a political party, according to him, he hoped to help the party, though he wouldn’t tell what help he intended to render to the party, what help couldn’t the ruling party need from father? It was barely some few days after he joined the party that he gave us a different reason for joining the party.
“There is nothing that can be done there,” he said to mother when he returned from one of his meetings.
“I don’t understand, I mean you just joined,” mother said to him.
“Am not dull woman, the idea of what one would get is systematic in that place,” he retorted.
“Meaning?” mother asked him
“Everyone is there for himself,” he explained to mother.
“Aren’t you there for yourselves?” mother asked truly innocently.
“Woman if we had things doing, no one would be there in the first place,” he answered.
“Well if that’s how they do things, I will...”
“You will join them?” mother cut in.
“Of course no, I will just stay and do what I can,” he said to her.
“Why don’t you just leave now?” mother asked him.
“Woman just don’t start your whole it’s dangerous thing,” he turned to her with a suspicious look on his face.
“Well I still stand my ground, the whole thing is too dangerous,” she said looking away from him.
“Are those there not human beings?” father retorted.
“Do you know what they do? And even if you knew can you do what they do?” she asked turning to look at him this time with so much boldness.
“What do they do?” father asked looking away from her like he wasn’t sure of what he was asking.
“You just said so yourself” she said to him.
“That isn’t what I said,” father replied still looking away.
“Yes you said they are all there for selfish reasons, that politics is their job, why don’t you ask yourself what a jobless and selfish man would do if he feels his means of livelihood is threatened.”
“Leave now Papa Daniel<” she said with so much finality and looking straight into father’s eyes making me shrink and wondering if this was the same mother that was always subservient to father in conversations.
“I won’t leave, Mama Daniel,” father replied even more timidly than he had done a moment ago. Why were they switching positions?
“Is there something you are hiding from me?” mother asked him, and he just looked down at his feet this time.
“Yes,” he replied weakly.
“What is it?” she asked him and drew closer to him on the big chair.
“I hope to get an appointment,” he answered in a very low tone like I would do if I thought I did something wrong.
“Mama Daniel, am not getting younger, I need a job,” he said to her. Mother drew him closer and he leaned on her shoulders. Mother looked up at me
“Go check the soup on the fire,” she said to me and I scuttled away. I wondered why father would suddenly stop looking for a job and start pursuing an “appointment” what was the difference anyway. It appeared to me that appointment meant he didn’t have to be qualified for whatever job he was given.
Few weeks after, father started coming home with big notebooks and announced to us that he had been made the secretary to his ward.
“Those dumb people don’t know anything,” he cursed as he struggled with the big notebooks scribbling words into them from the dictionary sitting on his laps, with his reading goggles sitting on his nose, and a cynical smile dangling at the corner of his lips. I think he was showing off with what he had, his discussion with mother always confirmed this.
“Papa Daniel you met them there,” mother would say to him.
“Well that doesn’t mean they would be illiterates and still occupy the top positions in such a sensitive group,” he would reply mother.
“Sensitive group?” she would ask him.
“Mama Daniel even the chairman of the party in our ward does not know his left from his right.”
And so the argument would go on and on. Sincerely this wasn’t what I expected from father joining a political party, somehow I had thought our standard of living would improve, especially now we were approaching Christmas. I had vacated form school just two days earlier for the Christmas holiday, and I sat outside the house brooding and musing.
“Daniel,” I heard father call me from outside the gate.
“Join me carry this bag of rice inside the house,” he said to me as I joined him outside the gate. Quickly we dragged the medium sized bag in to the house like father didn’t want anyone to see him and I came back for the gallon of palm oil.
“You mean they shared all this in your party?” I could hear mother ask father as I struggled with the gallon of oil.
“And we are going to share a whole cow tomorrow,” he replied boisterously.
The Christmas that year was in grand style. For the first time we had many people visiting us, and when they were gone father would label them “aspirants” as he examined the bottles of rich wine they had left behind, smiling so broadly and his eyes shining with so much pride.
“They all want my support,” he would say to himself and laugh out loudly waving the wine bottle hysterically. I too enjoyed the men’s company though they never talked to me besides inquiries of father’s whereabouts, that notwithstanding, I felt proud too seeing all those big heavy cars park in front of our house.
I wasn’t so happy when I was to resume school as I had to gather my books from where I had abandoned them. It was the Saturday preceding my resumption on Sunday, I searched for my stockings to no avail, it was the only thing missing from the things I needed for resumption. Luckily mother still bathing in the euphoria of our unprecedented Christmas celebration gave me money for a new one. I launched out into the hot after sun, but the heat of the scorching sun beat me back, I thought I had seen father stack some white caps somewhere in the house, so I went back in and grabbed one of them and marched once again into the sun, this time dauntingly and fearlessly. I had only walk a few feet down the road when I turned to see father running after na. He soon got to me, seized me by the hand and dragged me back inside.
“Get that cap off your head!” he shputed at me as soon as we walked into the compound.
“I said take the cap off your head!” he yelled at me again and I toot it off reluctantly.
“You can go now!” he shouted at me.
“Please Papa Daniel let him use the cap,” mother pleaded with him, emerging from no where.
“It isn’t that I don’t want him to,” he replied her as I stood there dazed and wondering what exactly was going on.
“Father the sun is very hot,” I said to him not sure what his reaction would be. He looked askance at me like I wasn’t supposed to be standing there. Then he turned away and went inside, only to return with a cup of paint with which he began to paint away the appalled face of the “aspirant” at the front of the cap. When he was done, he handed me the cap smiling.
“You can go,” he said to me.

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Judith accused me of been more friendly since the death of Williams, I don’t know how true that was, but I knew I played more and talked more in class. My been more friendly was soon picked up by the ever vigilant Mrs. Angelina as she asked me to go kneel at the front of the class during one of her classes, and afterwards invited me to her office.
“shut the door,” she said to me, I did and went to sit, but she ordered me to get up.
“I am going to talk to you standing>” she said to me, and sending cold shivers down my spine.
“Your grades are dropping,” she said to me fixing her gaze on my pale and uncomfortable face
She gave me a proper scolding that afternoon, and when I was allowed to return to class, it was a shadow of me staggering to the class. But I couldn’t help wondering if she meant everything she said to me, especially that part of “many people interested in taking care of me”. I settled down on my seat thinking about all I had heard from the therapy session, when it occurred to me that I had my fees in my bag. It was the first time I was to pay my fees myself. Quickly I got the money from my bag and ran off to the Cashier’s office but she wasn’t around. I thought for a while and finally decided to go pay to our new class teacher, but I was a bit scared of going to him for he was known to punish students at the slightest provocation, with the added reputation of never smiling.
Carefully I knocked on his door even though it was ajar but got no answer. From the opening I could see he was buried deep into whatever was below his desk. He finally asked me to come in and running his eyes over me.
“What do you want?” he shouted at me and ignoring my greeting.
“Sir the cashier isn’t in her office and I have my fees with me,” I answered him.
“So what do you want me to do with it?” he shouted at me again, raising his head for the first time and I could see his eyes blazing with fury like he was angry with someone.
“Sir you have previously collected our fees when the cashier isn’t around.”
“Well I don’t want to now,” he said to me, and waved me out with his hand, but I just stood there befuddled and staring at him as it dawned on me that I had failed to pay my fees myself.
“Times are hard,” he said calmly to me this time, shaking his head vigorously like he was struggling with something on the inside.
“Leave the money on the desk and return to your class,” he said pointing to his desk. I dropped the money on the desk and made off in quick steps to my class.
As I walked home that afternoon, everything Mrs. Angelina had told me came back to me, making me shudder. I desperately hoped father had not noticed same, sighting the gate of our house made me suddenly scared. I remembered mother warning me that morning not to misplace my fees and her hour lecture on how hard thongs were and how she had to borrow the fees. As I approached the black gate, I began to doubt if I had in fact paid the fees, something kept tugging inside me that I wasn’t so sure anymore that I actually did, so that when I opened the gate, I was shaking and sweating all over. Mother was outside washing clothes when I entered the house, I greeted her and headed inside. The room was very hot, it was obvious mother didn’t settle down before she packed out fathers clothes for washing, that the slight headache she had on Saturday had prevented her from washing. Still tremulous, I stretched out my hand to open the louvers window, one of them slipped and quickly I reached out to catch it but it continued its journey downwards and finally made a shattering sound.
“Who is that?” I heard father shout from the back of the house. I kept silent, surprised he was at home.
“What is that?” he shouted again
“The louvers fell sir,” I managed to answer.
“By itself?” he retorted.
“No Sir,” I replied.
He came towards the window and I could see him clearly now with his blazing eyes contending with the light of the scorching sun. He was dressed in party outfits.
“I am going to replace that louvers with your lecture fee,” he said and walked towards the front of the house.
“Papa Daniel you didn’t even make sure the broken louvers didn’t injure him,” I heard mother say to him.
“He is old enough to know that times are hard,” I heard father reply her.
“I have a meeting,” I heard him say to her again, I heard the slamming of the gate and I knew he was gone. It was then I felt something cold drop on my right foot and I bent down to check what it was, staring right back at me was a drop of my blood. My finger had been cut by the broken louvers and was bleeding, but then what father had said rang deeply in my head. I knew if he did as he had threatened my buttocks would sure become sore from the strokes and lashes of our joyless class teacher, for lecture fee was the compulsory fee we paid for the non compulsory extra classes we had immediately after our normal school hours.
I cleaned my bleeding finger with a rag that I found lying idle in a corner of the room, but it didn’t stop the bleeding. I didn’t know what to do, so I thrust the finger angrily into my mouth hoping to keep my blood from forcing its way out of my tiny finger. Mother came in shortly and met me sucking the finger.
“Why are you sucking your finger?” she asked mw.
“Nothing ma,” I lied but she appeared unconvinced as she came towards me with that her suspicious look on her face.
“Let me see,” she said and forced the little finger out of my mouth.
“You are bleeding,” she exclaimed and I could only nod my head in affirmation.
“I will get the disinfectant,” she said and reached for the top of the wardrobe still holding on to my little finger, presenting a small dusty bottle she shook the little unfortunate bottle which proved to be empty when it was opened.
“Oh God!” she moaned and I could see a tear drop from her eyes as she held on to my little finger with one hand and shaking the little bottle vigorously with the other hoping to find something inside. Mother went to stand by the window and I just stood there looking angrily at my little finger. It seemed to empathize with ys for it stopped bleeding almost immediately.
“Mother it stooped!” I exclaimed in excitement, she turned around to look at me and her face lightened up. I tried to smile too, but father’s threat kept coming back to me and my face fell once more.
“Just don’t worry, I will look for money to pay your lecture fees,” she said to me appearing to sense my well founded fears. She patted me on my head and made to return to her washing.
“Mother I paid my fees,” I shouted after her feeling relived.
“What did you say?” she asked turning around to look at me.
“I didn’t misplace my fees,” I replied.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she smiled at me and left the room.
That evening father returned late and as soon as he settled down, he called me to the sitting room.
“Here is your lecture fee,” he said to me and handed me some naira naotes
“Thank you sir,” I said to him
“Hope you didn’t injure yourself?” he asked me. I said nothing but stretched out my injure finger. He looked into my face apparently surprised by my gesture. Then he bent down to look at the finger, just then power supply was cut.
“Get the lantern,” he said to me and I reached quickly for the lantern lying in a corner of the room, which mother had lit in anticipation of power outage. I raised it a bit as father examined my finger.
“I will press it with hot water tomorrow,” he said, making me bite my lip as I thought of the painful ordeal that awaited me the next day. When he let go of my finger, I went to mother and told her that father had given me my fees and she came marching into the sitting room immediately.
“Papa Daniel didn’t you say you had nothing earlier today?”
“They gave us money at the meeting,” he answered lazily and lay back in the big chair.
“But I thought it was about voting?” mother asked him.
“Voting?” he retorted, sitting up.
“I meant primaries...congress” mother replied trying desperately to use the appropriate party register.
“Well there was nothing like that, a candidate had already been chosen.
“I don’t get it,” she said looking surprised.
“Please don’t be surprised, the top echelon all had candidates so there wasn’t any need to vote,” he replied.
“But they can’t do that,” mother said.
“They can and they did, it was just at the ward level,” father said.
“I dare say that is what obtains even at the top level, i mean charity begins at home,” she put in and strolled out if the room shaking her head. Silence descended on the room and I could hear the insects chirping and frogs croaking loudly from the huge pond of water on the road that have refused to dry up even at this time of the year, for it was getting dark. A mosquito stung me on my neck and I scratched it fiercely that yet blood sprouted out. I got up to shut the window but retreated almost immediately as I sighted the space created by the broken louvers, fearing I would break yet another.
“And the money shared wasn’t the exact amount sent from the top,” I heard father say to mother.
“Everyone is just cheating,” I heard him say again.
“Which one are you worried about, the money or the fixed candidate?” mother asked him.
“Both!” he shouted, silencing the chirping insects and the croaking frogs, even as I settled down to my homework.
That might as I laid down on my bed staring at the ceiling in gloom, I saw mother walk towards my bed, and quickly I shut my eyes pretending to be sleep.
She got to me, and held my hand, and I just lay still, holding my breath, feeling her cold hand, with different thoughts flitting through my mind as I listened to her heavy breathing beside me. Then I opened my eyes to look at her, her eyes were shut but a few drop of tears had escaped already.
“Lord you know we are doing our best for him, as I dream of the man he had like to grow into, as I watch him sleep every night, but all he needs now is you, he needs your help, let him grow old, living life without fear, for I know he is scared,” she prayed in whispers, and I turned slightly muttering an amen, but she stood upright suddenly, appearing to have been startled, looked down on me as I snored in affectation and walked away.
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I was sitting in class one day when the principal sent someone to call me. As usual I approached his office with caution.
“You will join some of our seniors going for a debate competition in another school tomorrow,” he said to me just I stepped into his office, without looking up from what he was writing. He waved me aside with his hand and I marched off to my class beaming with smiles.
That first competition outside my school was the start of a series that was to follow, and soon, the debates culminated into mathematics competition. There is a particular one I never forgot. It was a mathematics competition organized for the schools in the local government, so we had to go early to the venue in other to do our registrations. I remember waking up early that day, and just as I set out to brush my teeth, power supply was cut.
“Put on your clothes like that,” father yelled from the other room, and quickly I ran outside to get my school trousers that I had washed the previous day but forgot to take inside for the night, and hurriedly humped into it. Groping in the dark night, I dressed up without a bath and father walked me to the school compound. Even in the dark, I could see pride wrapped into smiles on his face as he turned to go. Fortunately, I didn’t miss the bus that was to convey us to the venue, registering as the second school.
We were only few minutes gone into the competition, when my loins began to itch me, I suspected the wet trouser and as the itching increased, I was forced to remember I didn’t have my bath that morning. But the itching began to move gently up and down in the region, at first caressingly and then menacingly and rapidly, I closed and opened my laps repeatedly in an attempt to negotiate with the itching, but it wouldn’t go away. As it moved to my privates, I stood up unconsciously even as my head was bent deep into the maths problem, as I solved it. just then I felt a bite in the region, and without thinking I rushed outside to the open field, drawing down my pants. I searched effortlessly for my tormentor, and as I pulled my pants up I saw a cockroach craw away, cockroaches and darkness, cockroaches and power cut!

Days rolled into weeks and weeks into months, and soon I was to write my final exams in my second year in secondary school. Monday was the start of the exams, and as I washed up that morning, I couldn’t help but worry for throughout the term, I had tried to heed Mrs. Angelina’s warning to no avail. Much as I tried I really couldn’t begin to study and look seriously as I had done previously. In earnest, I enjoyed talking and laughing with my mates and not bowing my head into my books all day. I dressed up and came outside only to see father smiling broadly.
“Mama Daniel i am going to see the chairman today”, I heard him say to mother. Whatever it was, I had to get to school, only that I had forgotten my first paper was by 8am, as I strolled into the compound by a quarter to nine.
“Stand aside,” our class teacher shouted at me as I rushed to get my answer sheet and question paper.
“Show me your receipt,” the bald, dark and lanky cashier ordered from behind me. Hurriedly I searched my pocket and produced the rumpled receipt. She examined it and then asked me to go to my seat and write my exam with the remonstration of our class teacher as he eyed me suspiciously. I dived into the examination as soon as my papers were handed over to me, oblivious of the cashier taking a head count.
“It isn’t correct,” he suddenly exclaimed and we all looked up from our papers.
“Stand up all of you,” he shouted at us.
“You cant do that,” our teacher remonstrated with him.
“please let me do my job,” he shot at him and he stepped back.
“When I call your name, you sit down,” he said to us quietly this time and began to call our name from a long and ugly looking notebook. When he was done, I was the only one standing.
“What is your name?” he asked me.
“Daniel,” I answered swiftly, looking at my mates scribbling words into their exam sheets. She ran her eyes over the book again for what seemed like a decade.
“Your name isn’t here,”he finally said to me,
“Let me see your receipt,” he ordered me looking straight into my impatient face blithely. He examined it for another decade, looked at me askance and finally asked me to sit and he stalked out of the class. I tried to concentrate on the examination but couldn’t. Finally in frustration I submitted my answer sheet and hurried out of the class. Judith came out shortly.
“Daniel what happened?” she asked me.
“Nothing,! I answered trying to appear unperturbed. She looked at me, saying nothing more she walked up to our classmates who were checking the accuracy of their answers with the notes. Just then the senior prefect appeared in front of me, summoning me to the principal’s office. It was a long time I was last summoned to the office, and I feared this time he would ask me about the “assignment” he had given me for really I had done nothing about it. I peeped into the man’s office, and I could see our teacher and the cashier with his ugly notebook beautifully tucked under his arm, almost facing each other. I knocked and the principal asked me to come in.
“Good morning sir,” I greeted him.
“How are you doing my beloved Daniel?” I shuddered in fright, wondering if I heard him right, “beloved” was simply just out of it.
“Fine sir,” I managed to say as I gasped for breath.
“Who did you pay your fees to?” he asked me.
“Our class teacher sir,” I answered and pointed to the man, who looked away swiftly when I imagined him swallowing me up with his bulging and flaming eyes.
“And he issued you a receipt?” our principal asked.
“yes sir, he asked me to come back for it after I handed him my fees, and I did sir.”
“you can go now,” he said to me, and I got up and walked out.
“How could you steal receipts from the cashier’s office when you were supposed to just hand the money to him!” I heard the principal shout at our teacher and I stopped abruptly in my tracks.
“I am sorry sir...” I heard the man plead.
“You falsified his signature for how much?” our principal screamed again.
“I am sorry...” the man continued to plead.
“Why did you do it?”
“I was pushed to the wall,” the man answered in sobs.
I don’t know what made me move closer to the half opened door, but I peeped into the office, and there kneeling down was our class teacher in tears and his white shirt soaked in it. even his bald head that shone like sun all term seemed dampened and unhappy now. I felt pity, he looked like father’s age mate and everyone knew how much he was disrespected by the entire staff, for he was quite old and yet unmarried.
“Please don’t turn me out,” I heard him plead again.
“Are you more scared of been sacked than been handed to the police?” our principal asked him and laughed out loud hysterically.
“Yes sir,” the man answered to my consternation. I just didn’t feel pity for him anymore, he was just been selfish. “That was why he was probably not married,” I surmised as I raced down to the class for my second paper.
As I walked home that afternoon, I was glad no one had blamed me for paying my fees to our class teacher, and I concluded there wasn’t any need telling father or mother about it, I guessed it had been the reason for the doubt I had felt deep down some timeago as I walked down this same path.
I wasn’t expecting to see father at home, but he was, and sitting on the big chair.
“Good afternoon sir,” I greeted him, but he just looked at me and turned away without answering.
“You mean they just gave it to someone else,” mother said as she emerged slowly from the other room holding a cup of water.
“Yes, the chairman in connivance with those illiterates gave the appointment to his son.”
So that was why father was unsettled, “appointment” I pulled off my uniform with mixed feelings. I wasn’t so sure anymore if our class teacher was selfish or wrong. Probably he was right, times were hard indeed and he was pushed to the wall, to the extent of debasing and humiliating himself. But what humiliation was there if he hadn’t been caught, did people like him who had justification for their wrongs feel any humiliation deep in their soul? I didn’t know what other way there was, looking at father and his principles as Steve would call it, I was sure there was. Isn’t that what father said our society teaches? Steal and don’t be caught? According to father, “stealing was stealing, whether by a wretched of an executive, and no matter how big stealing was exalted in our society above stealing in low places.”
Few days later father returned from another meeting, and wouldn’t talk to anyone, and when he did, he cursed.
“God will punish those people taking the money meant for us.”
“Papa Daniel not before him,” mother said to him apparently referring to him, unaware that I knew better than her. Even a baby could differentiate between hot and cold, even as both concepts were beginning to expand and accommodate like terms and increasingly becoming difficult to separate, where I was growing up.
“We will vote them out, whether the other party is worse of not,” father said vociferously.
“We will show them the true name is political party and not particular party,” he added.
“Even if they say even Jesus can’t conduct a free and fair election,” he swore.

CHAPTER SIX
We were shocked to know that the principal had resigned during the long holidays, in search of better pay. We had all liked him despite the hard strokes we sometimes received from him, though I alone had an exclusive reason for liking him. We anticipated the arrival of a more stringent principal, and when his replacement was finally named, it was the vice principal. We were not so happy with the development, for though the last principal had his stinging side, we clearly knew who a man who never objected to our doings, never said anything to anyone, a man who was too gentle, a gentle scholar than an administrator in our kind of “Field” more annoying was the excuse by the school management that it would cost too much to get an entirely new principal.
As we had predicted the man proved to be too benign for the job, within a short while he lost control of our ever difficult teachers for the number of subjects we were taught daily dropped considerably. The teachers hardly came to class and when they did, their lectures was brief and a good time out of that period was spent on scolding and chastising us , labelling us as unserious students. They always appeared deeply disturbed and concerned about their own claim that we waited for them to teach us everything and that we never learnt to study on our own, leaving me wondering why I was in school and why I didn’t just stop wasting father’s hard earned money and go sit at home, if education according to them was all about reading on your own. I never knew how this affected me but years later I would find it almost strange and impossible to participate in a pseudo interactive class, for having evolved from the kind of system paraded by our teachers I was sure good at reading on my own!
As the term progressed we realized we had only been treated as little kings and queens in our earlier classes. I particularly found the new environment unbearable and it all appeared a hoax to me, for what we witnessed daily in class was fighting here and there. Soon the good spoken English that had enthralled me as a new student slowly faded away to be replaced by croaky vulgar obscene utterances that appeared strange at first but quickly becoming fashionable to us all. In a way the new language made us feel big and mature and we spoke it anywhere and everywhere. In earnest no one could say from where it emanated, but the teachers soon adopted the language, making it “official”
I felt good whenever I walked into the school compound, a new feeling and love developed deep inside me and when I returned home, I would long desperately for it to be morning so I could return to “my playing ground.” Am not sure, but I think I wanted more than this, especially with what I saw when we went out for competitions that we never won again. But somehow I was entwined in the happenings around me, the system I had suddenly and unconsciously become part of! Deeper into it was I plunged.
As our final exams for our junior secondary school approached, it slowly began to dawn on us what we had been thrown into, that what we had all along was to culminate into a struggle to pass the exams that would determine if we were to advance to senior secondary school and not enjoyment. The lectures suddenly increased and each day we would come to school very early only to return when it was dark, with hurting buttocks from the long unabridged lectures. As usual the situation sufficed for father to show his discontent with our society when he discovered I had suddenly intensified my studies.
“Yes that is what they have plunged us into,” he would start.
“Struggles and survival,” he would lament
“We have lost the sense of even a comfort in doing things, all we seem contented with is surviving, and unfortunately we think it is the normal way of living and getting things done.”
When father talked I would frown in disagreement for the way I studied presently was pleasant to me, as against been taught and studying all term, for after all passing exams didn’t appear a problem, for I always did pass. But when the exams came, it dawned on me that I wasn’t ready!
When the results came, our talented principal marched down happily to the assembly to congratulate us. He praised our intelligence and brilliance. And just a bit funny the man looked at me and told me I had the overall best result, to which the whole students clapped, but somehow I just didn’t feel alright with it. Maybe I was scared because I longed to improve and not get acknowledged for my present state, but just maybe I should have enjoyed the moment.
In the new term that followed, more teachers resigned despite the increase in our tuition. The fact that most parents began to withdraw their kids made it appear like the system was fully ensconced, and no one was thinking of any improvement, but I didn’t feel perturbed until we resumed for another term and Judith didn’t show up.
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Father stayed on in the party, and twice a week, he went out for meetings, and return to editing and re-editing the minutes. He continued to wait for the appointment that never came, though he complained that the few slots that came were hide jacked by the few and unproductive but influential members. But despite all these father appeared happy with the secretary position he occupied in the ward, for many a time he would tell stories of how he had taken over the meetings with his good English, and how they all respected him calling him, “Teacher! Teacher!” for his meticulous handling of the position. But this had been all, for no matter how he presented it, when he talked, I sensed he was leaving out a part...a part that said he didn’t belong, the part that expressed how unlike the pack he was. Why did he strive so much to show how superior hr was to the rich influential but illiterate members of the party...was his literacy not his wealth and defence to the unexpressed attack. And wasn’t that the reason for the little sadness that sat on his cheeks when he was done with the whole talk. I don’t know why but I did feel the pain he wouldn’t dare express, I wanted to fight for him, even if he pretended everything was fine. “One day” I thought to myself, those old men whom I hoped would be alive, would tell others like father that I was the MAN blocking their parts. “I just had to get there first!”
As the gubernatorial elections drew near, the whole state went agog with campaigns here and there. By this time father had acquired a T.V set, so we were able to follow the campaigns on T.V, the campaigns were always packed full with piles of promises in disposable packs. Just like food is served in outings, as each promise was dished out, the people would yell and scream, asking hungrily for more.
“Father do these people follow the campaigns at all, cant they see the promises are meant to outdo those of the other candidates?” I finally blurted out.
“Daniel not everyone have time to follow the campaigns,” he replied and returned to editing his minutes, though I wasn’t satisfied I knew better than to disturb him.
I kept on watching the campaign which soon came to a close, and the journalist began to interview the party supporters. This went on fine till a boy with bulging stomach came forward armed with coloured English.
“This man are a good man...” he said.
“Eh!” Father exclaimed and raised his head from his minutes.
“He has do many things for all of we,” the pregnant boy continued.
“Shut your mouth!” Father shouted, but he was on T.V and couldn’t hear father.
“I knew he will won, us love him,” he finished
“What type of wounded English is this?” Father yelled even as I croaked with laughter.
“Look qt this tug, he doesn’t even know how to say the rubbish he is saying,” he shouted.
“Illiterate,” he cursed under his breath.
“Yes isn’t this their weapon...didn’t they say education isn’t meant for the poor?” he turned to me.
“Chronic illiteracy, so we don’t know our left from our right?” he continued his questions.
One of the contestants suddenly appeared on screen, “that is him!” father exclaimed.
“Who?” I asked him.
“You wouldn’t know him,” he answered without looking at me, and pushed aside his beloved minutes, to listen to the man who has begun talking.
I straightened up and listened to the man, wondering why father was so pleased with him, but I didn’t have to wait too long, he was the candidate of the najor opposition party.
“This our state has be stripped of its glory by this government, why don’t we send them packing,” he said.
“This corrupt government that wants to milk the people dry!” He shouted, then went on to prove his allegation with monies stolen, misappropriated, misused, mismanaged...so I thought the “Mis” wasn’t going to stop. But then he seemed so sure.
Everyone in that campaign ground were patiently listening to him, “We have all been oppressed subdued dehumanised, cheated,” the man’s voice rang into the cool evening sky.
“We must show them they can’t get away with anything, this is our only way!” he shouted.
“I know what it took me to grow up to this stage, now I want to help those children who can’t go to school, to make sure they become something in life, please help me to help you,” he pleaded.
“Am offering the assistance no one ever offered me,” he said calmly and I culd see his face had fallen like he couldn’t help thinking about what he had gone through while growing up.
“Please think of those men suffering without jobs, stripped of their manhood, the ability to take care of their family, the women who work in our farms all day with nothing to show for it, the children who die of diseases that can be taken care of ,” he continued.
“And the annoying thing is that the money is there!” he yelled and began to poince up and down the stage with furious eyes.
“Lets get them out!” he yelled and the people screamed out their lungs after him. Then he stopped abruptly and I could see he was weeping, i turned to father, a tear dropped down his cheeks, I looked at his face closely, he didn’t seem to notice me, but there it was, love shinning in those strange white eyeballs, love for the man? Certainly no, love for what the man represented, love for change! And all the people that had been in that campaign listening attentively to that man, the ordinary men, the market women, the okada riders, the street traders, just the peasants who probably didn’t hear the English spoken by the man, but they had all stood there untiring, waiting to install change!
I don’t know why but I just wasn’t enthralled, I strolled out. Then it came to me, the man had promised change, but didn’t tell us the form, honestly was there only just one type?
Outside, I fixed my gaze into thin air, that moment when you don’t know exactly what you staring out, and you really don’t know why you can’t stop staring, when I finally pulled out of my illusion, I was terribly taken aback by the sight that appeared before me, a dog covering a hen and its chicks from the hawk hovering above, the dog had one of the chicks between his teeth!

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One thing led to another and soon I was a frequent visitor of Mrs. Angelina, and becoming good friends with her son Sam. He was a smart and gentle boy though sometimes devastatingly boisterous. I didn’t see him as lazy, he read when he wanted to and played in his own time. Deep down I must admit I admired and even envied him, the kind of life he lived, where he didn’t seem to fear tomorrow, what he would become, this luxury it appeared I couldn’t afford, certainly not with the “know thyself...know where thy from,” father told me almost on a daily basis.
As I headed for my friend’s house today, I thought of his mother, the obedient house wife who has had to resign, to aid the campaigns of his political husband. Sam was just going out to play football with his friends when I walked into the huge compound. He invited me to accompany him and so I did, but I didn’t play with them for though father didn’t ban me entirely from the sport, this curious and uneasy freedom didn’t go without a certain pent-up portentous insinuation that I felt deep inside me. I stood there holding their clothes as Sam and his friends played. As I looked on, this great inexorable feeling that I would play better, descended on me, and I was soon running up and down the full length of the pitch. Just then I heard something tweak under my feet, sprouting from my big toe was very red blood, and the next I knew was a woman in white apparel shouting at me to keep shut as I screamed uncontrollably.
“No one asked you to injure your toe!” she yelled at me, with a squeezed face as she stitched the toe menacingly. I looked at the direction of father, hoping for a little recourse, but what I saw made me turn away quickly, a puckered brow seasoned with scowl at the lips and a frown at the chin.
“What do you think you were doing playing football with those kids!” father yelled at me almost as soon as we stepped into the house.
“Father I was just trying to be part of...”
“Part of what!” he yelled at me again making me shrink in fear and momentarily forgetting the pain that spasm from my injure toe to my brain.
“That boy is way too different from you.”
“I know,” I said to him and he looked up at me, surprised.
“No you don’t, you may think you do, but you don’t.”
“I do,” I said again.
“If you did you will stop trying to play and read your books!” he yelled at me.
“Must I always read>” I retorted unconsciously and tried to cover my mouth, but it was too late as father came towards me and landed me two hot smoking slaps in quick succession, and I raised my hand to rub my face but returned it swiftly to rub my aching toe.
“Do you know how much I just spent in that hospital, for unbudgeted expenses!” he yelled at me.
“look Daniel,” he came closer and raised my bowed head to look directing into his furious eyes.
“I have to budget for everything, for after all I don’t steal like their fathers,” he said to me, and walked away.
As I sat there rubbing my cheek and my toe, I knew it was no use talking to father, but I knew I was beginning to hate this, this place where I stood, where father asked me to stand. Whether money was spent on my injured toe or not, whether Sam was better placed or not, whether I read or not, I felt pained. Was father being insensitive just this once? Like those whom he said should fix the roads that injured us, those who didn’t care if we were saddened by hunger, that rain leaked into our old houses, that there was no power to warm ourselves in cold, or to power our fans in heat. But they were right, for as father said, “There was no money.” And we were supposed to know that these were luxuries not necessities, especially when I didn’t need to exercise!
As my toe healed up, I was able to move from the bedroom where I had been to the sitting room and around the house. The first thing that caught my attention was father writing his lesson notes giving no attention to his beloved minutes. Why had he abandoned the minutes?
In the evening, everyone sat down to watch T.V and just then the chosen one came on air.
“That is our candidate!” father erupted from the big chair where he sat.
“Father did you switch parties?” I asked him.
“Not yet,” he replied brusquely, and returned to watching the man who had begun talking.
“We will vote them out!” father exclaimed as I withdrew into the bedroom.
Two weeks later the elections held and there was celebration everywhere, the chosen one had won, in fact the whole Local Government Areas in the State. Shortly afterwards Father announced that he was quitting politics, that he was convinced now, that a progressive was at the helm of affairs.
“Father what do you mean by progressive?” I asked him.
“Well...someone who will move our state forward,” he replied.
“In what direction...if something is moving forward, it has to move in a particular direction right?” I quizzed.
“Daniel please I don’t know,” he waved me aside.
I looked closely at father; I saw the grey hair sneaking out surreptitiously on his head, then I knew he was tired, tired of fighting, he wasn’t fighting anymore to reassure himself he was right, he just assumed he was right. He was taking the easy path, wasn’t he who had taught me to recognise the easy path and avoid it? Was father alone in this? Was he the only one who didn’t care about the change he asked for?
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Time flew and soon I was in senior class two in my private school, with father regularly reminding me that I had no excuse if I couldn’t secure “admission” when I attended a private school. The way he called the “admission” made me shrink in fear.
“You better be serious with your books, I don’t have money to bribe anyone,” he would say to me, and then I would turn to mother hoping for a little respite, but she always took father’s side.
“Go and look at this...go and look at that...the daughter of the trader and the son of that farmer who didn’t go to school, they are in school, wont our own children go to school?” she would ask me.
“But mother am I not going to school now?” I would ask her.
“No, until you are in a university was always her ready reply.
I would stand staring at mother and father when they talked like this, unsure who they were. Wasn’t it the same father who had said that the foundation was important? That increased funding for schools without looking at where the students who were to use them were coming from was wasted? What was the reason for this new stand of his? Was he affected by the fact that everyone wanted their wards to be in the university, that the number of “Graduates” whether baked, half baked or even of completely unknealded flour, was the pedestrian of success on which men in my country walked? Why wouldn’t they? When it was the thinnest guarantee that their wards wouldn’t go through what they the uneducated had gone through? Since in the first place, according to father a degree was the slightest chance one had to the few non-existent jobs. Certainly father wasn’t consistent in his “opinions” anymore. But if father wanted to change suddenly, what did he hope would happen to those questions he had raised in me?

Soon we were in senior class three, and I was appointed the assistant senior prefect, with our quiet principal telling me I was too quiet and reclusive to be the senior prefect. Some days later we were called out in the assembly ground in the full glare of the entire students and staffs, and after which the principal called us to his office.
“You must know you have been honoured with these position,” he said to us.
“And that means responsibilities...” he added even as some of the newly appointed prefects quibbled in excitement, winning the affectation of our principal who smiled at them.
“And responsibility has to start from taking care of yourselves,” he continued.
“That includes the way you dressed...” he paused to scrutinize our looks, as he spoke I was suddenly panic-stricken, my uniform precisely my trouser had undergone many surgeries and consequent stitches. I could only imagine what it would take to stand before father to ask for money for a new uniform, so that I began to sweat even in that cold harmattan morning.
Good afternoon sir,” I greeted father, but he waved me aside and continued marking the notes without looking up, sending waves of despair down my soul.
“Father,” I said and he raised his head and removed his goggles.
“We have just been appointed as prefects in our school...”
“Get to the point Daniel,” he cut in.
“I need...a new...uniform,” I stammered, completely taken aback that he didn’t take pride in my position, I felt hurt, for I knew of better days when father would have praise me.
“I don’t have money,” he said to me and resumed his marking, I walked away slowly, turning back occasionally hoping he would call me back. I thought of the consequences of not getting a new uniform, scenes of the junior students making fun of me began to form in my head, as I walked sluggishly into the bedroom, with my hopes on mother.
“Mother please...”
“What did your father say?” she cut in.
“He said he doesn’t have?” she asked even as I struggled to produce an answer. She sprang up from where the bed and stormed into the sitting room, as I followed closely behind her.
“Papa Daniel did you say you don’t have money>” she asked father vociferously, but father wouldn’t say anything or look up from his notes.
“And you keep on supporting that man!” she shot at him when she surmised she would get no reply from him.
“What are you getting from him!” she yelled at him.
“Development,” father replied sarcastically still not looking up.
“When he has amputated my already crippled salary with his tax,” she shot at him again, and I could see she was close to tears.
“Well he is working with the money, isn’t he?” father remarked.
“When I can’t even get my son a new uniform,” she muttered and I could see the tears now coming out, mother was crying in frustration for she beat her chest repeatedly, shaking her head vigorously. And I withdrew silently convinced I wasn’t to get a new uniform, but I felt pained for causing mother pain, why didn’t I just keep shut and continue in my tattered uniform? I could only flay myself.
In the evening while mother cooked, I approached her about the uniform.
“Mother the uniform is really very important,” I said to her.
“Daniel please leave me alone,” she said to me, leaving me stunned, but I wasn’t to be defeated, for I drew closer to her.
“Please mother I need the uniform,” I pleaded with her.
“Just look at you, pleading for how much?” she shot at me.
“Go and look at your mates, they take care of their little needs, but we still have to buy everything for you at your age.”
“Mother! ” I exclaimed in utter disbelief.
“Shut your mouth! Look at Martins, he does menial jobs to take care of his minor needs and yet he goes to school!” she fired at me.
“Mother I know his type, I have them in my class, they hardly come to school, and when they do it is to come and spend it on the girls in our class,” I said to her in self-defence.
“Just go on lecturing me, you only have your mouth, why don’t you work and do something reasonable with your money!” she shouted at me, waving her hands furiously over her head.
“Mother I am simply focusing on school,” I said to her.
“Focusing on your studies you say? Or you are simply lazy, you have always been lazy, where you not chased back home by the same Martins some years ago” she retorted.
I looked at mother as tears began to drop down my cheeks, I couldn’t believe she had said those things to me. I began to feel hot inside, I looked at mother again and without saying anything more, I strolled out into the cool evening. I kept my hands deep inside my pockets not sure exactly where I was headed. I had only walked a few minutes when I heard someone call my name, and I turned around to look at a short dark woman, a little boy holding tightly to her wrapper, and another resting on her back.
“Daniel...Daniel...Daniel,” she just kept on saying.
“Don’t you remember me?” she asked finally letting go of my name.
“No,” I answered.
“Don’t you remember Cynthia?” she asked.
“No I don’t,” I replied.
“Come on...you surely do remember me, Chris’s sister, in your former house,” she said excitedly.
“Oh!” I exclaimed suddenly.
“Cynthia!” I exclaimed again, but calmed down immediately, for the actual person standing before me slowly came to me as a bolt from the blue. She seemed to notice my sudden change of mood, for she bowed her head quickly, drawing lines on the ground with her rubber slippers.
“Are these your children?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Philip, James” she called on two other children playing in the sand some few metres away.
“And these ones,” she added when the children came running down.
“But its just been six years,” I griped, and she bowed her head again. i just kept on staring at her bowed head, waiting for her to raise it, with none of us saying nothing in that awkward moment.
“How are your parents?” she asked, raising up her head, but I didn’t answer, as I was staring at her face.
“How are your parents?” she asked again, touching me lightly.
“Oh they are fine,” I finally answered.
“I live around here with my husband,” she said, but I could only nod, as I couldn’t stop staring at her face, that face that I had admired even when I couldn’t tell why, that face that had made me feel shy.
“We are going to church,” she said, hurrying off and dragging her children along. I looked at them until they slowly disappeared from sight. As i walked back home, I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about Cynthia, the tall pretty girl that had fascinated me a few years ago, a sharp contrast to the dark short girl who looked older than her age, I had just seen. A tear dropped from my eyes and I made no attempt to stop the others that subsequently followed.
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As I walked into our school compound, I could see tippers going in and out of the compound, with loads of cement everywhere, we didn’t have to wait for long to understand what was going on, for the proprietor came running down himself to address the senior class.
“Hope we still got time,” he said, smiling and rubbing his hands together, then he look at us and noticed that we were almost grinning.
“You guys don’t get it?” he asked still smiling.
“Well we will help each other,” he said.
“The school management wants to ensure you don’t run away to other schools to enrol for your final exams like your predecessor,” he tried to explain but we still didn’t understand as we stared harder at him.
“We want to build a hall, a very big one that will accommodate you and all those students who will now run to us,” he explained.
“They still don’t get it,” one of the teachers who accompanied him, whispered to him
“We want to go into mass production of results,£ he blurted out angrily, embarrassed on having to say it in such a mundane. Without uttering another word, he walked away.
As I walked back home in the afternoon, the proprietor’s furious complaint to his teachers kept coming back to me.
“Everyone is doing it, why does ours have to look strange,” the man had complained.
“Sir I don’t think the students got you,” the loyal teacher had tried to pacify him.
“Okay how did they want me to say it?” the man retorted.
Mother was waiting for me outside the door when I got home, “Take this,” he stretched out some money to me.
“Get a new uniform with it,” she said to me, smiling broadly like she couldn’t wait to give me the money.
“Mother I wouldn’t be a new uniform,” I said her, handing her back the money, and her face fell instantly, like I had unsettled her.
“Oh Daniel, am very sorry for those things I said to you, I really didn’t have money, I had to borrow this one,” she explained offering me the money again.
“Mother that isn’t why,” I said to her and she was utterly gobsmacked.
“What is it then?” she asked.
“I only have this term in that school,” I replied.
“Wont ypu write your exams in that school?” she asked.
“NO ma, I don’t want to be involved in their malpractice,” I answered.
“What malpractice?” she asked even more stunned.
“So where would you go?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but somewhere where no one would take the glory for my result,” I answered, and I could see mother heave a sigh of relief.
“But that doesn’t mean yo shouldn’t get a new uniform for the time being,” mother put in.
“Won’t that be a waste?” I asked, and mother began to smile again.
“I will manage mother,” I said to her.
“Did I say that?” I asked myself smiling as I strolled into the bedroom, surprised at my own reasoning.
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I walked down to see Sam, we really didn’t see during the period of our exams, so I went down to see him. Mrs Angelina was just going out when I got there.
“He isn’t here,” he said sternly to me.
“Where is he?” I asked casually.
“He is gone abroad to further his studies,” she replied.
“But he said he was attending a private university here,” I replied bowled over.
“Well we changed our minds,” she dismissed me hurriedly.
As I walked back home in quick steps, I felt betrayed, father had been right all along, he didn’t even bother to inform me, I thought friendship was about loyalty, I wouldn’t treat a friend like this.
“He ran away right?” Father startled me even more, coming from behind the door as I stepped into our sitting room, and I looked up at him, hoping he would understand what I wouldn’t dare express, that I wasn’t in the mood for his lectures.
“Oh you didn’t know?” he asked mockingly.
“Know what father?” I asked trying hard to hide my exasperation.
“Your friend impregnated a girl down his street and ran away,” father revealed.
“Not before his parents took care of it,” he added seeming to be having fun.
“Took care of it?” I asked naively.
“Aborted,” father put in.
“I only pity for the poor girl,” he said.
“No...that can’t be...certainly Mrs. Angelina must have known better,” I stammered and father began to laugh hysterically.
“Well now you agree that he always had someone to clean up his mess, unlike you,” father finished and walked away, and I could see he had been waiting desperately to show how right he had been. I looked on as he walked away. I wanted to say something to him, but couldn’t afford any. I thought of my teacher who had betrayed me, then Sam, but why did he run away if he had everything, did they feel guilty? So after all, we all had the same standard of morality despite the huge difference in our social status, I smiled to myself and went inside.

Bros you are tryin o

Divepen: Bros you are tryin o

tanx bro...was beginning to think I would post d whole story without a comment

light574:


tanx bro...was beginning to think I would post d whole story without a comment

That was what surprsied me...That you had the will to continue without a comment

Divepen:
That was what surprsied me...That you had the will to continue without a comment

well...lets jst say i v a message 2 pass across...there v been views anyway

CHAPTER SEVEN
Feet moved to and fro and the owners seemed not to mind their steps but just looked on ahead. Looking up myself, I could see that their faces expressed various feelings, some seemed happy, some excited, some indifferent, but most tired and worn out. They only canvassed with familiar faces unaware of everything and everyone around them, unless occasionally making remarks about what they saw or waving to another familiar face. I stood where I was, having never seen so many people just in one place. I tried greeting someone but got no reply, in fact no one seemed to notice me for many just hurried past like their lives were in danger.
I approached the gates cautiously, it was the first time I was coming here. The men at the gate looked fierce with blazing eyes, making me shudder as I neared the gate, but the fiery eyes seemed to disappear. I greeted the men but go no reply once more, for they too were chatting away except for times when they went to check the many cars that were coming in and going out. I could see the faces of the pedestrians follow a flashy car coming in or going out, with admiration in them until the car slowly disappeared from their sight, and then they would share with their friends what they thought about the car, occasionally many bit their lips, and “one day!” they remarked.
I walked closer to the man , one of them called out as I walked past. I stopped abruptly in my tracks and fear gripped me, wondering what I had done wrong, I stood there waiting for him to come over and probably slap me. One of them did come towards me but walked past in pursuit of a gentle one, when he got to her, he ore her handbag from her shoulders and almost immediately emptied its contents on the road.
“Didn’t you hear me call you!” I heard him shout at her. But she offered no reply as she ran her eyes over the man. This seemed to infuriate the man who suddenly started to pull at her arms dragging her towards his mates.
“What have I done wrong?” I heard the quiet girl yell at the man when I had almost began to wonder why such a beauty couldn’t talk.
“Shut your mouth,” one of them, a woman, shouted at her, one of the men looked sardonically at her like she wasn’t supposed to be there, and she immediately scuttled away and returned to checking the cars, shaking her big bosom firmly gripped by the orange uniform trousers, all the way.
“Don’t you know you aren’t properly dressed...” he turned back to the quiet girl
“With this your short skirt,” he added and attempted to touch the helm of the “short” skirt, but the girl shifted from his touch, which seemed to infuriate the man further.
“You will stay here all day!” he yelled at her.
I stood there watching, unaware that I was right at the middle of the road.
“Get off the road!” a man yelled from the windscreen of a car, and i jumped off the road, again uncertain what was to follow as the car screeched to a halt near me. My hear missed a bit and my ever conscious soul momentarily abandoned my body. The man came out of the car looking at me, just then he turned around and grabbed the collar of a boy who had big earphones on his head.
“So it’s because of this that you didn’t hear me horning,” he shouted at the D.J hitting the earphone off his head. I watched in amazement as the boy struggled to free himself from the tight grip of the man, somehow he succeeded and made to get away but the man suddenly began to shout, “security! Security!” and the men from the gate came running down. One grabbed him by the help and the others helped him drag him towards the gate, where the quiet girl was still standing, though now in tears.
“Continue to feign innocence when you have exposed your body,” the woman in uniform said to her, but the man scowled at her again, and once again she scuttled away to check the cars.
“Let’s focus on this one,” he said to the others, pointing to the boy they had just brought in.
“He seems strong, lets take him to base,” another suggested, and within a twinkle of an eye, the boy was whisked away on a motorcycle ridden by one of the man and another sitting behind the boy, apparently to prevent any daring escape.
The big man from the car shook his head with satisfaction, waved ceremoniously to the security men and sped off in his car. I stuck a finger in my ribs, i just had to reassure myself I wasn’t the boy that had been whisked away. Smiling to myself i walked on, but just then someone hurried past, it was the girl from the gate, but her handbag wasn’t with her, she had been granted bail on the recognisance of her handbag and its contents! Just a little way down, by the left, there were a number of buses and someone was continuously yelling like he was calling for people to come board the buses.
“Aren’t you going down inside the school?” a boy walking by my side asked me.
“Yes,” I stammered, surprised that someone has actually talked to me.
“You can’t walk down, it’s too far inside,” he added and turned to walk towards the buses.
“Come along,” he said to me
“Where exactly are you headed?” he asked me as we approached the bus stand.
“Faculty of Engineering,” I answered.
“That is where am going too,” he replied smiling but I just nodded in affirmation and got into the creaky bus, only to spring up almost immediately as the iron from the seat pierced my buttocks.
As I sat inside the bus, I felt alone, it was my first day at school, I thought about what it was like inside this mighty school, where I knew no one, indeed even outside here did I actually know anybody except for Father, Mother and those they wanted and allowed me to know? I could only wish Chris was around, but he was in another faculty, faculty of law, and our lecture days were different. The bus had come to a stop, its confused rattle had given place to an endless spastic shudder as if its pieces were held together by too much rust ever threatening to fall completely apart.
I admired the tall buildings that stretched out before me as I stepped out of the bus. I had never seen anything like them. I stared with wide open eyes at the surroundings and when I finally decided to look up, there it was, with a cement lettering sticking out in front of it, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING. I cornered round the building scared of going straight in, and just again a gigantic building stood in front of me with the same cement lettering but just a bit more colourful, DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING.
This was it! I was very sure, my admission into the university was to study civil engineering. With a little boldness, I marched into the building, which turned out to be yet another opening to other buildings and once again my admiration was heightened. I could see a building with “Library in gigantic letters inscribed on it, in a corner was a building bearing “lab” and just ahead was a column of smaller buildings and I surmised they were classrooms.
As I sauntered towards the classrooms, I continue at marvel at the big buildings spreading in front of me, they were indeed big buildings covering enough space on the ground but appeared shy of the sky, they were only big bungalows. Honestly I wondered why father had claimed that our universities lacked infrastructures, what were these? And to be honest they were very much bigger than my secondary school buildings.
As I walked towards the column of buildings, I could see that I had rightfully called them classrooms, for a plague that had LH1 hung out conspicuously from one of the buildings from where I assumed it had been initially fixed. In a particular building I saw many students peering through the windows, climbing on each other, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside. After a little tour around the other buildings, it dawned on me that the building with the students outside was the only place where something was going on.
“Excuse me” I said repeatedly but got no reply from any of the peering students. I waited for a little while and decided to peer into the room too, and then I saw a stout man pacing up and down the podium at the front of the class like someone reciting a poem. I shifted my gaze towards his audience and I saw students scribbling down notes hurriedly, most of them on their laps, apparently a lecture was going on. Was this how we were going to be receiving lectures? I didn’t have to wait long for my answer, for a few weeks later while we were sweating inside the same hall, scribbling down notes on PHY 101, someone yelled out that the hall was too tight.
“You are the ones who want to go to school, I advise some of you to go back home to create an enabling environment for the rest,” the lecturer replied, perhaps jokingly.
Seeing it as an opportunity to voice their discontent with the lectures, the students began to grumble, “how do you expect us to copy your notes that you are dictating hurriedly,” a “very” bold student yelled at the lecturer.
“Use shorthand,” the man had surprisingly replied calmly.
“Hope you wouldn’t blame us if we get our spellings wrong in our exams?” another galling student had yelled out. The lecturer had paced up and down the podium and almost immediately it seemed water had been poured on him, for the sweat oozing out of him began to wet the podium. And that was how that lecture had ended prematurely for that semester! But we had all been happy we were university students, as one of our lecturers rightly put it, “you are happy to have a village university”
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It was finally decided by my parents that I was to study engineering, and father insisted that I wasn’t to go far in search of a university education, so I had to settle for the state owned university in my local Government, though he had made me sit and pass the entrance examination into the Federal University in the state capital. Again, he insisted that I was to go to school from home, and every morning he would hand me some naira notes for my transport to school. The distance from my house to school was about two kilometres, I took okada to school to the main town and yet another to school. My course mates questioned the distance when they came to know about it, but father wouldn’t be persuaded to let me go leave in the hostel, in fact the way he called the “hostel” made it seem it was a no go area, but Father was oblivious that he only aroused my curiosity to see what indeed awaited me in the hostel.
“Father am studying a practical course and I need to discuss ideas with my mates,” I would say to father.
“Thank God I also went to school, so stop beating around the bush,” he would reply, to my consternation.
“Father this has nothing to do with whether you also went to school or not, but simply about my studying engineering.”
“Daniel, you are all I have, I won’t risk it,” he would say compassionately to me, signalling the end of our little conversation. In my frustration, I concluded that I was going to at least sleep in the hostel in the nearest future, whether father approved of it or not.
School wasn’t as I had imagined it to be, there were so many things I couldn’t comprehend, and I began to wish I had stayed back at home for at least a year for the older ones amongst us seemed to have settled down better than some of us, as they came regularly and earlier to classes, and had a good rapport with our stern lecturers. Our problem was further compounded when “assignments” began to fly in from every corner. I especially had the problem of having to do my assignments solo because of my far away abode, and every time we had to submit assignment, my mates would cover around themselves recounting how they had collectively done the assignments together. On one occasion I came to school thinking the submission date of an assignment I had done, but left at home, was the next day, only to be told we were to submit it that day. I remember rushing down to our class representative with that worried look only a fresher is privileged to bear, on my face, and pleading with him to let me submit mine the next day.
“Today is the deadline,” he said to me with finality and made to walk away.
“Alright, can I at least go and bring it?” I asked and he looked up at me from collecting the long sheet of papers from ours coursemates.
“I have done it already,” I added.
“That isn’t it, I heard you come from home,” he replied smiling wryly.
“I can get it,” I added again not minding the wry smile hanging on a corner of his lips.
“Alright, you got until the lecturer comes for them,” he said to me and walked away.
Quickly I dashed out of the hall heading towards a shuttle bus, but redirected my steps almost immediately when I realized that I would probably get back from home and the bus would still be packed where it was. When I finally made it to the main gate there wasn’t a single motorcycle or an okada rider around. They had all lined up along the highway. The only ones who talked to me told me they were going to join their mates at the highway. I couldn’t quite place what was going on, but I knew I had to get my assignment. Finally one of them stopped right in front of me, “we are waiting for our leader,” he said to me and sped off in the direction of his mates.
I was filled with indignation as it slowly dawned on me that that I was going to lose the mark from the assignment, but somehow I wanted to see this “Leader” another hurried past me, “our National Chairman is coming,” I heard him murmur to himself in excitement. My curiosity only heightened as I moved closer to the loyal okada riders to see their beloved national chairman. I could imagine the man riding on a very big motorcycle!
They suddenly began to shout and then all too spontaneous, some dark heavy duty jeeps flew past even as the men hollered in extreme excitement. Shortly the heavy smiles carrying with it an all air of importance and accomplishments vanished from the faces of the men, replaced by a more serious empty look and once again they returned to the garage, hustling shouting and fighting over passengers.
“Didn’t you say you needed a ride home son?” one of the men asked me, resting on his motorcycle, I returned to my senses momentarily, and jumped unto the bike, which sped off in the direction of my house.
On my return journey, I dared to open a discussion with the man
“Oga your chairman didn’t come again?” I asked him.
“He did,” he answer.
“When? I was there all the time,” I replied.
“He came in the jeeps,” he said to me.
“jeep?” I asked alarmed.
“Yes,” he replied calmly.
“Is he the chairman of the jeep riders association?” I asked him and he shook his head and laughed a bit.
“The government...they want to stop our operations that is why he came to talk to them,” he said to me.
“Oh! I see,” I exclaimed.
“At least when they see the jeeps just like theirs, they will give him a listening ear,” he explained and began to hum, and the heavy smile I had seen all over their faces earlier returned to his. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t so happy with his unnecessary lucidity. When I came down at the fron of the school gate, the man only collected ha;f the fare, and he wouldn’t even wait for a thank you, but sped off humming, with that huge smile on his face. I could only imagine the high hopes the man had on his chairman to “deliver” with all the respect and comfort they had accorded him, but what would he do if he didn’t? What did we do when they didn’t?
When I got back from school that day I walked up to father with a little boldness, hoping my near misfortune would make him shift his ground.
“Father I had to come back for my assignment today, and I almost missed out from submitting it,” I said to him.
“So?” he asked me and the boldness that had accompanied me as I walked up to him, fled leaving me to face father alone.
“Father I want to go to the hostel,” I blurted out.
“To do what?” father asked and sat down.
“As I said before, my course is a...”
“Practical course,” father cut in.
“That is the same university I attended and I bet you, nothing has changed there,” he said to me, as he stood up
“When you get to school tomorrow, take a look at the back of your faculty, and then you can come back to lecture me on practical,” he said and sat back down.
“Father whatever that means, I need a way to always communicate with my mates.”
“Okay I will get you a phone,” he said to me, I could hardly believe my ears, I was getting a phone? Phones were damn expensive, it could only mean father was hell bent on my staying at home!

Matriculation came and past like it was nothing, and father told me that it wasn’t entering the university that was important, but leaving it with your head held high, so there was no cause for celebration at this stage. Soon we were writing our first semester exams and not too long, our second semester exams, as our lecturers continually reminded us that “there was no time to waste, and that we weren’t in a polytechnic, whatever they meant by that. But I think I understood perfectly, for following father’s advice I had taken a trip to the back of the faculty, and what I saw made my stomach sick, for there sitting idle were research works rusting under the rain and the unbearable heat of the sun.
Am not so sure but I think natural selection brought some of us closer and distanced us also from some, for upon resumption everyone had talked and related with almost everyone, but gradually that had changed, giving room for little groups and peers here and there. It was in this confusion that I first met Jude. He was fat, short and just what I liked, quiet, but older than me and somehow I cant tell exactly how, we became friends, good ones.
Elections were drawing close, the whole place was agog with campaigns and as usual there were endorsements here and there. Everyone was singing the praises of the chosen one and even mother’s Teacher’s Association, or more apt the executives alone endorsed him. Father was now very quiet on public issues, he only mused and shook his head, then all at once he would look at me with fiery eyes,
“It was a mistake to have voted that man in, itr is a pity though, for incumbents never get un-sitted in this country of ours” he would say to me, and then go back to shaking his head.
Mother on her part would curse whenever she had the chance in low tones, blaming everyone and everything for the hardship. And one day when she came home, she just exploded
“this man is really wicked,” she exclaimed flinging her handbag into the far corner of the room.
“Calm down Mama Daniel,” father tried to assuage her.
“No I wont,” she shot at father.
“Alright, but at least tell us what happened,” he said to her.
“The same man who has refused to conduct elections for the Local governments...do you know who he appointed as the chairman of the caretaker committee?” she asked
“No,” father replied even as his big ears stood at attention ready to savour the answer.
“Paul,” mother blurted out.
“Which Paul?” father asked a bit alarmed.
“The same Paul you know,” mother answered.
“The same Paul who dropped out of modern school?” father quizzed
“Yes, he is our new chairman,” mother put in and folded her arms across her chest.
“That tug!” father shouted, and those fiery eyes I had come to dread rose steadily in their sockets.
“This is simply incredulous...in a university town where there are Professors!” father exclaimed again.
“And they say he is already erecting a mansion,” mother put in, and it turned out she shouldn’t have, for this was the beginning of quiet and sad days. When she returned in the evenings she would talk to father in low tones. Father appeared normal and unperturbed by Paul’s new status, though he would repeatedly tell us that no one would have expected that Paul would do better than him in life, but I really wasn’t sure that Paul had done better than father, for the first time I entered into the secretariat, when I had gone there to obtain my Certificate of Local Government of Origin, everyone had all been sitting idly, talking and doing nothing. if success was being paid for doing nothing, I had rather father wasn’t, for though it couldn’t be expressed, I adored father!
Mother seemed to have become the harbinger of bad news, for she came home one day and announced that Mr Francis was having a house opening ceremony.
“So they have succeeded...” father said looking out of the window
“Their pan has worked, I don’t even have a plot of land, not to talk of building a house,” father lamented and went to sit on the bed.
I know she had told father innocuously but the days that followed turned out to be difficult ones for us all. I really couldn’t explain father’s sudden change of attitude but he only went to school and had his meals, and when he returned, he would sit outside, clutching firmly to his little transistor radio, which he caressed every now and then, and almost spontaneously he would tune it with such vigour that the radio would scramble, as if to re assure himself that at least the thing was his. It appeared that father needed his own house, but I couldn’t tell why for we weren’t exactly homeless. Or did owning a house make father a “man”? Just how pitiful if it did, for the cost was too high for people like father to afford, people who formed a large percentage of the men. Didn’t those who come from the city complain about the high cost of land there? Didn’t they even say there were empty estates in Abuja simply because people like father couldn’t afford them? Where then were we expected to live in our own land? And that law on land Chris had talked about!
In truth I longed desperately to get away, especially after I heard mother console father, telling him that at least they had me, and I was presently doing well at school. I was happy been a consolation to them but somehow I just wanted to get away, to have a life, especially since that girl Susan, started throwing glances at me, whenever she met me with Jude.
My opportunity came one day when our lecture ended by 6 p.m in our pitch dark hall and the light from my phone having to aid me. The cloud suddenly darkened and a heavy downpour ensued. I hoped madly that it would rain till midnight so I could Jude to his hostel, just then as if reading my thoughts father’s call came in.
“Make sure you get yourself home,” he said and cut off even before I could greet him. Sadly, I gathered my books under my arms, and raced to gate under the blithering shower, I knew the Okada riders would be there and that one would certainly agree to give me a ride home, with a huge increase in the fare. To my dismay none of them was at the little garage outside the gate so I had to hurry away to shelter in one of the stores around.
“Where did they go?” I asked the owner of the store where I had squatted. She was just closing up, and turned to look at me suspiciously as she pressed closer to the wooden door to conceal the locks, as if to remind me that security was every ones business.
“They accompanied the Governor for campaign,” she finally said to me, but I wasn’t listening for just then Father’s call came in again.
“Answer your call,” I heard someone say to me, and turned around to see Jude standing by me.
“Where are you?” father shouted at me just as I answered the call.
“Father it is drizzling here and I don’t think I can make it home,” I said to him, and he kept quiet for a while.
“Hope ypu are not lying?” he spoke up.
“No sir,” I answered and he kept quiet again.
“Will you get a place to sleep over there?” he finally came up.
“Yes sir,” I answered.
“Take care of yourself and stay out of trouble,” he said and cut off. I turned to look at Jude, and he smiled at me.
“Does that mean you can stay at my place?” he asked still smiling and I could only nod.
Jude’s hostel was just some few blocks away from the school gate, and just as we neared it, my phone rang again and I looked at Jude in fear, that father was calling me to come home. Carefully I brought out the phone from my pocket and peeping at the screen, it was a 11 digit number, not father’s. When I picked it, a recorded message began to play.
“It’s your network provider calling you,” Jude said and began to laugh.
“So why would they call with a 11 digit number?”
“hmh. They call me three times a day, everyone is just doing whatever they like.”
“You thought it was your dad calling?” he asked.
“Daddy’s boy,” he added sarcastically when I didn’t answer him, and began to laugh.
**********************************************************************************
It was only the next morning that I was able to get a good view of the hostel I had slept in. It was a storey building with self contained rooms for the students, and a large veranda disappearing into the back of the house, and separating the column of rooms with the staircase just at the front. Jude occupied the first room by the right.
I stepped outside yawning, and even with my head lifted I could sight some children playing.
“Do the students have children?” I asked Jude who began to laugh.
“No they are the porter’s children,” he answered.
“And where does the porter stay?” I inquired.

“There,” he pointed to a little room at the far corner of the compound, having just one window which opened into the huge fence that surrounded the house.
“That is a store!” I exclaimed.
“Well it is where they stay,” Jude answered and turned to one of the children.
“Where is your mother?” he asked the child.
“She isn’t at home, she went for campaign,” the child answered.
“This morning,” Jude retorted.
“Okay, Faith get your siblings ready for school,” he called the eldest who was just coming out from their little house. In a little while the children were ready for school, Jude called them and gave them the rice left over from the celebration of my “freedom” the previous evening.
“I was once like this,” he said to me as we watched the children eat. When they were done they made to return to their house apparently to grab their bags, I don’t know why but I dipped my hand into my pocket and brought out some naira notes.
“Buy something with it at school,” I said to them and handed the money over to Faith. They thanked me calling me “brother” and in a split second they were off to school, running laughing and chasing each other. I admired them, for unlike me they didn’t appear to be scared of anything, just yet, nothing was wrong to them!
“I was once like this too,” I said to Jude who stood beside me with folded hands and with a pale face like he had seen a ghost.
“I thought you were too young to understand,” he finally said to me.
“Because you are a older than me?” I asked him
“Am not just older than you, am very much older than you,” he corrected with a dry smile on his face.
“If not for school, I should have your mate,” he added and began to laugh.
“Where is their father?” I asked him.
“He is never around, he works for one of the cement companies, so he is everywhere the truck goes,” he answered.
“Small boy,” he said to me patting me lightly on the head as we walked back into the house.
“Hope you didn’t give them your transport fare back home?” He asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said to him in sudden panic and quickly looked away from his bulging eyes.
I spent yet another day at Jude’s place, and when I returned home, the sky didn’t fall.
**********************************************************************************
Father allowed me to spend some time out of the house, particularly after Jude visited our humble home, and father was convinced he was a good person. Following my subsequent visits to his house, I saw more of Susan but never talked to her.
“If you like her, go talk to her,” Jude would say repeatedly to me, but I never did, only her looks, and that didn’t require talking to, to see! Chris soon began to accompany me to Jude’s place. Much as I bugged him, he wouldn’t reveal who was sponsoring his university education. Whenever he returned from school, he would stand in a corner talking to no one, and in a hurry to leave, but I wasn’t perturbed for I thought he was just been the Chris, until one day he got back, flung his little lawyerly briefcase aside and snapped.
“They just keep feeding me lies,” he blurted out.
“Who?” we asked him in unison.
“The lecturers who claim we are in a social contract,” he blurted out again.
“Well we really don’t know what that means,” Jude said t him.
“He means we aren’t lenient,” I added with a funny smile on my face.
“It means that we have collectively agreed and handed our individual rights to our leaders to exercise on our behalf,” he explained and sat down for the first time.
“How is that a lie?” I retorted.
“For our good,” he added.
“Oh I see,” I said and turned to look at Jude who was rolling on the bed and croaking with laughter.
“You think this is funny!” He shouted at us, as I had joined Jude on the bed, laughing.
“This is my future, what I will defend someday!” he yelled, making us jump up from the bed.
“Well if you can’t swallow it, specialize in the aspect you agree with, that is as much as I know,” Jude said to him with the smile gone from his face, and I knew he meant what he told Chris, For usually, he laughed over any issue and then just when you felt exasperated, he would proffer a solution with a hard face.
“Anything not involving our non-existent contract with our government,” I added.
Elections came and past, just like nothing had happened, and it seemed there hadn’t been any need for it, for nothing changed. The incumbent returned to office, just only we didn’t know what was coming for the “rubbish” that had relentlessly given their help and support to him, believing in the man to “clean” the state.
A few days later I returned from school, and there mother was, on the floor crying.
“Mother what is it,” I ran to her.
“Martins is dead” she answered as more tears flowed from her eyes.
“What happened?” I asked in alarm, even as a tear dropped from my own eye.
“There was a fight between the youths,” she answered.
“They were just killing each other and burning houses.”
“Why?” I asked.
“They were arguing on who would take the money paid by someone for a parcel of community land.”
“Jobless Youths!” I blurted out in anger, and sank into the big chair, crying as I clung to mother tightly. I had known Martins as a child, even though we had our little differences then, but now he was dead! And all that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Indeed he had finally learnt how to take care of himself since there was no one there for him and the community had paid for it.
Those men who came into communities they didn’t own to settle down, they always did fence their houses away from the others. With shiny barbed wires on top of them, but none of those had saved them now from the raging youths. Martins who had served them, Martins who had run errands for them, and no one ever asked him why he wasn’t in school, Martins who had cleared the grasses from their compounds and none had asked him if he had eaten, these children who had grown up with muscles but no brains, now they have paid for their indifference, a pity Martins wasn’t around to see it, he had been taken. He didn’t start to end like this, he had wanted to become a barrister, didn’t he call himself bar. Martins when we wrote down our names for labour back in primary school, certainly not only him, we had all called ourselves Chief this, engineer this and doctor that, we had all wanted to become something, especially all those who fought today!
Indeed I think Martins deserved a cenotaph for he had been fighting a war of survival, weren’t we at war? Didn’t our need to survive extremely conflict with their hedonism? Weren’t we disadvantaged in the conflict of interest when our only weapon itself was ignorance of the very fact that we were at war? A week later one of Martins’ friend drove past me in a black shiny Range Rover Sport, the survival of the war and the sole owner of the loot, obviously he hadn’t been fighting to survive like Martins, it just didn’t add up!
Just as we retired to bed that night, father called us back to the sitting room, he looked at mother and then turned to look at me,
“Let us pray,” he said and we knelt down slowing waiting for him to lead the prayers.
“My father in heaven please provide for me to build a house, buy a car, train my son in school and take care of this family you have given me,” he paused, and we answered amen. We waited for him to continue, but when he wouldn’t mother touched him lightly and found that he had dozed off.

Great story.

estellar12: Great story.

tanx ma