hakeem4

“Mama” he said running up to meet me as I walked the halls of the school, “Mama” He yelled again
“Okay, seriously though, that Mama name is embarrassing. I’m 17 not 5. I think you can call me Mesoma now” I said as he caught up to me
“Hmm. Right. It’s weird, everyone calls you Mama. You used to like the name” He said as he slung his bag across his shoulder.
“When I was a child” I said
“And you’re grown now?” He asked his tone teasing
“Of course”
“Mmh. Okay, uhmm… are you going home? I left my flash drive and some other stuff there over there last night and I have this paper that’s due in like three hours. I’m exhausted. So are with the key?”
“Yes” I said slowly, “I’m going home”
We walked all the way home and we talked the whole way there too. Nat mostly about how he couldn’t wait to be done with school. Nat was a year above Kenny and Lotanna, so that meant that he’d be graduating in October of the next year, which was pretty close by all things considered. He only had a semester and a half to go and all would be well, Lotanna would be next in line because he had the good fortune of choosing a four year program, Computer Science. Kenny on the other had would not be graduating until the year after that because he decided to go for Engineering. Graduation for me seemed so farfetched, I could see it but I couldn’t touch it, if that makes any sense. I envied Nat and the likes of him, I didn’t necessarily hate school but did want to get out into the world and do my thing.
I’d always loved lawyers, it didn’t help that I was better in the arts than the science. My father always wanted a doctor in the family, and with there being only two of us I think he lost his chance. But what is it with Nigerian parents and the medical profession though?
Any ways, Nat and I kept talking, we were talking till he graduated. But we kept in contact which each other. Lotanna did give me the talk, the big brother talk, but it wasn’t a plain ‘no’ like he did with Kenny. It was more of a ‘Don’t have sex, don’t get pregnant’ type of talk. I thought it was because Nat was senior to him, age and career wise but I came to realise, he just genuinely liked the guy. He was a sweet guy and he did have a sensitive side to him. His family lived in Port Harcourt. They were well to do and he had sisters a lot of sisters and his family was loud and obnoxious and they didn’t care about embarrassing you ever. Which kind of made me wonder why he turned out the way he did, the exact opposite of his family. Quiet and reserved. He served in Abuja, which I swear is like one of the best places to serve from the way he described it. Or maybe it was because he was working at the NCC, a pretty plush company. Nat was smart, really smart. He got a permanent placement at the NCC right off the bat. While I was struggling to complete my fourth year, and Lotanna was constantly complaining about the flies in the north, Nat had moved into his first real apartment in Abuja.
Kenny and I never really spoke, when we did speak he talked to me with so much disdain you’d almost think I killed his father or something. We did say hi to each other in passing, at least I did, he’d barely manage a nod in my direction.
The day Nat asked me to be his girlfriend, second happiest day of my life. I was 19, almost 20 and I had basically given up all hope, reluctantly accepting my fate to be friend zoned for life. I definitely liked him a lot, I could say I loved him, but I thought I loved Kenny and look how that turned out. I did like him a lot more than I was willing to admit, because you know as a girl you don’t say these things. Nat made many a trips to Nsukka in my final year and his living in Abuja was a major, major determinant in where I chose to go to law school at. Like 98%, the other 2% being that I had never lived elsewhere before and I wanted to be as far away from home as I possibly could.
A year and a half later, I was called to bar. Lotanna flew in from Lagos where he was working in an IT consulting firm courtesy of Nat’s contacts in the private sector. Kenny was on scholarship to complete his masters’ program in Canada so he couldn’t make it, not that I cared because nobody wants the awkward glances and exchanges between your ex and your boyfriend who used to be friends in school. My parents drove the 6hrs plus journey because my mother being the typical African mother that she was, had to take foodstuffs with her. With the amount of stuff she brought one would think that she was hosting a wedding ceremony. I complained and complained, but her reply was always the same, “My daughter is a lawyer. Everybody must know, if your father had allowed me the whole village would be here”
“Mummy, I am not the only one being called to bar. They are many others”
“I don’t care about those ones oh. They are not my daughters. I want to celebrate my daughter, or abi are you embarrassed by us? Your parents? Eh Mesoma?”
Mind you up until this last question she had addressed me as Mama. The quick change to my full name is just saying, ‘You this girl, I dare you to say yes’. So I do what everyone in my situation, who loves their life would do. I lie.
“No mummy. Ah ah, why would you say that? I can never be embarrassed by you… Never. Ah me? God forbid, my own mother…” I say.
I push it, milk it. Defend myself a lot more and then I start with the teasing and the praising, that always calms her down.
“Mummy, mummy. How can I be embarrassed by you? A whole you? You that your ofe owerri is one in town? Ah never”
And slowly I see her almost smile. I sigh in relief. I am out of the woods
For now.


Part 3 coming at maeotto..com.ng

hakeem4

The day I met Kenny was like any other day, warm, sunny, the earth so dry it was almost cracking. I was eight and he'd just turned ten. His family had just moved from Kaduna, his father was in the military and his mother never really had a steady job. He had been to seven schools in ten years, i felt sorry for him. he was put in the same class with my brother, Lotana. Lotana had asked him to walk home with us that sunny afternoon because he saw that Kenny had no friends. I remember the vague introduction my brother gave, "My sister, Mama" it was short and basically pointless but I cared. I learnt two things about Kenny that day. First, his real name wasn't Kenny and he was never going to tell me and second, he complained a lot. From the blazing heat to the red sand of Nsukka to the school we were attending even which side of the road we walked on, Kenny always had something to say. As an eight year old I intrigued, but growing up I realised that that was who Kenny was. He talked a lot and made everyone laugh with his complaints. It became normal and six years later we were still walking everyday back from school, Kenny, Lotana and I.

Kenny's parents were almost never around I quickly realised, his mother was always at her store and his father was always at the base. Kenny had no siblings, a maid who didn't care for him much hence the constant invitation my mother always extended to him at meal times. Soon eating with Kenny became a usual thing and any days he wasn't around, on were very rare occasions, we would wait for him to get back. Daddy even jokingly called him his son a few times.

I think in my head I always admired Kenny, to me he was beautiful. Everything thing about him was and I loved that. It was childish, secondary school love, but love all the same.

Kenny and Lotanna became best friends as quickly as I developed a crush on him and I knew Lotanna would kill if he knew about my feelings for Kenny. Kenny’s father was shot dead the year I turned eleven by a group of men, who till this day have remained unknown. Kenny was 13 at the time and he was braver than most thirteen year olds could have been. His fragile mother was a mess but Kenny held the fort down. For about two to three months after his father’s burial, Kenny was nowhere to be found he missed a whole term and he was not at home. We later reasoned that he and his mother had decided to return to Kaduna so we stopped looking. One day there was a knock on our front door, I ran out to open it and there stood Kenny, smiling goofily like he’d never left. He said his mother had decided to return home to be with the rest of their family but she didn’t realise how much she loved living in the east and so they were back.

By the time I was fourteen, puberty had taken it’s toll on the guys and they morphed into people girls loved and adored, which in turn increased their level of confidence. Despite being two years younger than them, I was a year below them in class having skipped a grade sometime past, and having to sit in a class and listen to girls ogle about my brother and the guy I liked was the most infuriating thing ever. Kenny and Lotanna did get girl after girl and it bothered me. Not Lotanna’s of course I could care less about what he did but Kenny. I didn’t want to be seen as Lotanna’s little sister anymore but there was nothing I feared most than being turned down and I knew it would happen because despite whatever Kenny might or might not have felt, Lotanna wasn’t going to let me date anyone let alone his best friend/partner-in-crime.

I clearly didn’t need to worry much as nature took it’s toll. The boys graduated from high school and gained admission into UNN, and the type of boys that began visiting were much, much, different from the ones I was used to and I had a chockfull of hot guys to pick from. My seven year crush on Kenny was dwindling to a stop, I had my eye on another guy, Nathaniel.

Now, this crush I had on Nathaniel was evidently useless because he paid me no mind whereas on the flip side Kenny and I were getting much closer. The irony. I finished high school at fifteen, much younger than most of my mates and by this time I had already decided to let go of my crush on Nathaniel and focus on my relationship with Kenny, he was my first crush after all. This didn’t go over well with Lotanna. “Mama” he said, “You don’t know him like I do, he’s only telling you what you want to hear” I was 15, done with school and waiting on my results, at that stage in your life you like to think that you have it under control, that you are on top of the world but you’re not. Clearly I wasn’t. I did date Kenny against all odds, we had two years together before we parted way. You know the feeling after you watch a movie and it’s not up to the hype? That’s how I felt. To this day I wonder how we lasted two years. Kenny was a tool, he had intense anger issues and he kept trying to force me into situations I wasn’t comfortable with. I expected that Lotanna would be happy to say I told you so, but he didn’t which I took as a sign that he’d grown past that and matured.

By this time I was 17 had had my first real relationship, was studying Law at UNN and my crush for Nathaniel was starting to redevelop, against all warnings my brain gave not to fall for anyone of my brother’s friends, my heart just wouldn’t listen.

A few weeks later I had my first real conversation with Nathaniel.


Check out maeotto..com.ng on Friday at 2pm for Part 2

Since I can remember I've always been told to be pretty, act like a lady. 'Wear some more lip gloss your lips look dry and chapped'. 'Wear more skirts, ladies show off their knees, what are you hiding under those jeans anyway?' 'Why would you want to play outside? girls play with dolls' 'Put on some earrings you look plain', 'Do no wear horizontal stripes, vertical stripes look better on you' 'People with your body shape shouldn't wear leather skirts' 'Do not wear hooped earrings, only hookers wear those' 'Wear braids, they suit you more than those weaves you love so much'

My first instinct was to go against everything my mother stood for like any other child would do. But I found myself slowly conforming to her ways. I crossed my legs and my ankles or my knees, I wore more skirts, I didn't speak unless I was spoken to, I didn't take a drink until I was offered one, I wore jewelry, i wore makeup to her liking, I didn't laugh out loudly like the other girls, I wore vertical stripes, I stayed away from leather skirts, I wore braids and I made sure to pick my plate of rice, grain by grain with a fork for almost an hour and despite my urges not to, leave a sizable amount on the plate like she asked. I never wore hooped earrings and I gave up almost all my jeans and all was right with the world.

That is until I noticed I was invisible, living on the sidelines trying to meet up to these expectations of something that I wasn't and almost losing myself in the process. I guess you could say that's when I started writing, really writing. things that mattered to me, things that made me feel like me. You never really notice how quite invisible you are until someone walks into the classroom and goes, 'Did that girl even show for class today?' and you were sitting right there three rows from him with your head on your desk.

For me that was all I needed. If people couldn't really see me then what's the use of acting like I'm this perfectly put together person that I wasn't. So I made my own rules, I wore my jeans, I wore horizontal stripes, I wore leather skirts, I wore weaves, I ate my food, I wore my whooped earrings and I laughed out loud every single time.

No one can put you in a box you don't decide to be in. Do not be a spectator in your own life, do not sit on the sidelines.

Agree to disagree.

Make your own rules.

Play in the game.