Tricol High Five (And They All got caught)

i used a little of my imagination to describe the events. i did not live in the girls hostel so i can't claim to know the exact turn of events. But I'm damn close, aren't I?

***********************************************************************************************

Let me tell you something. We Tricol boys were underprivileged. The school LOVED the girls and hated us. Of course that’s the way it is everywhere in the world…ladies first! And so, our school, to us, was rather feminist. The Girls always got the new hostel (the school would have us believe that it‘s because they‘re less destructive. I beg to disagree). When we boys were not allowed to have hot water in the hostels (except you were sick) the girls had a cold/hot water dispenser.

BOYS HOSTEL WOULD BE CRAMPED LIKE THIS

If a boy got caught doing something wrong, he’d be suspended. If it were a girl who committed the same offence, she would be given mere manual labour for two weeks (called “working suspension”). The girls served the meals in the dinning hall. Now, that seems normal. But then we boys were furious because these girls would serve themselves first, pack huge meatballs with their spaghetti and hide it! They’d heap both butter and jam with their bread (you could have either one but not both); they’d take two or three pieces of meat when they were entitled to only one! They’d get ten pieces of dodo (that’s fried plantain, non-Lagos people). When we got two scoops of ice-cream, they’d have stashed half a bowl somewhere. What robbery!

We evolved all manner of theories as to why this was so. We thought maybe Mrs. Philips (a.k.a “Princi” ) was a feminist. Maybe she didn’t know how to take care of boys because she had no sons and lived in school away from her husband. Maybe…

It was for this reason we began fantasizing about teaching her a lesson. Oh, KC boys poured sh*t on their principal. FGC boys beat their principal until he passed out, then revived him so that they could beat him MORE. Maybe we could use devil’s beans for both her and our evil housemasters!!!! 

But it was mere fantasy. Nobody wanted to risk his record. See, we feared Princi more for her rigidity than for her “partiality”. Truth be told, she’s very disciplined and excellent and truly wanted the best for us. But tell that to high school boys who were trapped with no money and no video games and were being oppressed- you’d be mobbed!

Oh- and boys did get their chance to serve once during the mini inter-house sports. And they’ve never served again to this day…for obvious reasons!

**************************************************************************************************************************One beautiful Monday morning, we went to the dining hall for breakfast. And beheld something beautiful. Our girls were all in their daywear. Huh? Princi’s beloved daughters? Had they all gone quite mad at the same time? Or were we unaware of any public holiday? But there’s no public holiday in November! Nobody would tell us what had gone wrong. The way they were so secretive, it was like you’d just asked them where they were in their menstrual cycle. Eeew!

At the assembly ground, We lined up according to our classes. Sang the hymn for the day. Prayed. Read the bible. And then the Vice-Principal came on stage to announce the good news.

ALL THE GIRLS HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED

What? What the hell’s going on? Has Mr. Odetola finally tipped over the edge of insanity? (a lot of people suspected he was very close to that edge). How could all the girls have been suspended? What kind of offence? But there were no answers. All the girls were instructed to go and change to their sportswear, pick up cutlasses, hoes and rakes and proceed to the field immediately to start their suspension.

We left that assembly, shocked of course that such a thing could happen. What could they have done? ALL the girls? This was NOT happening. Could Tolu have been involved? Omiko oko? Deborah Elomobor? Eloho Akpokhene? Wanma Yaro? Ema Oko? Omodele Makinde? I mean, these were people who had sterling character. People I’d never have imagined in such a scandal. (As for Tolu, well, I liked her so I didn‘t want her to be in such a mess). Two weeks working suspension!

They came to class later to lock their stuff up. It was then we discovered that one of our classmates wasn’t involved after all. Wanma Yaro. Phew! What a relief. It would’ve been dead boring if there were absolutely NO girls at all in class! Now, we’d learned to be sensitive enough to allow the suspended girls to go serve their punishment before we started asking questions.

As soon as they left, we in Arts/Commercial class ran to meet Wanma. What happened? What happened? What HAPPENED! And ever so eerily, she told the tale of the commando raid on their hostel that morning.

**************************************************************************************************************************

They were having their morning devotions. Singing and clapping. Feeling like the special daughters of the school. (okay, I added that part. I don’t know what they were feeling like). And then the impartial Princi walked into the hostel. If you’ve been to Trinity, you’ll know that Mrs Philips walks as silently as an FBI Agent. As silent as a ghost. You’re alone in a class but suddenly you get this unnerving feeling you’re being watched. You know what that feels like, don’t you? And blam! There she is fixedly watching you like a specimen!

The girls were surprised. She’d never been to their devotion before. What was she doing here? Of course, they instantly became more orderly. The movements ceased. Those “stabbing” (that’s skipping) devotions quickly received miraculous healings of their illnesses. The volume and pitch of the singing increased. The fervency of the prayers intensified. Anything to impress the Principal.

Maybe she wasn’t there for them after all. She was busy  conferring with the housemistress. Probably something to do with telephone privileges. Or the new gas lamps they’d gotten (which till I graduated did not get to the boys. They had to use rechargeable lanterns) Maybe she came to announce a new upgrade for the girls. Maybe a professional shoe-shiner to keep their shoes always shiny!

Wait a minute…where was she going? Why are they locking the rooms? All the rooms? Is there a snake in the hostel? What’s up?

Mrs Philips announced that everyone should remain at the quadrangle while members of room one lined up in front of their room. The room was opened and everyone was told to stand by her locker. The lockers were searched. The buckets, spray starch cans, under the bed, backpacks, under the pillows, inside the bed sheets. On top of the lockers. Even unopened stuff. They searched all the rooms. Even the box-room. And they way they did it, the rooms were searched sequentially while the rest were locked tight. Guess who conducted the search? Mrs. Philips and Mrs Ademola! Now, tricol people, you know these two people are eagle-eyed!!! They’d never miss a thing!!!

It was a massive massacre. The search turned up all manner of things. Food hidden EVERYWHERE. Even under mattresses (and you think boys are disgusting?) In their buckets, under their beds, on top of their lockers! Even In their boxes! There was money everywhere! You’d be surprised the kinds of things girls had in the hostel. There were even speculations that some girls had some…TOYS…(which were obviously not for kids). Mobile phones, Alcohol and other crazy, CRAZY stuff.

It must’ve been hard for Princi. Her beloved girls messing her up so badly. Was there no righteous one among them? The refrain was “no, not one! No, not one!”. It was in this spirit of vengeance that she descended on the girls and gave them what, for once, they truly deserved. NO ONE was spared. Not even Tomi Adetiba (sob!). The punishment was bad and far-reaching. If anything was found in your possession or among your possessions, you’d be punished. I remember Fiyin Owa who wasn’t even in school when this raid was conducted was indicted because something was found In her box! It could easily have been hidden there in her absence…(or alternatively, it could actually be hers, you’ll never know!)

Painful was Ife Gbosi, who received the big stick just because five naira was found on her. FIVE NAIRA (that’s like 2 cents!)! Gosh- it could easily have been change from buying bubble gum…besides, we always resumed on Sundays…it could easily have been leftover money from a brief stopover at Church’s Chicken or even offering money from church! Even the guilty felt it was rather harsh- just let her go! But Princi was on Fire and there was no stopping her! (Do I need to remind you that Ife Gbosi was withdrawn from Tricol that session, do I?)

The girls became guys…cos when they were done with a week of work, they began to grow big arms and legs like tennis and football players. And of course, Mrs Philip’s motherly instinct and unfathomable love for the girls kicked in. And she let them all off the hook.

This taught us a big lesson. MRS PHILIPS LOVES ONLY THE GIRLS.

Just kidding!

We human beings love order, patterns and things we can easily recognise and give labels. For example, we have an overwhelming tendency to categorise. Oh, the sky is blue! Or look, that’s a negro walking down the white neighbourhood! This tendency can be quite helpful to members of our species so they don’t keep changing things and “discovering” river Niger like Mungo Park Discovered River Niger, or like Christopher Columbus “discovered” America.

But the problem with this habit of classification is that we tend to get arrogant. Once something looks like something that has been classified before, we tend to try to force that new thing into fall into that category. For example, we say that some kind of literature is “Shakespearian” simply because the poet wrote in sonnets (but we refuse to take into account the fact that the poet wrote that poem in a remote village in Adamawa state before it was translated into English). Or we cancel a Tsunami warning simply because the undersea earthquake measured only 6.3 on the Richter Scale.

This is one reason why we keep having terrorist attacks and natural disasters all over the world. We get so used to patterns, paradigms and formations that we cannot deal with the unexpected. We expect the enemy to behave the same way; We expect disasters to come the same way, and when they don’t, we’re hit hard. Whoever believed that the WTC twin towers and the pentagon could be bombed by middle-eastern terrorists?

No system is foolproof. No matter how good you are at getting away with bad stuff, you’re gonna get caught one day.

Tricol High 4 (Boys Will Be Boys)

Note: there's a lot of fiction here. Tricol staff don't engage in stuff like that. and the bucket method? we only tried it once. It was too risky...i mean, what if someone found your stash?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Back in Tricol, everybody had a sweet tooth. Which is understandable for 9-17 year-olds. Which was one reason we absolutely loved holidays and visiting days. Ah! Visiting days! We were practically locked down in school, we had no access to phones except we were sick or URGENTLY needed something that couldn’t be got in Ofada. Our parents couldn’t come see us for a whole month…31 days of eating mass-cooked food…except we were sick and required surgery. I remember people used to feign appendicitis…we knew the symptoms…sharp stomach pain in your right side. Just hold your stomach tightly, and “accidentally” drop your keys when you entered the sick bay and scream in pain when aunty Dare (the school nurse) was looking. And when she asked you what was wrong, you placed an excruciating look on your face and “bravely” told her not to worry, it was just a stomach pain. And quick, your parents would come pick you up by that night! Oh, did I mention- after an appendectomy, you wouldn’t be given chores in school just in case your stitches came loose by accident!

Make no mistakes…we were privileged in Tricol. We had at least two options for each meal. Jam or butter? Okro or Egusi? garri or semovita? But when you cook food for five hundred people at once, it loses taste. So we looked forward to visiting day with glee.

 When our parents would be sure to visit sweet sensation, Mr Bigg’s, Chicken Licken, Chicken Republic, Nando’s, Church’s Chicken, Tastee Fried Chicken (Nigeria’s version of KFC) and all the other popular fast-food outlets and return with bags of delicious booty (by that I mean loot, you pervert! lol). Oh- and, sweet drinks, Chocolates (I’ll never forget Skittles and Toublerone), lollipops, ice-cream, bubble gum et cetera! It was a day of delight. You’d hear different kinds of music coming from the newest cars. I remember when Seun Osunsan’s brother shayo drove their Nissan Armada to see him on visiting day. It was shiny and red…with these 2o-something inch chrome spinning rims (which we were quite mad about back then). We watched in awe from the Senior Boys’ Hostel as the car drove around the bend towards the dining hall.

Need I mention that the dining hall would be particularly empty on visiting days? Except for the Port Harcourt and Abuja students who flew in to school every term, nobody would go to the dining hall on Sunday afternoon. Because if you did, you’d end up with a runny stomach that night. By the time it was 5pm, Tricol’s usually immaculate lawns would be littered with half-eaten packs of rice, empty juice packs, chicken bones and all sorts of expensive nonsense.

But what were we going to do with all the excess stuff? Food was absolutely banned in the hostels and classrooms (except on birthdays, when Aunty Lara would allow us, bless her!). And we had Eagle-Eyed housemasters like Mr. Aluyah and Monsieur Elegbede who would diligently search us before we entered the hostel that night. How on earth were we going to ensure that our taste buds would be adequately provided for over the next two or three days? Bribery was definitely out of the question. The Tricol staff were Christians, and believed in following rules. Besides, they’d lose their jobs if they were caught in any kind of malpractice.

But you see, NO system on earth is completely fool-proof. Even if you wrote the world’s most advanced algorithm to change a password every ten minutes, it’s only a matter of time before a smarter hacker wrote another algorithm to control the first. In simple basic (Q-Basic) programming, it’s called nesting (and you really should learn at least two programming languages…programmers will soon take over the world! Hahaha). Even Hitler’s army could be infiltrated. Even the CIA and MI6 can be infiltrated. 

Soon we began to identify the menial workers (I’m sorry to use that phrase. Okay- casual workers would be better) that could assist us in our quest. Certainly, no one would question a mason carrying a heavy bag. He could easily have his trowel and plumb line in his bag…or he could have a box of Kellogg’s coco pops or Nestle’s Golden Morn in there…or a packet of St. Louis Sugar. It was a dangerous game, because he could very well turn against you and hide them somewhere (or worse, turn you in). On the worker’s part, he could be fired if he got caught! But we never did get caught.

Soon, we became tired of paying these guys and began to think of more ingenious ways to sneak these things. Then we discovered buckets. Yes, plastic buckets. Nobody would suspect a couple of, handless, broken buckets standing under the clothesline would they?  Since we knew they’d be checking that night, we would put out stuff in a bucket, cover them and hide them in the shrubs behind the hostel. You do understand that we did so to prevent people from accidentally finding our stash, don’t you?

Early the next morning, we would bring the buckets in when it was shower time. You had to be insane to start checking our buckets when we wanted to have our baths! Besides, the school believed that we kids were not smart enough to outsmart them, and we believed there was no way they could catch us, ever!

So even though the Housemasters conducted random raids on the hostels, they’d NEVER find anything. We would tuck the contraband into our mattresses, inside our buckets, on top of our wardrobes. Fortunately our housemasters were short so they couldn’t find our stuff there. 

Wait. Did I say short? I’m sorry. The word “SHORT” is very offensive. A more acceptable replacement would be “VERTICALLY CHALLENGED”.

 We grew so confident that we even started cooking meals IN our rooms. We would soak noodles in our bathroom bowls or toothbrush cups depending on the size of your noodles or the number of people involved (you may think boys are disgusting but I assure you, we’re cleaner than the girls!). After thirty minutes the noodles would have risen to twice or thrice their original size. We would then mix in the seasoning (and hide the empty sachets in the cover of our easy-on spray starch (of course you couldn’t throw it in the bin or else the housemasters would surely tip housemasters off! Our mothers would’ve been horrified if they saw what we were actually eating. But then, boys WILL be boys.

`Our life like this was comfortable until…

Super-Mummy

I like septembers. My mother was born in this month. First love born in this month (4^th). younger brother's on 27th. Parent’s anniversary this month. On average I think I have about 5 birthdays every day in September. I also like Septembers because it ends long holidays when I have to do chores, lol.

So today I’m celebrating a great woman I met at the University of Abuja. She came in with the Direct Entry Students in my 2^nd year. Knowing that she’s a mother (with kids craving attention) I’ll keep this mercifully short.

Mrs Olayemi Olukoju  Akanmode is this person. She IS beautiful. We sometimes teased her that her husband would have to come pay a second bride-price. And she was meticulous about her appearance. Believe me we had married women who wore things that cast them as women looking for a last-chance with toyboys. Neither did she look like a old mama retired from the “market”. I remember taking this photo in our 2^nd year.

She came for lectures from home every day! I imagined how she had to wake up and possibly prepare breakfast, and the children for school. And dress up for school. And come all the way to Gwagwalada in time for an 8 O’clock lecture. Interestingly, I realised she ALWAYS got to class before me (hence the Super-Mummy title). I refused to let this happen- so in final year I buckled up and made sure I got to class enough to get a seat on the “elder’s council” (front row seats!)

And She had these notebooks. Wide, ruled sheets with plastic covers. Those notes were always correct- if She and Inyene didn’t have it in their notes, then it didn’t exist! Of course I adopted that method of note-taking. I got some best-buy notebooks in final year that held my poems and my land law/company law notes. I lost the poems in a taxi, but I have the company law with me. And I used those kinds of notebooks in Law School (so I have my drafts safely carried).

I remember when we had this conversation about marriage in 3^rd year(she probably doesn’t remember). When she told me how old her kids were (the oldest was below 12 at the time), I WAS surprised. But then she told me how her mates rushed into marriage- and she? She waited for the right one. If i remember correctly, she got married at 29 (i know i had an argument with someone about that) Now I wonder what people who may have sniggered behind her back would say now!

And I remember when we waited endlessly for law school. She was one of the people that gave encouraging words. Of course we hated the fact that we had to skip a year (I for one though I should be married next year, hahah). But she made us understand that things happen at the right time. I’m glad I didn’t get worked up – I went to law school at the best time possible! In that wait for law school, She took an internship with Awomolo & Co. I was with Godwin Obla SAN & Co, Ope Owotumi with Afe Babalola SAN & Co and Inyene Robert with Festus Keyamo. Sometimes I ran into them in court and the experience was exhilarating…I felt like a real lawyer! I’m sure she could have sat down at home and expected one husband to provide all the money. But she went out and did her bit- I’m sure the experience proved invaluable in law school!

And well there’s that adorable son of hers that used to say “God of-bid” instead of “God-forbid”.

I will stop here now. I hope you picked a thing or two about sacrifice. Any man or woman that goes back to university in Nigeria after marriage deserves commendation! And anyone who stays in school and actually finishes should be given a real award.

Thanks, ma for representing your family honourably- I have learned a thing or two about living married. And thanks for taking away the fear of married people from my life (my Hi5 profile still says I’m scared of married people). For those little words of advice, those silent cues, those good words you put in for some of us, well, thank you!

And Happy Birthday. May your children do you proud. And may God shower you with the blessings you don’t even think to ask for

Tricol High Three

Hey guys. A big thank you to those who are still following this story. I hope you learn a thing or two about life from me. And second note, I wrote this 3 years ago :)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve only lived twenty years, but the amount of information, philosophy, religion and bullshit packed into my memory is enough to last a lifetime. I’ve heard different kinds of things. I’ve listened to all kinds of preachers. I’ve watched all kinds of things. I’ve listened to all kinds of music. They teach you how to maintain good relationships with people around you, but I never saw anyone that taught how to start a good friendship. Especially with a girl you like!

But there was this new guy in our school who came from the United States (I can hear you US lovers cheering…but that’s enough… back to business). See, he was sent down here to Nigeria, to learn some sense, you know? And he had to be sent not to a school, but to a correctional facility. Let me explain.

Trinity International College is in Ogun state, nested within the forests of Trinity Hills (I’m told the school bought the whole area up, but that could easily be a lie or a half-truth!). Now, we weren’t allowed to leave school without an exeat. No, my school back then did not have electric or barbed wire-fences. But, Trinity is so deep in the middle of nowhere that if you tried to escape, you would either (a) die in search of food or water (b) go mad with hunger and become a savage (c) take to cannibalism and eat any human being you found.

Okay, I’m just kidding…the nearest town is Mowe, Ofada (yeah, where they plant Ofada Rice, and No, we did not eat Ofada rice every week. We ate it only twice throughout my stay in that school). But Ofada was still so far from anywhere; the natives spoke mostly Yoruba (which I’m sorry to say few of us could make coherent sentences in Yoruba) and then we had no mobile phones back then (so you couldn’t call your parents to come pick you up). Besides, some teachers lived in Mowe and could catch you! And then you’d have your name written in…you guessed right. The BLACK book.

SO, this new boy In school, Hecareth Adefila. Fresh from the United states, with all kinds of ideas about Africa. Have you foreigners ever heard any frightening stories of what Africans are like? That we have tails and eat our newborn babies? When our housemistress went to school in the UK, her friends asked how she got there, if they lived in trees and all that. She just sarcastically answered, “well, I just swung from tree to tree like a monkey till I got here”. Or in Chukwuemeka Ike’s book, “The Bottled Leopard”, some family in the UK thought that Africans ate wood simply because they found their houseguest brushing with a chewing-stick! (You know what that is, right?)

And Hecareth, who incidentally was Nigerian, met the shocker of his life when he came here. In Nigeria, Pastor’s Kids are actually some of the worst except God arrests them. In America, Pastors live the life they profess. And so on.

Hecareth was tall (I think about 6 feet 5”). meaty, muscular. He played basketball. He could break-dance. He had an amazing artistic talent (once he drew an African dancer complete with beads and horsetail...he called it CHRII). He was American by birth. He had everything it took to be bad. But he wasn’t. And that was amazing, you know? 

For one, Hecareth would NEVER hit a girl. With all his strength and size, with all the chattiness and pettiness of teenage girls, no matter how much a girl annoyed him, he would NEVER hit her. The bad guys in my school got extra street credibility for “shutting up” annoying, loudmouthed girls (shame on you! Hahaha!!!) with their fists. I mean, girls feared you if you beat one of them up. It was cool then, but looking backwards, I consider it another one of the foolishness young people display. Violence is Never cool.

In trying to find why Hecareth wasn’t bad even when he had the chance, I began to talk to him. Cautiously at first because the NEVER-hit-a-girl rule probably didn’t apply to boys; but then whole heartedly when I discovered he was human after all. He had challenges just like me. He stuck out just like me. He had no real friends just like me. He loved computers just like me. He was seeking God just like me.

Hecareth was only sixteen then, but he had a lot of street smarts. He quickly noticed that I liked Tolu. And he wondered why I wasn’t dating her.

“are you insane? Dude the girl can’t possibly like me!” 

“did she say so?”

“No, she didn’t”

“then how do you know that?”

“Nobody likes me…besides, we hardly ever talk”

“Peter. She won’t tell you stuff if you aren’t friends”

“well, she would already be friends with me if she liked me”

“then you gotta make her like you, man!”

“Tolu, like me? Pigs may fly…chickens may grow teeth…Nigeria may win the 2006 world cup”

We both laughed at that one. The Super Chickens (sorry, Super Eagles)…as much as we loved the team, we certainly didn’t see that happening in the near future. But we could watch the tournament hopefully, you know?

Hecareth steadied me with a hand on my shoulder. He looked me right in the eyes and said,

“Peter, I’m gonna tell you something, but you must promise to keep it a secret”

“dude, we’re not allowed to have secret societies in school!!!”

“do you really wonder why they think you’re dumb? Listen.  This formula I’ll give you will get you any girl you want”

My ears perked at that statement. Any girl?

“Seriously, Peter”

“And I have to keep it secret?”

“Yes, you have to. If anybody knew I told you…”

“Alright, man, whatever”

“okay, this is it. It’s called the three C’s”

“Celestial Church of Christ?”

“No, dummy…sorry…you listening at all?”

“yeah. Sorry. Just fooling”

“It stands for Cool, Calm and Collected”

I turned this over in my mind. Cool. Calm. Collected. How the heck was that supposed to do that? So I asked,

“how the heck am I supposed to do that?

“it’s easy. Be cool around her. Act mature…girls always go for older guys”

“dude, she is older than I am”

“really? How much older?”

“two days. She was born on 12th June. I was born on the 14th”

“doesn’t matter. Now, be cool”

“Do I have to change the way I walk? Acquire a foreign accent?”

“no, dude. Just don’t be TOO smart around her. Don’t be disorderly. Iron your stuff well. Be calm…don’t freak out when you see her. Show her you’re cool. Man, you gotta make her chase you!”

Stop freaking out when I see her? I believe in Miracles. Dear Jesus!

*******************************************************

The next day, we were sitting in class. I think we had a free period before Mr Apata’s English class. Then this girl Ameh Oputteh (Y’all remember her? Cute, I mean intensely cute girl) who was a year our senior walked in to our class, right in front of me, and asked

“who’s got an extra pen?”

I must tell you that my hand moved of its own accord, whipped out my favourite extra pen and extended it to her.

“I do…you can have it” I said

“why…thank you” She said, and gave me one of those her heaven-on-earth smiles

Immediately she left, somebody from one row behind me said,

“wow…that was so fast…how come you’ve never done that for me?”

I turned to see who said that to me. It was Tolu.

Panic. Cold sweat. Systolic arrhythmia. Cardiac arrest. What do I say? WHAT do I say! I have to say something cool and look cool when I say it!

She didn’t make it easy for me at all. She was smiling…wide…those white teeth gleaming like…oh never mind!

And then I blurted

“well, you’re not HER”

My class laughed out loud at that one. Obviously they thought I was saying she wasn’t beautiful enough or something! What blasphemy!

Stumped, She chuckled dryly and turned away. And probably forgot the entire incident (except she reads this, she’ll NEVER remember that). I got the creepy feeling someone was watching me, so I turned. I saw Hecareth sitting on Seun Adebola’s desk (close to the bulletin board at the back of the class)

He smiled at me. And gave me a proud thumbs-up. attaboy, Peter. Way to go!

________________________________________________________________________________

 For Today, I will be linking you to a popular song by The Monkees. Well, I like the Eddie Murphy Version better. Get it Here

In Part 4, We visit the boys hostel. Hold Tight, Guys!!

Tricol High: Part Two

  

 I apologise for taking you through the saddening details of my past life. But it was necessary to give you the background to this cheerful never-frowning boy like me. Behind every glory, there lies a story!

I tried to fight my self-esteem issues. I knew I couldn’t fit in the way I was…I mean, everybody around me was trying to be all gangster and here I was. Mr Goody-two-shoes. They wanted to be lil’ wayne, chingy, T.I, souljaboy redman, beenieman. Birdman, apeman, and all such funnily named musicians. I wanted to be Kenneth Hagin or Benny Hinn! It was so obvious that I would never fit in with such a mentality. I mean, it’s like a fingerling trying to swim against the ocean tide.

There was friction between me and my classmates. They loved doing things that were wrong. Anything contraband, from radios to cereals snuck in ingeniously (for some reason they called the food “grubs”…now I wonder if they actually knew they were referring to their food as worms and bugs…eeewww!). But here I was, a stickler for the rules. If we were to have two cubes of sugar with our cornflakes on Sunday morning, I’d take exactly two cubes no matter who was serving. I remember, even staff were positively amazed that a senior student would obey. One Saturday I had my breakfast late because I was working with the Chaplain. I walked into the Kitchen and meekly requested my breakfast. Sure enough, Aunty Ibukun (the head cook, I think) served me hot pap and then pointed me to a pack of St. Louise’s Sugar. When I was leaving the Kitchen, she called;

“Come here!!

“y-yes..?” I stuttered. You have to understand that Aunty Ibukun was a tough young lady, lithe as a cat and ready to pounce on any offender. So I was naturally afraid of her anger.

“How many cubes of sugar did you take?”

“two ma”

She gave me a good looking-over, from head to toe)  like she was trying to judge the veracity of my assertion by bodily composition. And then she calmly asked me what my position in School was. Well, I needed no prophet to tell me that she was amazed. I mean- how many senior boys would ignore a full packet of sugar when no one was looking? They’d have taken everything and left like a quarter of the packet!

It was for acts like these that my classmates saw me as a potential spy, a ‘caster (our very own home-grown synonym for whistleblower). They could never be comfortable doing anything they knew was illegal while I was around. One day I walked into class and met two of my classmates making out in class, and without any lookout! If you went to Tricol, you know what the school stood for. You could get suspended if you got caught! But these guys went ahead like a breeze just blew. And then they stopped and settled for a hand job. In loving memory of the guy (who was an arsenal fan), I will not mention their names.

But I’ll give you a clue. He wore glasses and was in Blue house. She…oh, never mind. That’s not important anyways. Now, this dude walked up to me and said, “don’t tell anyone what you saw…not even NONSO”. I was still reeling at the scene which obviously contradicted My Christian and moral values of sexual purity! (of course they didn’t go all-the-way…but they were pretty close)

Wait a minute…did he just ask me to keep a secret? Was he taking me into confidence? Me…? Wow! I felt super cool that one of the big boys could entrust me with such a secret! I felt new…accepted…like I’d just been initiated into a secret cult! A part of me was horrified at the very act which I’d just witnessed and wanted to talk about it, but a greater part accepted it. 

And so, I began my gradual slide into dishonesty. I began to seek the approval of these guys. I would run their errands, I would lookout for any teachers or security guards who might stumble onto them in the act. The same with every other couple- I desperately tried to show them I wasn’t some Jew guy, but a Soji guy (I’m sorry if you don’t know what Soji means in Nigerian English). I began to copy their way of life.

Slowly, I lost my personality and started allowing myself to believe I was a part of the life I saw around me. Slowly, I started cussing and swearing. Slowly, I started trying to learn rap songs. I never actually knew more than three lines at a time, but as it is with guys, if you raised a song, they’d be sure to follow…we were so into that stuff, you know what I’m saying? I even went to a cybercafé one day with the sole aim of researching the popular artistes my “friends” were listening to. I remember I got the lyrics of G-Unit’s “If you don’t know who I be” or whatever it was. I even printed it out during the holidays. Then the next term, I let it “accidentally” fall out of my books when I was arranging my locker. Seun Osunsan found it and started singing the song. Soon everybody joined in, and I gathered a few points to my reputation.

Slowly, I rejected the life I’d been raised in, and began embracing the things God said he hated. Lying. Cheating in exams. Dirty talking. I even began to make public displays of anger even when it wasn’t necessary. I must apologise to Omagha Oduniyi at this time. I remember throwing a chair in an unnecessary fit of anger, just to look cool. Just about anything that’d make me cooler in the sight of my colleagues. 

You see, there’s something with pretending to be who you’re not. You’re in constant danger of being found out. How do you even go to sleep knowing that the entire day was a fraud? Eseosa Ighodaro was my roommate for three terms, and both of us hardly went to sleep immediately after lights out. We would lie awake in our bunks and reflect on the day’s activities. He probably had no clue, but the day’s activities weren’t really all IALL was thinking of. I was thinking of how long I could keep this up. My teachers still believed I was a good boy; my classmates now believed I was just like them and had been pretending all along. But Eseosa knew the truth. One day, when I tried to tell him about Jesus Christ, he called me a pretender…he told me I was merely pretending to be a Christian. If he only knew the truth!

Do you know the worst part of the whole charade? Acting and talking bad did not get me more acceptance. Instead, it made my classmates despise me the more. They saw me as a cheap imitation and invented even more names for me. I was called holier-than-thou, Pastor’s Child…all very annoying names for someone who was desperately trying to be bad. I had denied my beliefs to get accepted into some cool, hip, “happening” group, yet it seemed to drop my approval ratings. Like anyone was paying attention to me anyways.

I once read Morontodun  and some review of the play. She was regarded to have committed class suicide when she left her bourgeois family and took up with the proletariat. Well, I felt just that way! I felt something die within me. I knew it was only a matter of time before the fraud I was would exposed to the whole world. 

You know the Vice-Principal’s Assembly on Fridays? Remember when He (mr. Odetola) brought his new black book titled…well, BLACK BOOK (written in Gold letters) to the assembly? He announced that whoever committed a grievous offence would have his name entered into the dreaded black book. Even the bad guys in my school wouldn’t want to get a bad record…we all wanted to go to college/University in Canada, England or as a last resort…America (Malaysia wasn’t a known option back then. But thank you Wanma Yaro, Nazeer Abdullahi and Ashwak for showing us the way).

Exactly What Kind of offences would get you in the book? When we were accepted as students in the school, we signed an undertaking to obey every rule in the rulebook. And yes, our school was that legalistic! The rules ranged from reasonable (like promising to obey all instructions) to downright ridiculous (like promising not to start a secret society or bring hard drugs and firearms into the school compound. I mean, rules for ten year olds?). But we did promise not to engage in anything sexual…peeking, pornography, dark corners, kissing and so on…and definitely “organising” (our very own slang for making out) was DEFINITELY part of sexual activity. As you know, aiding and abetting a felony is as good as committing it yourself.

You may think I was carrying another man’s cross, but I tell you, growing up with a lawyer mum makes you understand the implications of disobeying a law. How much longer did I have before I would eventually get caught? 

And then there was Tolu. Tolu Ariyibi. I thought she was some kind of goddess of the sea or alien. Because whenever I looked at her, my usually functional, scientific brainwaves would become automatically scrambled. My auditory signal would leak through my neurons leading to a psycho-emotional malfunction with physical symptoms such as staring, hyperventilation and spontaneous speechlessness. I mean, I liked this girl. I wanted to know just a little of what made this girl tick…I mean- if I could get her to smile, maybe the sting of being the rejected one would be lessened? Initially, it felt just like a nursery school crush (Why are y’all staring like I said something strange? You crushed on people in your nursery school too, ADMIT IT!) then it grew into a raging inferno that stole my waking moments and crept into my dreams.

But you see, I could never talk to her for more than ten seconds at a time because of my reputation as a dull guy. No girl, I mean, NO GIRL wanted to be seen with me. And worse, she (Tolu) laughed when anyone insulted me. But I don’t understand why I still liked her…was it because she had such a disarming smile? The cutest dimples? The whitest teeth? The perfect skin? The most engaging eyes? Come to think of it, I never saw a single zit on her face (**up till date…you can look her up, she’s on facebook too! Hahaha!**) I guess it was the mystery of not knowing who she was…even though she sat just a row behind me…I had no rep, no rep, no game, no flows, no nothing. It’s like the hunchback of Notre Dame trying to get a date with snow white. It was hopeless.

Until this dude came to our school, all the way from the land of freedom. Hecareth. Hecareth Adefila.

______________________________________________________________________________
Listen to "The Original" By Uchman. Awesome stuff, people!
And if you missed part one of the HIGH SCHOOL series, get it HERE