A SEEDLING NURSE

Three of us laid flat on the roof while another two perched on the tree, well hidden partly by the luxuriant mango leaves in season, the shadows of houses and plantain suckers splattered around by the concave reflection of the November moon. 

Somewhere from the distance, a remixed version of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” filtered through the air like a soothing balm to our souls. 

Chike peered from his vintage position and whispered, “Kehinde, you guys be careful, it seems some S.S. 2 boys are coming this way”. Alerts have grades, but this type of alert, just before midnight after a tedious day in class and an evening of wandering, looking for the perfect place to spend the night, was epic.

The five of us actually wanted to read in class for the evening prep, but an attempt to do so will certainly lead to a capture by those hunters and then an endless night of forced, unappreciated labour.

Whoever composed the school air must either have been on cheap stuff or written it when they were still planning how the school would be built. Life in this school does not bear any semblance to any form of a seedling being nursed with the shock that comes with fortune after just being a big boy in the Juniors’ hostel. The sharp contrast that comes with wearing a pair of trousers the next session after shorts for three years is unbelievable.

At the moment, the most important thing was Coolio reminding us of our walk through our own valley. If only he knew that somewhere on this planet and at this time we are hanging onto various heights and taking various awkward positions, I bet he would have a different kind of inspiration. 

As we sucked it in, Churchill peeped from his own end as we all heard our code whistle and he whispered ” guys na Paulo and Ramson”. I heaved a sigh of relief and came down from my rooftop hideout and saw Paul looking dishevelled. “Baba wetin do you?” Junior asked, more for asking’s sake than with genuine concern. 

We all know the drill. It doesn’t matter what dormitory you belong to, when the hunting begins, any S.S. 1 boy caught by the seniors will do the washing and water fetching for his captors. Paul had obviously fallen into the hands of the notorious Olikiti squad. These guys are so heartless that they will make you fetch water, wash their clothes and iron them while intimidating you at the same time. 

Some of us who can’t bear the hardship have become Day students, while some like Ohis had already left the school completely.

Nuhu, being a Warri boy, had found a way to blend into the system. Nobody knows whether he is a Day or Boarding student. During the week, he goes home with Day students, and on weekends, he is in school with everybody else, an influential S.S.1 guy with so much going for him. He blends in with the S.S.2 boys without much ado, and the S.S.3 boys seem to avoid him.

Rumour had it that if you oppress him, you better not go into town, and you know, with the groove in town most weekends, both inter and intra school, the S.S.3 happening guys can’t afford to miss the train. To enjoy your liberty in town, you have to leave Nuhu alone.

I remember in our junior days when the Senior boys usually sent us to go and buy cigarettes, they asked us to light them. When you light it, you are complicit; you can’t report them for smoking because, in lighting it, you have also smoked. We noticed that after a while, no one sends Nuhu to buy cigarettes because he must have smoked it halfway before it gets to the senior; so they stopped sending him altogether to avoid shortage.

It also went round and, believably so, that he had slept in the Girls’ hostel as a J.S.1 student. So was the Nuhu legend that he was in a class of his own.

Rummaging through all this, I didn’t notice that all my guys had run away in different directions as the hunting S.S.2 boys came lurking in the shadows, tracking the movement of Paul and Ramson. I was left alone to face them, and as the bearded Iroha shouted my name, it sounded like the trumpet on resurrection day, and I fainted.

I chose to faint as his badly crafted palm landed on my back. That is what ordinarily is called a “Sabbash“, but this one was like no other. The crudeness of his palm landing on my back with the chilly feel of the coming harmattan’s momentum on my skin was hellish, my best escape was to faint and faint I did with my ears wide open.

The moment I went limp to the ground, the initial reaction was ” leave am if I slap the idiot again e go wake up”. At this point, I chose to faint the more.

As the night wore on and I lay almost lifeless on the ground, confidence turned into fidgeting, and my friends who had all run away crept back slowly, and Iroha whose high sounding voice shook the night and mere mortals like us scampered for safety like a bunch of rat on Papa cats visit became gentle.

His voice became like a soothing balm on an Orchestra rehearsal. He spoke nicely to my friends for the first time in a long while, asking about the history of my health while I remained fainted.

In a few minutes, he was sweating like a child under malaria treatment with cooked dongoyaro leaves, but I remained still. Chike drew close to feel my heartbeat, and I whispered to him that I was fine.

We all spent the night under the tree in peace. I won some freedom for myself and my friends and some space to which I enjoyed till it was almost Christmas of 1997. After a protracted drama night of fainting and seeing the gentle side of Iroha and his Olikiti crew, I managed to regain consciousness. 

At this point, they had forgotten why they were hunting for us, and we had forgotten they were our seniors. The need to save a life had brought us into an umbrella of brotherhood, even if for some moments, and I decided to make the moment count for as long as I can.

The next morning, the almighty Olikiti boys had all come to my room to check if I was alive and well and with my status confirmed, they left and I got set and left for breakfast, then clas,s but not without sending words round, albeit by proxies, of the happenings of the previous night.

Iroha continued hunting but drew the line when it concerned me, and a few others took the cue from him. I enjoyed this arrangement until the end of the term when we decided to go on a poultry rampage only to be caught by the same Olikiti boys who had also gone on the same mission of chickens but that story must come only if we close our eyes and open our mouths to give thanks to the creator and father of lights who has kept us and illuminated our hearts with love so that this day we could look back on such hardship with a smile on our faces. See you soon

Missed episode 3. Read it here.