Grimacing

First page

At the end of this brief madness the world has deemed fit to call a book, you will very well understand why you must indeed rage.

This complicated and thought provoking story will start from a simple imagination called Nigeria. A word fashioned out in the year 1889 for a country birthed out of the subliminal consciousness for greed and absolute control, hidden under the disguise of unity and progress.

Yes, it was simply a white man’s plan to get more and control more, so spreading his tentacles far beyond his own boarders became necessary.

Well I do not intend to bore you here with some litany of correspondence history one that I may not be well aware of simply because I never lived in those years … so I’ll tell you what I know and as humbly too.

So yes; I was born in the time the western world would have referred to as the jet age, but here in Nigeria the place of my nationality we couldn’t call it that… why? we couldn’t even get steady power supply let alone thinking of having to fly, majority of us still took buses to whatever the hell the destination we were going to …. Jet age? Rubbish! How could we have even called it that when what were most prevalent on our news on radios and televisions, were never about scientific discoveries or educational development or even the development in the standard of living of her citizenry in the slightest way, but of coups, counter coups assassinations and arrest of human right activists… well I remember as a child in the 80s speaking of your government at that time was one you did in terror and trepidation,as we saw them as beings moving without the faintest of pulse in their veins, and so we were taught by our parents from home to fear our government, not to respect them, but fear them and call them only the things that would speak of despicable evil, and so the colour green in my eyes would only tell me of monstrosity for another decade or two .

It was the 3rd day of the month of July 1989, it was my sixth year birthday, and for a child who had learnt how to read multisyllabic words at age two and now becoming "almost" a genius at age seven, my birthday had to be the talk of the town. Our living room was filled with very bearded mature faces, some of them I could recognize others I just couldn’t, it was another time for my father and mother to show to their friends and even foes, that they could throw a big party, because around here parties meant a lot; from happiness to freedom, it just couldn’t be over looked ..as in their hands were bottles of beer, ones they drank with so much joy and heavy laughter bursting out of their bellies as they clinged so closely to the ladies with skirts so short their panties showed each time their handlers carried them up in excitement … just a few of my friends, ones of my age grade made the scene, five of them to be exact and it was only because their parents made it for the party too, there was Rotimi who always kept asking me if the food was ever going to be served cause he was always hungry… and my reply to him was simple “this is not your house” I never really liked the guy, come on... we were just between the ages of six and seven… there was absolutely more to do at this time than eat.. then there was Patrick I hated that one too, he always told me stories I couldn’t at that time fully comprehend, stories of how his older female cousin Ola took longer hours washing his p***s than the rest part of his body and then smiling as she did it making him feel in a way weird, well pedophilic acts has always been rampant in the suburbs where we lived, but still at that time it was foreign to me, although I could tell that for him, it was something of both pleasure and shame, this i concluded from the way he would cuddle up to me and whisper the stories in my ears anytime she walked in, he would beg and make me promise that I never told anyone else, “she will take my life at night when I sleep if I tell anyone” he would say to me in the most frightful manner, with his eyes all red and welled up with tears ready to pour out at the slightest provocation, even though I knew at that time that it was all a threat, something in me still cautioned to believe her, you see in Africa there is something quite mystical about the night and people who made claims with it were the witches themselves, and for us as kids we sure did fear the night, I was always curious to know how he truely felt but he never did tell… he always had a way of cutting the story short… like he lost his memory or something. Then there was Bella; the most beautiful creature I had ever set eyes on in my brief six years of existence, and even though we were just six and seven I could still very well tell that she was pretty with a smile that could drive a thousand demons from a possessed man, because it was holy even though she had lost some of her milk teeth. The way her pink lips parted revealing the two missing incisors made my heart skip beats like an unskilled drummer playing his clumsy tunes and when she called my name “Oshioke” while staring at me with those eyes, I couldn’t help but say “ye..s” like a whipped dog curling into her every command, and yes I always wanted to tell her how I felt.. how much love I had for her … wanted to let her know that even though I was six and she was seven I was still going to marry her, and that our relationship was bound to be one of lollipop ice cream and sweets, wanted to tell her how much it would have felt to kiss her just the way the actors in movies did on our black and white cathode ray television screen. And how I really wanted to burst into singing songs like

" I’m back I’m back

you know it… you know it

Your mama say to your papa

your papa said to me whose back"

well that was our own perfect rendition of Michael Jacksons hit song “Bad” and we didn’t care if we got the lyrics wrong as long as we didn’t miss the melody whatever we said was correct. And so today on my sixth birthday I was going to let her know all this and if possibly kiss her too, I had poured out all my heart into a letter, one I was certainly going to give to her today, but just before I could make my move, here came Haruna the biggest kid in the neighborhood and with "big" came the "brute" and with the brute the bully, his reputation for making tears run down the eyes of little children was way beyond that of hunger or boogie monsters and it wasn't like he was far older than the rest of us, it was simply his size he looked like he had already hit puberty at age five, he was almost five and a half feet tall and his biceps were twice the size of mine, his chin didn't look soft like the rest of ours they looked like they had been worked on just to resist punches, see this guy was mean looking, well for us at that time he was... But come to think of it! Now that I reminisce on the past, I am beginning to think he was just ugly, yes ugly and sad his father was the one who drank the heaviest at my party that day, and right there at the party his father would call out to him at every moment with a slap to face or a knock to the back of his head, his mum wasn’t present at the party, the neighborhood knew too well that she was constantly beating by Haruna’s father, and so maybe today he must have bullied her to not coming, I always heard her cry out in pains from their house during his father’s routine of beating her to a pulp..... I can today guess that these were the reasons why he took out his frustration on us,

And today with the way he called out my name walking with such gusto towards me I knew he was about to rain the terror, but for what?

You see... I was never one with the biceps of the hulk or fighting skills of Bruce lee all I had was a brain and a will... And my Will today was to talk with Bella and tell her exactly how I felt about her.

But this story should not fool you, because where I come from, at that time talking about love and affection by little children was considered a crime similar to fornication before God and man, and the same penalty was given to you. Okay back to my story... So here I was few steps away from my destiny and what ever the future held, she was standing right there, coming just right behind her was the bully I had earlier described, in my hand was a well written letter inspired by most of the romantic novels I had stolen from my mum's wardrobe to read, it was too smart for a six year old but I had to water it down all the same so she could very well understand what I was saying .

The letter read thus;

"My dearest Bella,

Like the soft tender morning dew is to the blooming flower

That’s how the sound of your name is to my heart

And I know you may not know how I feel about you

That is why I am writing you this letter

To tell you that I love you

And I would like us to kiss just the way they do on TV”

It was a beautiful letter to me at that time... It simply showed the purest truth from my heart, an expression of the way I understood love, but just before Bella's out stretched hand could get hold of the letter, it was rudely snatched by Haruna I had to get it back even though I knew HAruna couldn't read, he was the type some educated parents used to refer to as “ ones that spoke foul languages” and so were doomed for life, see to us at that time pidgin English was considered a taboo, a language for the ones who just wouldn't make it in life there was a word they used for such people yes the “NFAs” an acronym for "No Future Ambition" even making friends with them at that time was considered a hideous crime to your personality .... Oh the shallow minds of the unsure.... Well my parents never shared that sentiments they only simply made sure I spoke correctly and didn't see any problem with me making friends with my fellow ghetto kids, .. and yes even though HAruna couldn't read there was this instinct that drove him to sensing that the content of the letter was something romantic, well it was the instinct that drove anyone to sensing same because here was a boy handing over a piece of paper to a girl the final conclusion had to be “romantic” and now Haruna getting hold of the paper could only spell doom for me if my parents found out so I chased him round the living room, running inbetween some dancing adults and some over zealous beer drinking ones, yelling "give it back to me" the bully callously ran through the living room knocking down objects we used as decorations for the livingroom thereby slowing my pace as I tried to catch some of them before they could hit the ground, finally he ran into the wrong object face flat on it, the object was my mum and sure she was going to be the object of my ridicule, why are you running she asked? I went numb for a moment because how could I tell her the truth like "mummy I was chasing him because he snatch my love letter to Bella"? That was going to land me in some serious trouble, just before I could think up a creative lie Haruna spills out the words "he be wan to give Bella this paper" handing the letter over to my mum.

Well what followed next could only be described in two words "sad" and "painful" as the celebration for me came to an end few seconds after my mother had read the content of the letter and then sadly showing it to my dad as well to read too... Imagine being flogged by both parents almost at the same time, it was like a tag team wrestling match for both of them, one handing over the cane for the flogging to the other and then taking the position as the one to yell, and then switch again, this would go on for at least five minutes till they put the final full stop by telling you to kneel down hands up and close your eyes, that was the longest full stop ever, it could go for half the day... Well I know my westerners and some over zealous civilized Africans may call this child abuse, but to us it was a sign that our parents loved us, and we came to understand that most of the time the flogging and punishments came as a result of the fear of seeing us grow up to becoming the unknown .