SURVIVOR :CHAPTER 3-SCHOOLING

Schooling in Lagos is tough just like every other thing in Lagos. Lagos is tough Lagos is hard!!!.

The first memories I had of school was "jeleosimi". That was the Yoruba word used to describe the somewhat mobile pre-school that children that hadn't aged enough to resume primary school attended. The term "jeleosimi" literally means "let the house rest". Children were a disturbance to the house so parents got rid of them for a few hours of the day though this pre-school. There wasn't any of the kindergarten or nursery schools of this century back then. You had to wait till you were able to reach your left ear with your right hand before u could start primary school. Luckily I was a tall child so I started primary school earlier than most of my peers. Mama wouldn't allow me go for "jeleosimi"...who would help her fetch water when needed? or run her other errands. I didn't attend jeleosimi,  but I remember seeing children being collected from house to house on our street by a teacher and taken to a central place for teaching. They used a slate(mini blackboards) and chalk. By the time the children returned home they usually were bathed and covered in chalk dust. They were almost as white as snow. They would take their slates to show their mothers (most of whom could neither read nor write) and receive a pat on their backs. Pity!  No pats for me. 

    I resumed primary school around age 6 and I loved to read, I was smart I learnt fast. I guess God decided to compensate me for having a harsh grandmother. I started reading before most of my classmates even though I didn't have prior knowledge of alphabets or numbers. I excelled at school and it was just academics. I did sports too. I represented my house most times during inter-house sports especially on track. I ran 100, 400, 800, 1200 meters. I had long legs I used them well. 

There was a problem though, I didn't own a sportwear-as you must have guessed mama wouldn't buy for me. So my blue house house master had to borrow that of another girl for me during sports, I was that important to my house! 

Primary school passed in a blur and I passed the entry examination into one of the most popular public secondary schools in Lagos. I had to trek several streets to get to school because it was very far from where we lived. Tuition was free since it was a public school but I still had to pay for books and uniforms. So I started hawking. All these child labor laws hadn't been born yet so early in the morning, before school, I hawked oranges around the neighboring streets. This made me a perpetual late comer. As soon as school ended, I resumed hawking. My wares increased as I grew, I started selling yams. Usually my head was loaded with yams on a tray that was bigger than my head itself and I had to sell every tuber before going home else there won't be food for me. 

There was this particular incident that happened, one afternoon I had walked miles and miles with my tray of tubers. Not even once was I called by a buyer to haggle over my wares.  My head was protesting and my neck threatened to leave my body. I was close to tears, usually my tray got lighter as I walked since people would buy. The more people bought, the lighter my burden and the more chances of getting food I got. But that afternoon, even hell was against me. I was beginning to cry, then one woman-she would make a good Samaritan -noticed my distress and helped take the tray off my head. She bought my yams more out of sympathy that afternoon than out of need. 

Around form 2(jss2 of today), many of classmates enrolled for extra lessons, but I couldn't, where would I get the money to enroll?  How would I feed? Usually I hawked around one of the extra lesson centers and each time I passed the building I made my best attempts to shield my face from it so that my mates wouldn't see me. I didn't want to be made fun of. Sometimes my efforts were futile. They saw me. 

On another fateful afternoon, I was hawking and came across a teacher from my school, he was shocked, I was embarrassed. He said he didn't believe I really was hawking, I looked too 'ajebo' for it -and he was right - I was tall and fresh. God really loved me, even though I starved many times people still saw me as "fresh". After some time I stopped hawking, I started working for a woman-mummy rekia" at her Akara and yam shop. We sold fried akara(beans cake)  and yams in the evenings. I usually got there around 3pm immediately after school and stayed until 11:30pm to ensure we sold everything before going home. She payed me 20kobo. Yes! 20kobo! per day!. But as little as that money was, I was rich, at least in my own right.