You know the kind of world you are in when you begin to notice that you lack the pristine opportunities that those cheeky mates of yours in the neighbourhood enjoy. You cannot ask your mother why you are not born an
Ajebota. You do not enjoy the luxury of commuting to your school in the big school bus. You mother looks like a traitor to you; she won’t even condone any slights. Any stupid mistake fetches you electric speed spanks. That is it. Okay, I admit, that is not all! Here are other things that you brave through as a Nigerian Ajepako:
1. The neighbourhood tailor makes a living via that gaping hole in your school shorts that never seems to stay closed.
2. Your father won’t pay for transport fare because he is instilling the spirit of discipline in you – you will later regard this as celebrating poverty. Well, your legs are already used to wearing dust off the road, and the fact that your father bought you an exodus visa, “rubber sandal”, is also a trekking benefit. With this, you could join the ‘runts’ in the neighbourhood who also transport via “Footwagen”, and have better short cut knowledge than you do.
3. Instead of a big teddy bear, it is dad’s directory of errands waiting for you after school.
4. You have already considered yourself under-pampered compared to Shina who enjoys bonuses of milk, choco candies, and biscuits each time he scores above average in maths. You know the degree of “Machine Ride” you will do, if you ever got such a horrible score.
5. Instead of daddy organizing a birthday party for you, you get a beat-day, I mean a lashing-day, a crying ceremony because you have mistakenly spilled water in the “passage”. And if gracious heavens will serve you mercy, dad might show his rare generosity; you could get 2 Herbert Macauleys (ten naira) to buy candy (you will have to keep the wraps to convince your classmates that you eat candy too.)
6. You know how to dodge that uncle of yours who seems to enjoy hitting your head with his knuckles aka “konk”
7. You also have a mother who is hawk-eyed to prevent you from joining your playmates who are already signaling to you to join them on cashew-plucking pilgrimage, fishing adventure in the stream, or hunting adventure in the wood.
8. You also have a father who will purge you of your daftness in Mathematics exercise each night. If you don’t know how, you are a certified
Ajebota!
9. You have an ally who pities you, your grandmother, who will be begging your father not to kill his only son.
Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!
10. It is a benefit that you have a grandpa that will chew tortoise and elephant stories like sticks of cigars. It is a benefit one enjoys instead of reading those stories from the books. In books, those stories lack believable spirit but hearing them from grandpa is scintillating on its own. It also elicits infantile questions such as: “Did tortoise really cry at his in-law’s house?”
“Oh yes, my son,” grandpa lied.
11. You are only ten years old but you have been introduced to the hustle. Of course, instead of AC, you have several trees supplying natural air and giving you incense-filled shade as well. There is also an earthen pot at a corridor from which you can serve yourself a cold drink. Did I just hear you say “fridge”? Lol.
12. Items of play come according to your creativity. They could range from unused tyres and covers of bowls, to guinea corn stems and cement sacks which you’ll use to make talking drums with those Bournvita cans, to sand from which you cook soup and build castles and get married, to anything that catches your fancy.
I remember them all! Do you?
Mother always says, “A child is never big before his mother.” That is her warning me of an impending slap.
Then I ask myself, ‘Will I ever be an
ajebota in this life?”
Happy
shildren day! Shout out to all
ajepakos out there!
About the Writer: Salawu Olajide is a graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife. He writes poems, short stories, and watches a lot of TV. He listens to dadakuada music at his leisure time.
