Childhood: And we were sent away

Parental Angst Versus Child Welfare

I observed two news stories from afar until I found myself commenting on a Facebook post, to which the author suggested my comment should be an essay.

Previously, I had written about my parents’ decision to send me to secondary boarding school after the cloistered bubble of an international primary school education. I will not dwell on that matter, but there are many facets to not being born and raised within the traditions, culture, and lands of one’s parents’ birth.

Blog - Childhood: When Parents Think They Know Best

For that, there was a term coined: Third-Culture Kids. This comes with many connotations, including the conflicts of environments, the anxiety and angst of our parents, the issues of not finding belonging in any place, and all the attendant psychological challenges that are somewhat ignored because our parents assume time will eventually resolve things and make everything work.

Send Them Home to Learn 

What bothers ethnic minority parents today is what might happen to their kids in the UK, where I am somewhat more familiar with the situation, and in the Americas. The tendency among parents who have the means is to extricate their kids from abroad and place them in the sometimes-harsh environments of their home countries, usually in West Africa, where they hope to address the lapses in discipline, educational attainment, purpose, and character that they have observed in or around their children.

Recently, a child took his parents to court to compel them to return him to the UK after he was apparently deceived into going to Ghana to see a sick relative. We all have variations of the same plot. He lost his case, the judge empathising but ultimately siding with the parents. [BBC News: Son Loses Case Against Parents Over Move to Africa]

Continuing with the narrative, some men have come forward to share their own stories about being sent home and how, in hindsight, it saved them. It probably did save all of us, one way or the other. However, it is never comfortable during that absence from what the kids call home. [BBC News: I Was Duped Into Leaving London for School in Ghana - But It Saved Me]

Before I share my comment, many kids have been brought up in the UK and the US and have thrived; this is great credit to their parents and communities that nurtured them. All these stories need to be told.

My Facebook Comment 

I suppose this is another aspect of split upbringing that is rarely discussed.

We returned to Nigeria when I was hardly six years old; however, because I was with my parents, I had the pleasure of attending primary schools filled with foreign-looking but Nigerian-born schoolmates, while many of us black kids were foreign-born.

It was the secondary boarding experience that was brutal, but I survived, despite the lasting scars of that environment.

You eventually become streetwise without losing the kind of daring that some people regularly said we Ajebotas [Kids who eat bread and butter rather than local fare; a pejorative term for lacking experience in local customs.] have.

The longstanding benefit of my early education and experiences in Nigeria meant building resilience, grit, and, mostly, self-esteem, while retaining the precocity I always had.

Upon my return to the UK, my blackness was always a part of me; no one could racially abuse me and get the upper hand, as I had a better retort, coupled with wit.

Escaping the race and deprivation politics of the inner cities and suburbs, which would have found me in Walsall and Birmingham in the 1970s and well into the 1980s, meant I never had the sometimes-invisible baggage or chip-on-the-shoulder that affected ethnic minority kids who never left.

I left Nigeria with just an OND and built an IT career that was earning top rates by the mid-1990s, before the extraordinary fortune of being invited to pursue a master’s degree after providing a character reference for a friend.

Moreover, unlike the scolding in Nigeria that implied one wouldn’t amount to anything and spurred you on, in England at that time, it was a limit on your horizons, pushing you towards low achievement and menial roles.

My parents left after qualifying in their respective professions; even though my dad placed third overall in his accountancy finals, his colleagues suggested that they never thought he was that bright, instead of congratulating him on his success.

I assume they both decided that the England of Enoch Powell, whom my father once challenged in a pub, was not a suitable place for them or for their boy—and the children that came after me.

Now, each experience is different; I cannot suggest that any of these actions are in the best interests of any child, but having the agency to intervene when you see things going awry is a privilege of opportunity that many do not have.

I even had my own personal intervention; after a relationship breakup in 1999 left me lost and listless, I packed my bags and started anew in the Netherlands, where I remained for almost 13 years.

Our parents mean well; whether they were right is another conversation altogether.

I cannot argue against being immersed in a totally different culture; it presents opportunities that we often fail to fully appreciate until later in life, as the men have suggested in the article.

RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Angelic babies, we were not

When we were sent to boarding school, it was presumed we were innocent, unaware, unspoilt, and undefiled. Yet, nothing to be further from the truth about the kind of knowledge we all had as adolescence and puberty had hormones raging in our bodies that the more precocious and adventurous amongst us found outlets for.

Rumours abounded of boys meeting girls, seniors finding impressionable girls to exploit in the dark classrooms late at night, there was even one instance though unconfirmed of penis captivus where the parties could not be separated after intercourse for a while, the male participant allegedly the son of the principal.

Denial and hypocrisy around us

Sometimes, the girls disappeared for a while, recorded as ill with apparent tuberculosis whilst most definitely, a pregnancy was terminated. The female teachers in school were matrons of ovulatory expertise, they could tell if a girl was pregnant from the whites of her eyes, her continual spitting, and some other natural sign of divination before inquiring wether the pregnancy was caught by contagion if no name of the sexual partner was forthcoming.

I do not think any male got called out for sexual intercourse except in our last year when two girls were gang-raped by a group of boys with whom at least one had provided times of intimacy years before.

All ready to do something

For those of us who were not daring enough to approach the opposite sex, we were not entirely sexless. My first exploration was when a classmate during a moment of being alone together asked if we could copulate. I did not know what copulate meant even though from an earlier age I seemed to have some excitement looking up words that began with sex. I had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from 7 and after that, pederasty did occur at home with people employed to care for us.

He soon left the boarding school as he just did not cope with the environment. In terms, it was harsh for many of us leaving home for the first time, but we found ways to adapt. Being one of the youngest of my class, I was quite developed for my age, taller with pubic hair that others thought I had acquired by the application of methylated spirit. I do not know where the idea of hair growth by methylated spirit came from.

The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Soon, there were partners my age mates were in a lower class but full of sexual needs and seeking some partnership in which I found a few to fumble or frot. Later, there was one, a classmate, with whom fumbling led to fellatio with the experience of ejaculation, he called fluid. That even went on until two or three years after we left school.

I never met with the ones who had homosexual inclinations, at least, not until I began seeing them in pubs, clubs, and parties in the UK. I cannot speak for their experiences as they all seem to want to avoid engagement even as it was quite obvious, they did not miss their way into those places of encounter.

All the others are married, the ones I still remember and are even grandparents. We can agree that those days of our youth were just experimenting in practical fluid mechanics; the physics, the chemistry, and the biology of it, the subject of memories of old mischief.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Adolescence: Revisiting the RSS Class of 1981

Calling from the deep

This morning as I got to work, my phone rang and at the other end of the line was a voice I could not make out. A name and my memory went into a tailspin, I was trying to remember a quinquennial period of my life that ended just a few days over 36 years ago and my recall was not recalling much.

Apparently, one of the most enterprising of my secondary schoolmates, and I mean that in every way, he drove his own vehicle to school, but was not given a parking space within the school walls. He had set up a WhatsApp group and invited the class of 1981 to join. I was added to the group and very few could remember who I was.

Now, that I think of it, apart from my sadness at the way the Parents and Teachers Association of my secondary school treated my class in the summer of 1980, I have hardly written about my secondary school life. Yet, it is not without event and adventure.

More fiends than friends

One other thing is I have not necessarily kept contact with the closest friends I made in secondary school, from the scoundrel to the evasive, the fleeting contacts we made afterward only showed how divergent our lives had become. The common strain that brought us together was kids born abroad and with another bedwetters, but that did not beyond school materialise into friendships.

It is strange that in a conversation with my dad some time ago, he noted that I had not cultivated friendships with my secondary school mates. Then I think of friendships I have tried to rekindle from my primary school days and other friendships that have lasted a lifetime from my post-secondary school days.

There are issues that seem to set my secondary school relationships apart and I do believe the time has come to begin to document those parts of my history. Then again, I have acquaintances I made in secondary school who have indeed become friends, not only that, I have made friends with their relations too, who in some cases have married into relations of mine.

My large family of One

However, this collision of the shadows of the past with the intricate and delicate balance of my present brings some interesting areas of complex and somewhat strained conversation. We all make assumptions about the lives of others following a particular trajectory when in reality, that is rarely the case.

I have to tackle the very extant and pertinent question, “How are you and your family?”. Indeed, I have woken up in a jolt from the nightmare of dreaming I had a wife and two children. The thoughts even in the dreams questioning how all this happened to me without my involvement.

I was once integrated with a nuclear family until I was 10 before I was sent to boarding school, after that, the family was a nebulous mix of close and distant relations, many of whom I now hardly know, some have already passed on and others I relate to on Facebook. I have three half-brothers I have never met, one of whom is already a father.

In my bowels, I have reached the age of grandfatherhood, I know this because one of my very close friends who is much younger than I am has been a grandfather for at least 5 years. Yet, I cannot say I do not have a family, rather, I do have a family, it is a large family of one. I never married, I have never had kids. To enter into much more detail about that would challenge the seemingly conservative disposition of some of the entrants into the WhatsApp group.

Conserve on the detail

Suffused with religious supplication and the grandiosity of prayerful incantations, the more liberal matters of a life less ordinary may not be understood, neither would I want to impose any of my worldviews into the Remo Secondary School (RSS) Class of 1981.

My family is well, I am glad to reacquaint myself with you all, of all I can remember, we at least liked each other and there was rarely if ever, any hate or animosity between us. I look forward to recalling the wonderful memories of my early teenage years. I finished at 15, and I guess most if all are now over 50.

For God and Fatherland was the motto of the school, I guess, I am not doing much for either today, on reflection, there is much to be said and much more to be forgiven.

My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Why I write

I wrote the themes of this blog in my mind and my head as I walked back from the cinema after watching Moonlight, the 2017 Best Picture Academy Award winner.

Normally, I would write a review of the film and from it draw allusions and relationships that resonate with me. However, on this occasion, I would suggest everyone who has the opportunity go and watch the film.

What I have to write below touches on some very personal things that in my own coming of age I feel I must express and I am sorry if anyone after reading this is adversely affected. We bottle up too much of our experiences in silence and hurt, giving no option to expression and lessons to be learnt.

As a child

Moonlight comes to us in three chapters of life, of childhood, of adolescence and of adulthood, the story of understanding sexuality and the relationship between mother and child in the midst of addiction.

As a child, I first recognised issues with my sexuality that began to find expression originally in sexual abuse at seven, and more towards an affinity to people of the same sex from around that age. In the process, there were people who took advantage of me and took their sexual favours whilst I obliged like a catamite.

I was 3 when I noticed my mother’s own addiction, it was religion and the constant visits to prophets and soothsayers, the inclination towards syncretism and the rituals therein, the recitation of Psalms and the invocation of inscrutable angelic beings, none of which inspired confidence in me for what a useful religious devotion could be.

In my teens

As I moved into my teens, I grew rebellious and difficult, the relationship with my parents deteriorated and my mother’s addiction took its toll on her reasonableness, her marriage, our family and consequently her career. My baby sister’s medical condition sunk her under the mesmerising spell of a ‘prophet’ who I considered false, she lost her agency as my sister was shunted between hospital and grotto, my mother finding justification for her actions in such atrocious hair-raising conspiracy theories.

I sank into depression, failed at school, took religion and almost lost my bearings. Meanwhile, I found a different friendship, occasions for a sexual outlet, all guilt-ridden and self-loathing, yet taking a hold I could not deny. I, without a doubt, had same-sex attraction that I could not explain and understand other than beginning to come to terms with who I was and who I am.

I got older

As I entered adulthood, I found some stability and an accommodation for expressing both my religiosity and sexuality, a family that took me into their bosom and gave me a grounding that became the foundation of who I am today. My mother in her own way that done really terrible things to me, things she dismisses but no child can forget.

It irks me when people interfere thinking there are filial duties incumbent on me without any acknowledgement of the deeper issues that necessitate estrangement. My situation is not necessarily unique, but my experience is exclusively mine to understand and that hopefully would be respected by others.

Whilst I was bullied in secondary school, I was saved the physicality of beatings, people exercised power in other ways. In adulthood, before I left Nigeria, I was being blackmailed but I refused to pay up knowing it was the gateway to something beyond my control. I was ready to face the consequences, just as I had years before when I was caught in a sexual liaison with another man.

I accepted myself

On leaving Nigeria, I decided no more to live in the shadows, I reached a point of self-expression and acceptance of who I was and that freed me to enter relationships, find love and develop productive and useful friendships amongst people like me.

Beyond that, I was freer with information about my sexuality in my workplace and it meant I did not have to live a double life. It also meant my managers quickly nipped any homophobia in the bud. I was fortunate to be respected for who I was regardless of my sexuality.

Sex had its attractions, an outlet, a search of companionship, a kind of addiction and a self-destruct button that was pressed more times than I could reckon. In that scheme of things, I became HIV+, developed AIDS, had cancer, lost everything and rebuilt my life from scratch again.

Sadly for my father

My siblings probably do tolerate my mother, I cannot, she has no capacity to reflect and that is to reflect on anything she might have done wrong, she feels entitled and makes demands of entitlement to fealty from her children, failing which we are emotionally blackmailed. I stopped giving in to this kind of manipulation some time ago.

My father who by commission has done little wrong, but by omission failed to save me from the menace of my mother’s caprices sometimes finds himself on the cold shoulder that is given my mother. His ability to reflect and accept wrong is sometimes limited by his inability to empathise with settings in which he cannot find a frame of reference. I probably should be more forgiving of that inadequacy, but everything is quite emotionally draining, it is sometimes best to let sleeping dogs lie.

I don’t hate her

Invariably, I do not think I would ever get to wipe the tears from the eyes of my mother from her acknowledgement of the hurt that I have suffered at her own ‘motherly’ acts. I do not hate my mother, then I cannot convince myself that I love her either. We exist because of the accident of circumstance, not something I had the freedom or will to affect beyond the fact that I was born.

My moonlight is a story with parallels and analogies, it is not a movie, it is my life and the way I have been affected. In my moonlit night, I find the peace and tranquillity of accepting who I am, and in my coming of age, I cannot deny who I am. The pursuit of happiness endures and a better story will be written, either by me or by those who learn something from my life.

Thought Picnic: My world, their world

Read this first - Blog - Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

All drama and histrionics

Now for the real reason behind this blog, it was inspired by a video I watched on Pa Ikhide’s Facebook page.

A boy decided to play a prank on his father clearly identifying the idiosyncrasies of people of that generation. Typically, a Nigerian parent reacting to some failings of their heretofore precious brood.

In this event, the boy of 16 announces to his father that he has impregnated his 14-year old Caucasian girlfriend and a flare up ensues.

Now, this video was the boy playing a prank on his father, as we laugh we must realise that there is a majority of cases where this is no laughing matter but the reality of an unfortunate set of choices that presage dire consequences for that child.

I failed woefully

I have a story much similar to this, and I hope this with other interesting narratives that the video represents about parents, their children, their expectations, their disappointments, our mistakes, their reactions and the usually contemporaneous bleak prospects.

The background to this story has been written in this other blog.

Blog - Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

Having learnt that I failed again, and there was no option for re-doing the course after repeating the class, there was just no way I could return home to face my parents; I had betrayed their trust, squandered their investment and rubbished their expectations of me.

A typical Nigerian household

That is the kind of atmosphere we are brought up in, we are to excel and do our parents proud, we are constantly challenged to improve beyond ourselves, under serious scrutiny of incessant comparison with our betters at everything and in fearful juxtaposition with uncles, aunties, relations, friends and examples of those who have failed.

The trepidation is palpable and yet, I was never under pressure to excel academically from my parents, I was a problem child of a different sort, secretive and defiled through the sexual exploitation of those who were trusted to care for me, there were things I never discussed with my parents and even today have still not brought up, but have shaped many aspects of my life.

Begging and pleading

After a week of going missing, mother in desperation had sent people out to various haunts until word got to me and the friends sheltering me. I had to face the music and deal with the consequences of my situation.

My friend took me back home, my father who had begun a second career as a farmer had returned to Lagos that week too. At first, he would not let me in the house, but after much begging and pleading, prostrating and much else; a kind of grovelling subservience I had never really grown accustomed to, he relented.

Not like my father

Upstairs, he began with his own success stories, and indeed, my father was a brilliant accountant, a successful professional, in the upper tier of adulation of his peers, and he could begin to question whether I was his son having not taken after him.

I was useless, stupid, an idiot, a failure and to make the point more strongly, I was only good for the farm and we were to leave in the morning for the farm, I had no other prospect after that.

The more forgiving aspect of this encounter was no corporal punishment, no threats of sleeping in a police cell or the order that I sleep on the floor rather than in my room in my own bed, but the future looked bleak, very bleak indeed.

You’re off to the farm

That night, I prayed so hard, I probably prayed all night because I was at my wit’s end, and though I have been once suicidal at 13, I have had the grace of hope in the storm since then to know that whatever situation I find myself in, was just a matter of course.

When the morning dawned, I had not even spoken to my mother since I returned, but she left a message, with my sister. “If your father attempts to carry out the threat to take you to the farm, leave the house and come to my school.”

It was close to 10:00AM when my father said, “Akin, pack your things and get ready to go the farm.” I got 30 kobo from my sister, snuck out of the house and went to see my mother. She sequestered me with a teacher from her school for 4 months.

Rebuilding from scratch

In that time, I began to think of what I needed to do with my life, it was good fortune that at times I visited an aunt – aunts and uncles can be extended relations in Nigeria. I was related to her husband, I think 4^th cousins.

She invited me to stay with them, my uncle who had seen failure in trying to pass his secondary school finals for years reminded me of a meeting he had with my dad when we returned from the UK.

My dad had promised him £10 if he passed his examinations, and though the promise is still owing, my uncle passed, qualified as a chartered insurer in the UK, became a fellow of the professional bodies both in Nigeria and the UK, was an examiner for the institute and reached the pinnacle of one of the longest established insurance companies in Nigeria.

Mentored by one who once failed

However, it took one man understanding failure to take my failure in the eyes of my parents and whoever else had a stake in who I was to put me on the path to rebuilding my life. I returned to school after, excelled, started a career in computing and did many significant things within 4 years of that personal catastrophe.

Sometimes I wonder if part of the estrangement from my family is related to this, I have forgiven as much as I can, but forgetting what is significantly part of my life and my story is a much harder job. And much as the reaction of my father might have given place to what my life eventually became, this kind of reaction of Nigerian parents to their failed or failing kids is all too common.

The many disappointments we’ve been

Failing at school, getting pregnant, taking religion, getting involved in gangs, engaging in vice, acting outside unwritten but societally constituted norms like not getting married, not having children being homosexual; these are all drivers for apoplectic rage, repudiation, overreaction, histrionics, rash decisions and regrettable outcomes.

In my next blog, I would deal with the many narratives that the video above signifies of parental reaction to children with problems.

Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

The smarter of a big bunch

In primary school, I can say I was brilliant, though not good enough to beat Maya from Bulgaria to the first place.

I never revised or liked homework, examinations and tests were always a chore, but I did what I had to do, coming 2^nd most times and probably 3^rd once. In my last year, I was out of school for four months doing common entrance tests for secondary schools in the Nigerian South-West, when I returned, I still came 10^th out of 22 in the class.

Just average

Secondary school was a different regime, homework and assignments were part of the continuous testing regime apart from the end-of-term and end-of-year examinations.

I probably wrote the shortest scripts and was out of the exam hall in half the time, my performance in those terms were mediocre and scores average that I was in the top fifth of the class, but hardly celebrated.

Many of those ahead were naturally gifted and smart though the teaching technique of learning by rote and evaluation in some cases of regurgitating lesson notes verbatim in answering exam questions would have had me handicapped. If I was endeared to any teacher and there were a few, it was because I was articulate, we never had oral examinations, no, not the dentist.

Succeeding at failure

After secondary school, the first four years of study in two different schools yielded nothing, I did not need to report the events at the first where I was advised to withdraw because I made it into the premier polytechnic in Nigeria of that time.

Much as there were distractions, what I realised with hindsight and I have written about before was I never really made headway academically. I attended classes I completely drew a blank in, I was like a zombie in class but able to thrive in student union politics and getting co-opted into religious activities.

I played truant in secondary school and here too, the classes were boring, the teachers were evil and the lecturer was either bombastic or had the worst command of English ever, it was tortuous beyond belief, I had to extricate myself. The die was cast for tragedy.

Depressing the F-key

I was in trouble and somehow I did not understand what it was between depression and probably something worse because the mental capacity was there, but the engagement was missing, it was like I had no purpose or direction and before long my world came crashing down.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Are those blanks signs of depression?

Under duress, I repeated my second year after my father pulled all the strings to get me readmitted but I was far gone. At the end of that year when the results came out, I left home to check my results first running an errand for my dad.

I did not return home that evening, I went missing for well over a week and there began a new chapter in my life, an acknowledged failure, the child of role model parents, between them a successful accountant and a secondary school principal of 10 years.

That is the lay in for my next blog. The link would appear in the blog below when I have written it.

Blog - Thought Picnic – My world, their world.

Childhood: Yikes! A snake visiting boarding school

Preserved for posterity

That night, there was much clamour as much of the boys' hostel emptied to chase after what then happened to be a yellowish tanned snake with a white belly - as I can recall - Poisonous snakes of Africa and Asia.

It measured about 2 metres and it was eventually preserved in formaldehyde in a large jar and put on display in the biology laboratory where specimens of other once wild and dangerous but now dead animals were racked on shelves to fill anyone with dread and fear.

Our biology teacher was a Canadian, much unlike other teachers, young, agile and rode a motorcycle, generally friendly and never menacingly cruel nor wielding a cane as the other sociopaths masquerading as teachers that our parents entrusted our care and education to.

Named for discipline

The aftermath of that night would have been grave for some, the commotion at close to midnight when lights were supposed to be out had roused the principal, a matriarch with omnipresence and omniscience that saw through you with a gaze that made you dissolve into nothingness in her presence; strict and motherly, Mrs Adebambo defined the regime of a tight ship.

She called out the sleepers; the spies and the eyes of the authorities, prefects in other words, to gather the names of the noisemakers who had breached every rule of discipline and order, that list almost as long as an arm included the great and the small, we only had to wait until the morning for the verdict which was most likely going to be a suspension rather than interminable hours of bush-clearing.

Bamboo and palm fronds

The grounds of the school were on the edge of a forest and it only had walls on the sides bordered by roads, the forest itself stretched for kilometres, I do not think we were ever sure of where the grounds ended and when we had begun to trespass on the property of neighbouring farmers.

For our annual sports days, each school house; Falode, Mellor, Igimisoje and Adedoyin built huts of a bamboo framework and palm fronds made up the walls and roofs, gathered from the surrounding forests though not too far from the hostel was a bamboo bush, probably decades old, a good few metres wide and a haven for much more than could be imagined.

Fire raiser

I had happened upon a box of matches, exuberant and carefree, as I walked past the bamboo bush, two fingers slid the match box out of its sheath, picked out a match, struck it on the igniter coating and threw it – the fire caught like kindling to tinder and I hurried my steps with the innocence of an idle pedestrian.

As the boys gathered in front of the staff building to receive the verdict of the council who were not aware of the cause of the commotion, the snake was laid lengthwise on the steps at the main entrance of the staff room, mercy came, relief came but why that all happened is only revealed today, I set fire to the habitat of creatures that could have brought a much different story than one told now.

The mischief of almost 35 years ago and that was a typical boarding school day.

Thought Picnic: Of Justin Bieber in London with that look

Unconcerned

Now, apparently, a Mr Justin Bieber has been on a UK tour, having been in Manchester the week before when I was up there and then in London as the weekend rolled in.

I do not particularly care for his kind of music but I have seen the female folk swoon and squeal with glee at his appearance and performance that I can quite patently say I do not want whatever they are on to make them see whatever they are seeing or hear whatever they are hearing.

Then again, for the kind of music the young man purveys, he has become rather financially successful and some credit for his upbringing should go to his tenacious mum, Pattie Mallette whose intrusion into the public sphere has now included her sententiously religious opinions about abortion.

Unabashed

He turned 19 on the 1^st of March and he allegedly was staying at The Langham London which along with its luxurious opulence will not be lacking in the class and grace of a decent gourmet restaurant, however, the dear boy thought he might have a kebab instead, we cannot for now vouch for what kind of meat might be on the skewer with the food industry horsing around on pigs and cows that we might just be racing camels at the Grand National if all the horses enter the food chain.

One should not begrudge the man the need for something less exquisite, the presence of means does suddenly accrue to good bearing and exemplary mien, these things cannot be brought and only so much can be taught.

Unimpressed

It turns out that he left the hotel topless and what a body he appears to have but the low-hanging trousers exposing the full complement of his underwear must be the lowest expression of oafish conduct I have seen since I last told some boys on an Amsterdam shopping street to pull up their trousers and stop assaulting and outraging public decency with cack-ridden slips.

Every picture captured of the boy, because it does not become a man to be in such a state of undignified exposure, rankles with revulsion that makes one give up the hope of rescuing a fashion victim that has no doubt become a fashion suicide.

The worst bit of this display of gaol fashion that was attributed to men in prison who allowed themselves this demonstration to suggest they were available to be used as sex objects is the many others who will model their slouching gait and backside exposure tendencies after this Justin Bieber enterprise which should attract much excoriation and opprobrium.

Unacceptable

If my life had taken another course, a 19-year old kid would probably have been a 3^rd or 4^th child and I cannot see how regardless of situation, circumstance or peer pressure where any of my children would have been allowed to walk the streets inappropriately dressed to fit in with a nominally uncouth culture and appearance.

Being proper and properly attired is a matter of breeding, class and comportment without having to be dependent on means.

At this point, if there were occasion to warrant a cacophonous imposition on my aural faculties of this man’s crooning croaks my estimation of this very successful man who William Shakespeare would have effusively praised by saying, “You show yourself highly fed and lowly taught,” would not move one to find the slightest respect for his standing.

You only have to see the pictures to understand where I am coming from.

Opinion: Our Children Deserve Better - Respect Them

A mental case

A recent news story has brought the leadership of secondary schools under the searchlight where a principal has not only been indefinitely suspended but there is a view that she should undergo psychiatric evaluation.

Mrs. Olufunke Aladeojebi, recently, the principal of Ajuwon High School, Ajuwon in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State in Nigeria probably within reason as the person ultimately responsible for the education and welfare of her students might have been concerned that some of the females in her school on reaching puberty were taking liberties with their sexual curiosity.

It’s a dilemma, alright

The principal, in loco parentis was presented with a dilemma of how to react to the onset of adolescence and the raging hormones that accompany such natural human development; she could have reacted in any number of ways that could have presented her with the better opportunity to inform, educate and probably warn her students of the possible issues and dangers that accompany exploring and expressing one’s sexuality.

Apparently, she is notably a strict disciplinarian which in Nigerian parlance almost has nothing to do with discipline and instruction but everything to do with severe punishment as a means of re-education that exploits the pain thresholds of the recipient whilst dealing an atrocious emotional battering to all including the innocent.

These innocents are then literally scared out of their wits unable to think intellectually of the consequences of their actions apart from associating it with the fear of shame - that is usually the only weapon in the strict disciplinarian's arsenal of imparting wisdom - Fear nurtured by terror.

This is sadism

Deterrence has its functions but when school leaders use their authority as an instrument of pathological sadism to maintain control of a situation that has probably gone awry, more suffer unnecessarily and can be so seriously traumatised without essential mental health help that this might have life-long consequences.

The principal, on suspicion, and I state again, on suspicion; not that any of the girls were caught in the act of sexual intercourse. The principal suspecting some of her students were engaged in pre-marital sex and she was particular about the girls and not concerned with the boys; she invited a nurse as surety whilst she and the nurse proceeded without the consent of the girls’ parents to conduct a virginity test.

Crude is making light of it

This was not some questionnaire to elicit the truth of her subjective reasoning posited on a warped moral duty to maintain a sense purity in her school. Rather she proceeded to subject the girls to the heinous and reprehensible indignity of probing their private parts with fingers as if to determine if the hymen had been broken and with glee and euphoria greeting the confirmation of her instincts catch the girls in the most compromised of situations allowing her to probably expel the girls from the school and in the process temporarily destroy their future prospects.

It so happened that whilst engaging in this act of criminality that goes to the extremes of sexual abuse and the violation of the civil liberties of the girls, the unprofessionally crude and barbaric act led to injury presented as bleeding which can only be due to these women having damaged the hymen they were not expecting to be intact.

At the very least and this is not to condone or offer the remotest absolution to these terribly wicked women whose savagery is unspeakable, this rotten test should have been conducted by or under supervision of a qualified gynaecologist.

Society’s acquiescence

This kind of egregious violation of the students, especially females is played out without respite in many secondary schools all around the country and even in universities that somehow act as if undergraduates are adults who need to be treated as prepubescent or adolescent.

Sadly, we have a society that condones these acts in the name of maintaining some communal morality imposed by fear rather than by information and knowledge.

It is then so unusual that parents have raised the alarm at this sententious abuse of authority that the Ogun State Ministry of Education have moved to act in the best interests of the civil liberties and rights of the students than default to type about falling moral standards that need to be addressed urgently.

We must help better

As the principal is sent for psychiatric evaluation presaging committal and consequently barred from ever being in charge of students, I do hope the students affected are offered professional counselling and therapy to assuage the trauma they have suffered.

It is important that we recognise that children have inalienable and inviolable rights that should never be infringed upon in the name of maintaining some moral standard regardless of religious instruction or sense of moral duty.

The outrage is more than justified because we are at a time when between the conflicting influences our children face, the best we can do for them is to treat them first as individuals, respect them as human-beings, instruct them with empathy, educate them with understanding and inform them to enlightenment.

We must learn better

We should unschool ourselves from the primitive and outmoded forms of corporal punishment as a means of effective instruction to engage their intellect, offer them responsibility, entertain their searching questions, expand their horizons, praise their good work, inform their curiosity and when we are inclined to condemn anything they do we should be mindful of what change we want to see and lead with a greater sense of duty, love and compassion.

All children grow, they reach puberty and there are emotional issues that come with that development; on matters of sexuality what our wards need is information and education, we must agree that is not offered through intrusion and violation of their bodies – certain things need that we address them clearly without embarrassment than hope that our wards will gain knowledge through some form of ethereal osmosis.

We must all be involved

The matter of how we violate our womenfolk for the maintenance of some societal norm is an extensive topic and it is seriously hypocritical to place the complete burden of responsibility and dire consequence on the female when in the majority of cases, it takes both male and female to engage in the sexual intercourse that concerned that principal.

Our boys are not entirely innocent of exploring their sexual interests; they are almost always praised for their sexual conquests without moral sanction whilst their female counterparts are left to carry the shame of premarital sexual liaisons that sometimes result in pregnancy.

Boys and girls alike deserve better of their supposed role models on these matters of sexual development, morality, education and direction, if we address their bodies rather than really address their intellect, we have inadvertently reclassified them as no better than animals – eventually, when retribution comes, a psychological evaluation of our mental capacities will be the least of our problems.

I will appreciate your views on this topic.

Thank you.

Childhood: Last year at RSS

One morning in Form 5

It was during morning assembly, we were exempt sadly having been kicked out of boarding house the September before by a Parents Teachers Association that felt blanket punishment of everyone was better than determining who the culprits were who for the refusal of girls to come out to play had stoned their hostels harming the girls and damaging property during summer school.

It was literally a ruinous year for many because the strictures of boarding school were lost as parents had to find ways to handle their wards that had become day students where a majority had no family.

Substitutes of sorts

I was fortunate, I could stay with my aunt but the regimen of boarding school amongst peers after school for study, interaction and the preparation for final examinations had been lost.

To augment that, we attended remedial classes amongst those who had not been too successful the year before, but we were mixing with another crowd. With hindsight, I doubt it was extra classes we needed what we needed was the adequate setting for better understanding what we had learnt within the regular school system.

Our rotten lot

As if to compound the problem, the last session of the Sixth Form students who we had tussled with about positions of student leadership was leaving too and we found ourselves having to defer to our juniors who were now the student leaders.

That 3-set Sixth Form experiment was a disaster for our morale though even though until the time that it mattered to us, we literally adopted uncles and aunties of these sons and daughters of Anak who were giants in frame and knowledge to us puny kids barely into our teenaged years.

However, in Nigeria, no humiliation is too great for the punished because in some warped way of thinking, the punished will learn lessons, no one however audits those lessons to determine if they are the right ones.

The riot we became

What did I not see of those who were left to fend for themselves in town from parties to vices and ultimately a gang-rape that this time could not be swept under the carpet? The youngest in our year would probably have been around 14, I was barely 15 and the age range went up to about 23 or so.

I was quite tall for my age if my face did not belie a pre-pubescence of sorts, in the right crowd I did gel. At home, I also had my problems that made my parents agonise about where elements of my personality could have been derailed to become the reviled imp that had the tendency to suddenly shame them.

Seeds of life

It is probably then that the seeds had been sown that I could not possibly afford to have kids like me of what was visited upon my parents either from the emotional issues that were beyond my control that took a toll on all of us to the character issues that were in formation but had their wildly scary deviations – in the deep recesses of my mind even though I know now I am incapable of having them I still harbour the fear of having my own children.

As the examinations approached, we found study cells around town which got infiltrated with rumours of exam leaks and confidence tricksters circulated false answers to questions that many were smart not to use.

That morning

On that morning a teacher saw me in a classroom waiting and thought I was in a lower form skipping assembly, without first finding out, scolded me as they were wont to do ready to wield his cane when I told him I was in Form 5; sitting down, it seemed I could barely pull off the fact that I was in the right class.

When we completed our exams, the school did put together a valedictory service for us and for all the pride we have of having passed through Remo Secondary School, not one apology has been issued to the innocent boys who were unjustly punished in the Summer of 1980 apart from what the Vice Principal said that fateful afternoon whilst we packed our bags to leave – I know that these kids were not involved – and we weren’t.

Childhood: Shocked into adolescence

Send the child to our roots

Some memories came flooding in the other day about my childhood or is it my adolescence. Now, whilst I have written extensively about my primary school days, I realise I have barely scratched the surface of the wealth of stories to tell, I believe I would eventually visit those times, nothing would be strictly chronological in presentation I dare say.

My parents even though we lived in the North of Nigeria in Kaduna felt it was necessary I go to secondary school near my ancestral roots in the South where I could learn my father’s mother tongue of Yoruba properly – I never made much academic headway with Yoruba, I barely passed any of the examinations, though I did end up learning something.

They also had this feeling that sending me to boarding school would toughen me up; I had always lived a life of some privilege, much of which has hardly withdrawn once I left the confines of the parent-sanctioned borstal.

Steering to secondary education

So, in January 1976, I was put on a flight to Lagos where an uncle collected me and ensured I was able to attend a number of common entrance examinations to secondary schools – thankfully, there was no socialist fervour about selection, if you did well you did get noticed and get offered a place.

I had also been booked to attend an examination in Ibadan, I cannot remember which school it was but as we drove to the home of my hosts the driver got engaged in some distracting activity with the other kids and I found myself handling the steering wheel of the car with a gorge to the side of the road, the realisation that my turning had dramatic effect must have been seared in my memory that I never touched a steering wheel for another 15 years.

I had to learn the difference between arithmetic which we did in the North and mathematics which was done in the South. Negative numbers? Whose idea was that? I had the services of an aunt who was studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Lagos.

Between a cemetery and a forest

Eventually, a number of offers came, the nearest to my ancestral home was Odogbolu Grammar School, the other was Remo Secondary School in Sagamu where I had very close family.

I had a very terrifying experience when I returned home after 4 months down South when my aunt and our houseboy was chatting about appearances of evil and to the mind of an impressionable 10-year old there was fertile land for imaginations that could produce untold realities.

That night as my parents entertained guests, our kitchen was detached from the main building and as I went to place the dishes out at the washing area, I saw what I believed to be the devil and my life changed completely from then on, I knew fear, I knew terror, I found out that having my parents present did not save me from what my imagination could conjure for my seeing.

Anyway, that meant Odogbolu Grammar School was completely out of the question, the grounds were literally shared with a cemetery, I would have lost my mind if I chose that school.

Preparing for school

When we settled for Remo Secondary School there was the frenzied activity of acquiring uniforms, linen and other essential goods. The instructions seemed muddled, I ended up with grey shorts rather than green ones, and my cutlass was completely unusable for the activity we were to engage in.

The indelible ink of choice was Kandahar, and this was used to label all my effects, the school and house uniforms, the linen, my sandals, my pail, my mattress, my pillow and my metal portmanteau which was acquired from Panteka, the metalworks market in Kaduna – it was black with red dots and it had a hinge link for a padlock.

The first day at school was without much event, we arrived a few days before the seniors apart from the room seniors, fresh students had their own dormitory well away from the seniors.

Eventually, we were allocated our house groups, I was put in Adedoyin House that excelled in coming last in my first 3 years at school, it was a slow start but as soon as we began to settle in the reality of it all began to dawn on all of us.