RSS Mischief IV - Post the pots

Double or starve

One morning, the vice principal came into the dining hall during breakfast when we had a bread bun and fish stew served in an aluminium dish. He asked one of the boys if the food was enough and the boy replied, “No sir.” That interaction led to the doubling of our bread rations, from then on we had two bread buns rather than one.

Our dinner ladies or cooks were of a different animal species, almost too well fed that they could have been a crossbreed of homo sapiens and hippopotamuses for the way the folds of skin at the elbows looked like armour cladding that you could not once suggest they were fat even as they were built like stout brick houses, their legs might have suggested elephantiasis, though none looked ill, and we were scrawny and skinny like Jack Sprat.

Weevils and vitamins

When we had beans that nearly passed for diarrheal effluent fully augmented with weevils, that became more of the protein content than the beans, you closed your eyes as you spooned in the sustenance, maybe mixed in with garri grains. That we never fell violently ill at what we were served was probably testament to a constitution borne of being shipped off to hostelry by our loving parents to toughen us up.

The dinner ladies had a side hustle of snacks and sweets that they sold to us, an escape from the witch’s gruel and puddings of three-square meals that would have made Oliver Twist think he was at the Ritz.

Gremlins of the dark

One night after everything had quietened down at the dining hall and the kitchen, I was invited by a classmate, and we found ourselves in the confines of the kitchen pilfering goods we should never have had access to. The doors and windows were bolted shut and yet we got in with ease.

The pots were placed over holes, there were heated from recesses for firewood on the outside and so whilst the food was cooked, the smoke was always outside. At the end of the day, the firewood was removed, and the recesses cleaned of ashes and soot for the next day.

Post the pots

We, the gremlins of the night could go into the recesses and lift the lighter pots and that was how we entered the kitchen, through the fireplace. How so criminal and soon the novelty of that enterprise wore out, for the pang of conscience and probably the realisation that too many gremlins were scavenging around the kitchen. Yet, I doubt Miss Marple would have determined how things were lost.

The thrill and the adrenalin rush of this naughtiness would have faded at the stroke of the first landing of the birch on one’s backside, you never wanted to suffer the humiliation of a morning assembly punishment and thankfully where one came a cropper, one was spared the lasting indignity of such.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Blog - RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

Water all around

Apart from the front gate and a side gate there were no walls around my boarding secondary school, Remo Secondary School that we all knew as RSS. On the outskirts of Sagamu to the east, over a river bridge called Májọ̀pa that came with its tales of intrigue and paranormal dread that we at times exaggerated into fabulously unbelievable tales fed by imagination.

Then to the right was a hotel complex and a standpipe where we sometimes came for to fetch water if the taps around the school or the water source called Odò gàrrí (Garri pond) was too dirty for any use. The hotel was a disorderly house of ladies we eventually made friends with as aunties and not for any untoward activity.

To the gate

Further on to the roundabout, with two exits, the one to the right towards Ìkẹ́nnẹ́ and ahead over it to Ìpẹru, that part of the roundabout forming the northwest boundary of the school before a wall was built from the west round to the north and then to the east, leaving the south exposed to Odò gàrrí, farmlands, the rain forest that harboured a laughing jackal that for the best part of the first year at night howled the peace away. A path was later cleared for electricity pylons which opened parts of the unnavigable forest to exploration.

Soon after the roundabout was on the road to Ìpẹru was the main gate to Remo Secondary School on the right, facing onto the main staffroom. The wall was just a demarcation not a barrier, as no intrusion deterrents were placed on the tops of the wall, like broken glass or spikes, they were easily scalable to escape the confines or regimentation of hostelry and pathologically sadistic seniors.

Crabs swim better

Crossing the road after scaling the wall just before the roundabout from the school end, we plied a footpath through cocoyam farms then bearing left many pathways presented but one after about 1,500 metres of walking came to a river upstream of Májọ̀pa we called Ibù from which water was extracted for the waterworks and mains.

That part was deep, and no one ventured there because we were told someone drowned having been sucked up by one of the pipes, that was to the right. Ahead of us was a rickety wooden bridge and to the left shallow water where we went for a dip and pretended to swim, moving underwater like crabs.

We ran for dear life

This became a draw, for as many as 10 of us set out for this apparently illegal escape from authority to play. Though, without really witnessing it but following the stampede back to school that ensued. There was a fetish priestess in white who arrived from the other side through the bushes between the river and Sagamu probably to do some ritual to the river goddess.

When she arrived, whether it was a tall tale or not, one can not tell, but apparently, she got to the bank of the river and began to walk on water. We all jumped out of water hardly remembering to pick up our clothes as we broke sprinting world records literally unable to catch our breath and another fantastic yarn on our lips ready for any listening ear.

I cannot remember when the novelty of Ibù wore off, but it was not due to any official action of the school, I guess we found other distractions apart from where a river runs through it.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

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

RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Idle hands and fiery minds

I had a box of matches, and I was ready for mischief in one of those sinister acts of naughtiness invisibly perpetrated out of boredom and a sense of adventure in secondary school. I went to Remo Secondary School (RSS), Sagamu, Ogun State, the Class of 1981.

Much as I do not retain enduring friendships or associations with alumni from my secondary school, it does not suggest that my time there was not memorable. We were up to a lot of stuff, some probably unprintable because that could span the spectrum of the dastardly to just downright criminal. The tall prepubescent innocent-looking boy with a funny accent cannot be responsible for many things and there were things we did not do.

The long bamboo grasses

The annual inter-house sports day had us combing the dense jungle around the school for thick bamboo grass shoots like trunks and palm fronds to build the schoolhouse gazebos at the back of the sports field, that was part of the competition along with the field and track games for which in total points my schoolhouse, Adedoyin came last for 3 years.

Not far from my dormitory was a large bamboo grass bush that rarely yielded much but had grown from the cutting and extraction of bamboo stalks over the years. That we were rarely fearful of the possibility of dangerous elapine species lurking in bushes was probably one of innocence rather than bravery or daring.

Light it up and walk by

The grass beckoning to an arsonist’s urge in me was like tinder begging for the role of cinder and irresistibly, a lit match flew out of my hand to the inflammable grass, starting with a smouldering without rising into a conflagration, as I walked by my deed, it appeared it was going to be a slow burn. This was sometime around 5:00 PM.

After lights out, there was some commotion, someone had stepped out from the dormitory hall probably to take a leak and saw a snake, he raised alarm and a tumult resulted, sticks and clubs to hand they chased after the homeless reptile and send it to snake heaven. The principal, Mrs Adebambo, unaware of what caused the fracas came out of her home and nabbed some of the boys with the view to suspending them the next day.

Preserved from punishment

I was not part of the melee, how could any of that have been as a result of what I had done earlier even as it did occur to me that it might have been my deft handiwork?

The morning came and as the principal was about to unleash her fury, she was presented with yellowish-green cobra laid out in front of the staffroom. That was the end of her intentions; the snake was picked up by our motorbike riding Irish biology teacher and preserved in a large bottle of formaldehyde as an object of study, interest, and fascination.

Now, I dread the thought of what could have been if that snake had bitten anyone and at the same time one had indirectly acquired a biological objet d’art for the school.

Childhood: Early 1976 in Mushin, Lagos

Experience to new experience

A piece of childhood history has just been triggered by a Facebook friend request that I am ambivalent about honouring. In early 1976, I was sent from the north in Kaduna where we lived to stay with relations in the South West, and this was to attend common entrance examinations to secondary schools in the region my parents came from.

I was picked up from the airport in Lagos and on our way to where I was to be staying, I was sick in the car. Everyone was gentle with me, I survived and recovered well after that.

In Ibadan, there was a rite of passage, probably what put me off learning to drive when the driver distracted and attending to other activities asked me to grab the steering wheel just short of careering into a ravine. Though it did not appear I passed the examinations having flown from Kaduna, it was the time that I had a full sexual experience with a 16-year old.

Then, I happened to be in Sagamu in February, at the time that the Head of State, Murtala Mohammed was assassinated. Then also for examinations and another 16-year old finding his pleasures with me. I might well have been a catamite.

A Lagos of a dream

Returning to Lagos, I was in Mushin on Araromi Street, number 29 if I can recall. An older cousin of my father with adult children, the last, just about my age. He worked in the same company as my father but in a slightly junior capacity. His wife worked at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in the catering department and his mother-in-law lived just up the road, we called her Ma Mije.

His father was a lay reader of our old St. Jude’s Anglican Church in our village, known to all with the corrupted version of his honorific title, Lerida. A friendly and jovial man who entertained with hot sweet and milky tea and loaves of bread. He was the tea connoisseur of our village and well-liked.

One of his sons was in his twenties, he had finished secondary school, two others were close to the end of their secondary education. The December before, their big sister got married, remnants of the wedding cake kept on top of a cupboard. She put to bed soon afterwards, but her husband was abroad studying whilst she lived in the newly developing suburbs.

Surely not a negative

She sometimes visited and helped with my lessons, that was when I learnt of negative numbers in Mathematics for all I knew before then was Arithmetic, the concept of negative numbers were so alien to me and questions of that sort featured a lot in the common entrance examinations.

She had just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lagos and when we visited her, I drank Tennant’s Light Lager, it is strange a 10-year old was allowed such leeway.

In the Easter of that year, we went to Bar Beach, the big boys picked me up and threw me in the raging surf. That experience probably informed my fear of water and so my inability to swim until this day.

Representing them to some

During my stay, there was a visitor to the company from Japan, they worked for a textile company with my father being the chief accountant. In Lagos, I was the one wheeled out to converse and engage with the guest as everyone else was shut away. We went over maps of the world in an atlas and when he was leaving, he gave me lots of Yen.

I returned to Kaduna late in the month of May, but it is very likely that was last time I saw the eldest son of the family, who has now asked to be a friend on Facebook. There are so many things I remember, the star clock on the wall in the living room, the scent of Oil of Ulay that was quite off-putting.

The incomplete third storey roof where the big boys went to smoke cigarettes, the girl in the ground floor apartment that won a place to Mayflower School, Ikenne when I ended up down the road at Remo Secondary School, Sagamu.

My tenth-year harbours much to remember about childhood and some things I would rather forget as I touched on my 11^th birthday. It was both an adventurous and scary time, I sometimes wonder, what were my parents thinking when they made some decisions from 1975 into 1976?

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.