I finished secondary school from one of the Catholic schools in the east in 1982.
In those days, I always came tops in my class. I remember during my final year at the speech and prize giving day, my name was called virtually for every category of prize to be won.
In fact, one of the teachers told me not to go back to my seat but to stay close to the podium since the presenter didn’t want to stop calling my name for award after award.
Chidodo, hail o! Chidodo hail o! They kept chanting my name that day.
I cleared it all; Best Overall Student, Best in Mathematics, Best in English Language, Best in Chemistry, Best in Physics… I got it all.
But I did not go any further. Whereas all my classmates, including the ones their parents bribed teachers to keep passing them year after year, had by October of that same year, secured admission at one university or another. A few more, I later heard, relocated abroad.
Me? I returned to my father’s farm. How did it all happen?
My parents are poor; I got into that secondary school only by the grace of God. I was taken in as the houseboy to the Principal. My father was the houseboy of the Principal’s father, who told his son, the Principal that I was very brilliant chap and so when I finished primary school, he took me in as his help.
I didn’t start secondary school immediately, of course, I had to work for one full year for the Principal before he enrolled me in school. I think he wanted to be sure I would be a good houseboy, that I would not get into trouble, it was a testing of sort.
You see, throughout my five years of secondary school, I never came second and not once did I miss doing my chores, not once did the principal threaten to stop my education on account of truancy. I was a good boy!
Which is why it’s easy to understand why everyone thought I was going to end up as some great scientist abroad.
It didn’t happen. After secondary school, things didn’t improve for my parents; they took me, bowl in hand round to their relatives; my uncles, aunts even the community, nobody raised a dime to sponsor my education. Nobody offered to help me achieve my dreams, instead, they told me repeatedly-go and farm, after all, your father has a farm.
They said I was too ambitious; how could the son of a poor man think of going to the university?
You know, after almost five years, I began to truly believe that perhaps I was too ambitious. Much as I longed for school, for education, what was staring me in the face was our homestead with its rough earth, we couldn’t even cement it, our mud windows and thatch roof and a farmland that seemed cursed.
For years, I farmed a land that didn’t yield any good crop, I farmed until I was bent and could not stand up straight; we barely had enough to eat not to talk of selling off to make extra money.
My siblings and I, five in all, we toiled with my father… then my father died and the burden of feeding everyone fell solely on me as the first born.
Some 8 years after secondary school an old school mate who also hails from my village came home for Christmas. I didn’t even recognize him, he called me, Chidodo! Chidodo! Only people from my secondary school days call me that name. So I knew that the person knows me very well. It was Ifeanyi. He was now a qualified doctor already in an hospital in the UK.
Ifeanyi was smallish and dull at school, he was also a spoilt brat but he was one of the kind hearted ones who shared his provisions with me and I in turn helped him with school work. I also acted as his guardian because you see, Ifeanyi had a big mouth and was always getting into trouble especially with seniors.
But there he was in front of me, huge, tall and very handsome!
Chidodo! He called me again.
I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my threadbare clothes, my worn slippers, my cracked toes and heels. I looked like a poor farmer.
But that day also marked a turning point for me. I told Ifeanyi that I had not been able to go to a higher institution since we finished school because I just couldn’t afford it.
Ifeanyi promised to help. He helped me open an account, he put some money in it and told me he would be sending money so I could try JAMB and go to a higher institution.
He kept to his promise. Three months after that December, he sent money, about N50,000.
It was the most money I had ever seen in all of my life, by the way. I was already 25 years old. But I couldn’t just use the money for school, I had five hungry mouths to feed. So, I used the money to buy food, fix our roof and put a few things in the house.
The following month, Ifeanyi sent another N50k but this time, he sent one of his cousins in the village to tell me to get a phone so he could be talking to me.
I got the phone and that was how I got to know about our other classmates who had been meeting. Ifeanyi told me he told a few friends about my ‘situation’ and that they had agreed to make some contributions towards me going back to school so I could have a degree.
Oh yes, they sent the money, at some point, I was getting nothing less than N200,000 to N250,000 every two months or so.
No, I didn’t go to school immediately; I was too ashamed to go back. I was afraid I would not be able to cope. After almost 10years out of school, I just didn’t know if I could sit in a class and understand anything. So I used the money to send my younger ones to school. And no, I didn’t tell my friends that was where their money was going because they may stop sending and the chances my younger ones have will be taken away.
Two of our last ones benefitted from this; I sent one to Unizik and the other to Uniport. As for me, the following year, I finally settled for part- time OND Engineering course at the polytechnic close by.
They kept sending until they thought I had finished school. Yes, I told them I was at Unizik. You understand how easy that lie would have been since my younger brother is a student there.
But somehow, one of my benefactors found out I wasn’t in the school I claimed to be. He told the others and they stopped sending me money; only Ifeanyi continued. He sent N50k, sometimes N80k as he was able to.
Then one December that Ifeanyi came home again, he invited me over to his house; he told me a few of our old friends would be there. Ifeanyi had been kind to me, even though I hesitated, I felt I should honour him. So I went.
Let me just say I regretted going; there I met more than 16 of our old school mates; they had got on in life, they were looking good, had achieved so much and left me, the one who got all the awards way back. I looked like the poor farmer I was in my cheap sandals, my worn clothes, my wet armpits from the anxiety of seeing them all looking so accomplished.
I couldn’t even flow with their conversations. I couldn’t relate with anyone of them; these people who begged me to teach them Pythagoras theorem back in the day, these people who sat beside me just to copy my notes during Physics tests, these same people were like foreigners with a strange tongue.
All of them couldn’t reconcile the Chidodo who won all the awards, who all the teachers hailed as being the one to achieve even more, to this person in front of them. I looked very old, they looked young, fresh, happy.
They didn’t even know when I left, they didn’t see me when I quietly slipped into the shadows and disappeared. Old school reunions are not for all of us, I have learned that the hard way.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)