Chapter 10
I Came Back To Iyin
(My Home Town)
In December, 1969, we finally returned home from Idanre. I was admitted into Iyin School B, which was the Catholic School. It was there I learnt so much about the creed, sacramentals - that is, the mystery of the Liturgy and so on, of Roman Catholicism. It was compulsory to pass both the written and oral tests to qualify for promotion in that school. We memorized swathes of the sacramentals as well as other important verses of the Duay Version of the Holy Bible that will last me a lifetime. At the same time, I was a member of the Cherubim and Seraphim Sect through my mother. So all along, I juggled my faith simultaneously as an Anglican, a Catholic and a Cherubim and Seraphim member in addition to my Methodist experience in Idanre!
As a matter of personal choice, my good friend, Omowaye Oba and I decided to leave Iyin School B and proceeded to enroll ourselves in School A. There we completed our primary six class against all entreaties. All efforts by our Headmaster, Mr. Ojo from Ilawe Ekiti, to woo us back to School B failed, as Omowaye and I dodged him on the occasions he tried. Of course, we were afraid that he might prevent us from sitting for our final examinations, in School B, which was the examination center for all primary schools in Iyin, or ensure our failure in the examinations but our fears were groundless! The School A where I begun my primary education in 1964 was where I finished nine years later in 1972! What impressed me in my last two years was my membership of the Boys' Brigade whereby I enjoyed exciting opportunities during which we queued up to welcome the then Governor of Western State, Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo, who himself, incidentally, hailed from my town, Iyin!
Chapter 11
Off To Lagos!
In my hometown, and indeed for an average person from Ekitland, pounded yam was and remains a favourite food consumed every day. But I was soon confronted with eating Eba, thrice weekly or so. I was scandalised. Although I could easily eat, rice, beans, bread and butter, beverages and so on which were luxuries back home, enjoyed only during festive occasions, I still longed for pounded yam.
If you have a living God
Who answers prayers,
Your brain and mind to think
Your eyes to see
Your mouth to speak
Your hands to work,
Your legs to walk,
Your ears to hear
And you live amongst living souls
Then there's nothing more you need
To succeed in life
At this point, it will be incorrect for me to say I had nobody to send me to Secondary School. Between 1970 and 1972 when I lived with Sister Fehintola, I had so impressed her that she vowed to train me to any level I chose to attain academically. According to her, “even if it means selling my properties”. She made the vow on her return from the hospital where she had delivered her third surviving child, Dupe. On her return home, she told me, “you have proved to me that you are a very caring and hardworking child who can be relied upon even in times of need”! It never crossed my mind when her time was due that I was making any impact with anybody as I excitedly went about packing the baby things and ran ahead of her to the hospital as if it had been my wife that was in labour! But God, in His infinite wisdom, made the performance of her vow impossible! Before I could obtain any forms for and do the necessary examinations for secondary school, my brother, Ajiboye, came from Lagos in December 1972 and offered me an irresistible carrot to go with him (to a celestial place called Lagos!) with a clear promise to sponsor the scholarship there! That was how I inadvertently and permanently lost the chance of having a full-time, secondary school education (but this was not clear to me then).
Fehintola was unhappy with Ajiboye for taking me away. She did not forgive him until the day (about a year thereafter) when she observed from the letter I wrote to her that my handrwriting “is now straight”. She could not read but she could see a clear improvement in the strokes of my handwriting. There and then she concluded that I must have truly been schooling. That false scale of judgment finally settled the rift between her and her brother all on account of me.
I had heard so much about Lagos, fascinating and exciting stories that made me think, like other people, that inhabitants of Lagos did not walk on their feet, but rather did so on their heads! Another one that said that the dead and the living both co-habited there together also reinforced this belief.
Fundamentally, those of us from the hinterland saw Lagos as an escape route to liberty which consisted ofreality eating bread not only during important annual festivals such as Easter and Christmas as was in village. So, going to Lagos was a rare opportunity to variagate our culinary habits to include frequent eating of bread, beans, egg, and so on. Bread used to be a status marker of the Lagosians' superiority over their brethren in the village. Even among Lagosians, as I later found out, there was rivalry as to the type of bread one ate. So, some resorted to buying bread with different colourings to maintain class!
There was a variety that my brother used to buy for us which we named 'Lagos bread'. It was of yellow colouring and so tasty that whenever any aeroplane droned over our village even at its great height, which made it look only as big as a tiny symbolic cross drawn on a classroom chalkboard, we would nevertheless religiously appeal to it for bread on its return, as if the pilot could hear us and take our orders!
I imagined that my sojourn in Lagos would fulfill these expectations while the journey to it would give me the opportunity of knowing towns and cities like Ibadan and Abeokuta as well as all the places we had read about in our English and Yoruba textbooks.
My excitement was indescribable. A few days to my departure, I was full of songs, jubilant like someone drunk and spoke imaginatively like Lagosians as I laced everything I said with “Nigbati”. I invited everybody to my meals with “Wa jeun” - come and chop ( as if I was always so generous with my meal!). I was already living the proverbial Lagosian: I dreamt Lagos, acted Lagos and laughed Lagos. My appetite could only savour Lagosian cuisine; it could no longer entertain any other type!
I was so taken up with going to Lagos that I refused to go on any errand for anybody except, reluctantly, for my Mum and sister Fehintola. Anyone else who wanted my services was confronted with my ready-made answer: “By this time tomorrow, come and send me on errand again.” I said the same thing to my mother once, and she countered me promptly: “At least you are still with me today and you must do whatever I ask you to do.”
I arrive Lagos!
If it was possible, in my last night, I slept with my two eyes wide open to the day of my departure. The reason was that I feared being left behind. At last, the opportunity came and I rejoiced in it. My conveyance was Pa Tijani's vehicle. Pa Tijani was a celebrity in our village because he was regarded as a father to all travellers. He did his work with the fear of God at heart and sublime affection for humanity. Old as Pa. Tijani was, every Tom, Dick and Harry took the liberty to just walk up to him and drop his or her parcels or letters to pass on to their kith and kin in Ibadan or wherever. You didn't need to be his relation for him to oblige you and bring back replies in whatever forms. He remained the excellent gentleman he was until he retired.
Pa Tijani's vehicle was a Pick-Up van popularly known as “Deku-ma-go-lo” ( a snare made of a can). It derived this name from the fact that its Nigerian drivers recorded alarming rates of accidents with it and the passengers were invariably trapped within it.
A little while after we took off, we got to Igede about 5.30 a.m. and soon after, as we headed towards Aramoko Ekiti, an edible big rodent dashed across the road for the Cocoa plantation to the right. Pa Tijani's attempt to crush it with his vehicle's wheels failed and so he stopped abruptly, jumped down from the van and started pursuing it in the early morning light. Everyone in the vehicle responded in sympathy and joined him in the chase. The rodent had no chance with such a determined and hostile crowd after it, and it was caught eventually. Papa promptly tucked it under his seat and what finally became of it was beyond the contemplation of this book!
For the rest of the journey, I was content enough to feast my eyes on the kaleidoscopic passage through Aramoko, Erio, Itawure, Ijebu-Jesha, Ilesha, Osu, Ife, Ipetu, Gbongan and Ikire until we landed at Gate Bus Stop, Ibadan.
Although we were at a corner of Ibadan, the atmosphere was still impressive, what with the cacophony of vehicular traffic, heckling bus conductors and the general rowdiness. So this was the Ibadan I had been hearing about and reading of in our Yoruba books and during conversations! I saw very big Austin Buses and 'Molues'. The sheer energy of the bus conductors was bewildering: “Gbagii, Gbagii, Beeree Beeree, Ojoo, Ojoo, ojeee ojeee, Mokolaa Mokolaa, Ekoo, Ekoo, Ekoo, Lafenwa, Lafenwa!!!…”; they shouted and heckled non-stop, announcing their various destinations. The noise of stereo music that blared from record stores all over the place overwhelmed the entire environment. It was bedlam, so it seemed to a newcomer like me. However, I held on to my brother's apron string, for balance and a sense of reality.
At last, we made up our minds to join one of the big buses heading for Lagos. Unknown to me, my box was erroneously stacked in the compactment of another vehicle heading for Abeokuta or so! It was during a final check of our situation as we boarded the Lagos-bound vehicle that the error was discovered. After a long and despairing search, it was eventually located.
I had another experience that started as an excitement but which ended in agony for me. It was all due to my naivety. Our vehicle was full to the brim, although there was a little room at the entrance or tailboard of the vehicle for those who didn't mind standing. In spite of the congestion, I had the offer to sit on my brother's lap but I rejected it, preferring to stand up at the door so I could have a tourist view of our passage. I was advised against the choice because the journey was too far to do that. I demurred out of excitement and curiosity to see everywhere as we went. Unknown to me, the Molue was noisier than its speed. Although I was able to see so many places that I cannot now remember, after one hour I was full of aches and pains in my legs. It was so painful that my spine was strained but I was too ashamed to let my brother know the agony I was going through. It was indeed a terrible experience as my legs finally collapsed under me. As I toppled dangerously, those around me quickly came to my aid. I was then squeezed inside the vehicle where I was offered another but relieving opportunity to sit on a gentleman's lap.
After traveling seemingly without end, we arrived at Ijebu Ode, then at Shagamu and finally at Ikorodu township. It was at Ikorodu that I started hearing the vibrating noises of aeroplanes. I peeped through the window and sighted some of them that seemed to be sitting on top of us, as they were too low for comfort. I feared they might fall off but, to my surprise, none did. What I hadn't known then was that Ikorodu was the direct tail-end of their descent route to land in the Ikeja Lagos airport runway!
As from Ikorodu, I saw massive construction works in progress, being done by gigantic caterpillars and bulldozers. The snaking and frequent traffic jams along the way, the high-rise buildings, the overhead bridges, the extremely wide roads though crowded and so many other things that a village boy like me had never seen, fixated my deep interest. The Lagos State Marcopolo Mass Transit buses were streaming up and down, so were taxies, other big lorries, and molues. I was excited to see them all, happy that I was finally in Lagos. The date was January 3, 1973. As soon as we disembarked at the suburb of Ketu, we joined another bus heading towards the megabit bus junction of Oshodi! Then we arrived at No 5, Salawu Street, Oshodi which, was my first place of sojourn in Lagos.
Lagos is Unfriendly
The euphoria of being in Lagos was short-lived and marred by two unpleasant denizens: the merciless heat and ubiquitous mosquitoes! I never thought anything would make me homesick in Lagos but, alas, mosquitoes did. I would be forced awake in the middle of the night, get hold of my usual weapon (a broom) and battle the noisy enemies with the broom in circling movements thinking that I could eliminate all of them to have a pleasant sleep. But I had no weapon to conquer the heat. Even though I could curtail or contain mosquitoes by using mosquito nets and insecticides, which were readily available in the markets, my brother and uncles never used them. It was surprising, how they slept soundly! Whenever they were going to bed, they would make jest of me thus, “Good night. Remember to kill all the mosquitoes before you go to bed so we can sleep well”.
After some time, I knew it was a losing battle and a waste of time. I learned to ignore and tolerate my tormentors and finally didn't see anything unusual about them.
I Missed Pounded Yam!
As I finished with one battle, another reared its ugly head. In my hometown, and indeed for an average person from Ekitland, pounded yam was and remains a favourite food consumed every day. But I was soon confronted with eating Eba, thrice weekly or so. I was scandalised. Although I could easily eat, rice, beans, bread and butter, beverages and so on which were luxuries back home, enjoyed only during festive occasions, I still longed for pounded yam. When there seemed to be no way out, I threatened to return home because I wondered how I could survive without eating pounded yam. But all were the unusual pangs and reactions to uncomfortable adjustments in novel environments!
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