Posted: Dec 30, 2009, 4:14 am Remember Old Chambers of Commerce (our 1st, dear old and beginning site? Remember Mr. Allen, the pioneer Principal? remember...remember. Let's tell the young ones how it all started... from the beginning; the joyous journey. How great!
Posted: Dec 22, 2009, 9:57 am It was thirty six years ago as I strode down the graveled road to the dormitory in an enclosure that used to be called Chambers of Mines and Commerce in the defunct Benue-Plateau State. I was halted on the way by a 'Senior'. My first out-of-my-village lesson commenced that day with Rabiu Akawu asking me in a very stern and dignified manner my name and where I hailed from. I answered in a mouse-like manner; scared and puzzled. Nobody, besides my father had ever talked to me the way he did. I didn't know at that time, but it was to define some of my hardest times in College...... to be continued
Posted: Dec 24, 2009, 6:04 am FLASHBACK: Episode II
The Federal Government College, Jos (FGCJ), was first located at its temporary site equidistant measuring from the fringes of Jos Metropolis and Bukuru. It was a serene environment surrounded only by friendly villages. The largest of them was Dadin Kowa; inhabited by just a few hundred people then, may be just 1/50th of what it is now. But, the excitement was to be found behind the fence to the east of the enclosed college. There flowed a mild all-year round stream. Across it is a towering mountain that made climbing a delightful experience. Before my friends and I expanded our adventurous expeditions, we made the climbing to the top of this hill a weekly affair. We would rest there and play a little; sometimes we would take some snacks, whenever we could afford to. The surrounding farms were mostly of sweet potatoes. We would plough a bunch or two of these plants each week. Actually, we never believed we were doing any harm since they just laid there and we only took a little of the potatoes.
We got to learn otherwise one particular Sunday when about five hefty men laid siege on us. We ran but they caught us. Remember I said these villagers were friendly, Yes! they truly were. With all the fury and war-like chase they gave us, all we got was a friendly warning. They even advised us to simply request for what we needed rather than uprooting the sweet roots at will.
After uprooting the roots, we would munch on them until we got to the mango trees, growing about 1 km away across a long rail bridge. Oh boy....
Posted: Dec 24, 2009, 1:05 pm Remember how we had to dig for water in the harmattan season. We would dig the holes the evening before and then in the morning, we'll go and scoop up the water.
Boy was it cold!
Posted: Dec 30, 2009, 4:14 am FLASHBACK: Episode III
Jos was one of the most wonderful places on earth (until the various skirmishes that turned it into a fearsome region). Even the wonderful weather has changed; due to global warming no doubt. Coming, from the North, the weather then tormented me. It was like being suddenly thrown up the polar region. We acclimatized after a while and we became so fond of it that we would brag about it back home. We would mention the "steam" that came out of our mouth as we breathed in the early morning hours each day of the cold period. You either bathed with cold water or waited to heat yours in a drum being a heated by coal. It would take an hour or two, and the water would come out all reddish from the rusty drum. Did we have pipe-borne water? No. Just tanks, tankers and drums. But who cared. We numbered less than 400. Lots of space and playgrounds and books to read.
The setting in the school as regards its mixed status was something else. It could as well have been a Monastery. We were trained to respect the girls who conducted themselves with all the coyness you would expect of girls brought up under disciplined parenthood. Of course their were some affairs, but they were more of a distant admiration of the girls than physical. Intense amorous affairs were unheard of.
Posted: Jan 5, 2010, 7:10 am FLASHBACK: Episode IV
Imagine having a basketball court right adjacent to the door of your house or a punchbag inside the living room. You are sporty: a basketball player and a boxer. Imagine a ball strategically placed by your door. You would most certainly take that shot whenever you passed along. And a punch you would certainly give to the bag.
As the punchbag was to the boxer so did my cheeks got regarded by Atile Lan. At every turn, time and occasion, night or day, whenever my path crossed with that of Atile's, I would receive a resounding slap. Were I to pass by a dormitory and then hear my name shouted SSSSAAAAANI! I knew immediately the duty expected of me. Like a "fox" with its tail toked to its tommy, I would rush inside the dorm, present myself in a most attractive position for the inevitable slap.
Now, seniority and enforcement of discipline and respect go hand in hand in almost all secondary schools. I know I must have acted in a manner similar to the one described above (but not as aggressively and habitually) at one time or another. So, the issue here is simply one of musing and sober reflections of the past. I am sure that were I to meet face to face with Mr Lan today nothing would stop us from embracing and laughing nostalgically at those days and moments. I said this with certainty, because there was Maiwada Audu, whom I invited to my house some years back. We sat down and reflected on our past with great wonder and amusement.
You see, Maiwada and I had more in common than divided us, but.......
Posted: Jan 11, 2010, 6:27 am
FLASHBACK: EPISODE V
At 50, trying to recollect events of 36 years past would prove illusive, unless they are your Secondary School days. It never ceases to amaze me how, when I sit before my computer, events of the college days appear to me as if I were watching them on a life-size plasma television screen.
One such incident was my first visit to the permanent site. We were highly elated that day in 1977 (or, was it early '78? an OLD boy, indeed) when we boarded a bus to the permanent site to see the progress of work there. You see... we had always nursed the hoped of relocating there before we passed out of the College...a dream that never materialised. Well, as soon as we disembarked, my attraction was the mango trees in the bushes, not the disappointing empty site that assaulted our sight. There was just a single uncompleted upstairs building on the entire grounds erected at the base of a mountain slope.
I was always quick at sighting a fruit. I saw a lone mango dangling on this tree and rushed to pluck it. I climbed and reached for it, but unknown to me, there was a wasp clinging to the same fruit on the other side. As I pulled on it the wasp protested and came charging at me. By and by, the sting I got that day was the most indelible mark of all my escapades. Its so indellible that it is sitting centrally at the tip of my nose. Should you meet me, look straight at the tip of my nose and the first thing that would probably attract you is the mole-like black mark that has taken permanent resident at the tip of my nose; the price of one mango I have to live with for the rest of my life.
I was a sucker for mangoes. I even wrestled a snake once. YES I DID. Did I not tell you of the distance I would trek to reach the mango trees about 2 km away? Oh, I didn't? You see, first, there was the fence to crawl under, the stream to cross, the canyons to meander through, the dungeons of the iron-ore excavations to manoeuvre, the 50-foot drop rail-line bridge to cross tight-rope style). Then you reach the densely populated plantation of the mango trees. My encounter with the snake almost cost me my life. I reached for this sumptuous-looking mango just as the snake was about to take a bite at it. Fatefully, the snake swirled round and ran off, for me, it was simply a jump through the branches onto a mud wall that broke my fall, then landing on my back. The story would have been different had I landed on my neck without the wall to break my descend......
Posted: Jan 11, 2010, 6:27 am
FLASHBACK: EPISODE V
At 50, trying to recollect events of 36 years past would prove illusive, unless they are your Secondary School days. It never ceases to amaze me how, when I sit before my computer, events of the college days appear to me as if I were watching them on a life-size plasma television screen.
One such incident was my first visit to the permanent site. We were highly elated that day in 1977 (or, was it early '78? an OLD boy, indeed) when we boarded a bus to the permanent site to see the progress of work there. You see... we had always nursed the hoped of relocating there before we passed out of the College...a dream that never materialised. Well, as soon as we disembarked, my attraction was the mango trees in the bushes, not the disappointing empty site that assaulted our sight. There was just a single uncompleted upstairs building on the entire grounds erected at the base of a mountain slope.
I was always quick at sighting a fruit. I saw a lone mango dangling on this tree and rushed to pluck it. I climbed and reached for it, but unknown to me, there was a wasp clinging to the same fruit on the other side. As I pulled on it the wasp protested and came charging at me. By and by, the sting I got that day was the most indelible mark of all my escapades. Its so indellible that it is sitting centrally at the tip of my nose. Should you meet me, look straight at the tip of my nose and the first thing that would probably attract you is the mole-like black mark that has taken permanent resident at the tip of my nose; the price of one mango I have to live with for the rest of my life.
I was a sucker for mangoes. I even wrestled a snake once. YES I DID. Did I not tell you of the distance I would trek to reach the mango trees about 2 km away? Oh, I didn't? You see, first, there was the fence to crawl under, the stream to cross, the canyons to meander through, the dungeons of the iron-ore excavations to manoeuvre, the 50-foot drop rail-line bridge to cross tight-rope style). Then you reach the densely populated plantation of the mango trees. My encounter with the snake almost cost me my life. I reached for this sumptuous-looking mango just as the snake was about to take a bite at it. Fatefully, the snake swirled round and ran off, for me, it was simply a jump through the branches onto a mud wall that broke my fall, then landing on my back. The story would have been different had I landed on my neck without the wall to break my descend......
Posted: Jan 26, 2010, 11:37 am (Will like to beg your pardon for the lull in blogging. There was a new arrival into my household...a baby boy. I have been busy looking into the future through the eyes of my kid. I, therefore, left the past to lie quite for a moment).
FLASHBACK ViI:
Education really took a tumble in Nigeria and, unfortunately, the academic horizon still doesn’t appear good. It wasn’t so in the 70’s. The FGCJ fielded the best teachers in the nation. At a particular time we had over 35 teachers to a student population of a little over 200 (not the 400 I wrote earlier. I Just checked my ID Card signed by Mr. A. R. Allen; I was number 95 of set two! I wish I could have an intervention here from any ol’ boy/gal for the exact number). As you could see, the teacher/pupil ratio was a very high and impressive one (....I wonder what it is now..?). These finely and morally upright persons were between the ages of 30 to 45, except the principal and Mr. Monoume, whose ages then were within the 50-60 bracket. All were Right Honourable Gentlemen and Ladies, but for one. I wouldn’t name names here. There was this vicious History teacher who took great pleasure in hitting his pupils with his knuckles right at the centre of their heads. If you so much as coughed in his class, he would misconstrue that as mockery and summon you to the front of the class. He would ask you to bend low to his height (he was a very very short saddistic man). Like an archer, he would strecth back his arm with a clenched fist. When fully drawn back, mustering all the strength he could, he would let go the clenched fist, knuckles forward onto the head of the unfortunate pupil. No 16 year-old kid deserved such viciousness. The day I got my knock I resolved to leave the school for good. I brooded for the entire day and night, but somehow fate made me persevere. I struggled and defeated pure evil. If you had been following these memoirs, you would notice that with all the frequent Atile slaps that I narrated, I never called him evil. There was something odd about what attracted Atile to me. There was nothing sadistic about those slaps. He just needed to slap me and I wasn’t too concern as to have reported him.
That History teacher was the exception to an otherwise perfect union between teachers and pupils. Take for instance Mr. Adewale. He would give you 101/100 in Maths if you did wonderfully well. Our boy genuis, Maikanti Baru, always got the 101, so did Wilfred and a host of others. (Stop being curious about my scores, I won’t tell). If you are one of the lucky few to have been tutored by Mr. Adewale, you probably would be living today as an Engineer (like Dr. Maikanti Baru), a Chemist, a Geologist (like Christian Ukoko) an Accountant (like Frances Ofodile) or some Science somebody. He was that good. A disciplined and morally upright gentleman who still imbibes these qualities and continues to positively impact on the lives of both staff and students as Professor of Mathematics in the University of Abuja.
...............Its GOOD to be GOOD..... truth lives on, never gets intered with the bones of the dead, just as the evil that men and women do will continue to live after them.......................
Posted: Feb 12, 2010, 6:23 am I wish to pause and reflect on my story and to try and bring out the moral in it for the benefit of our sons and daughters in school.
a. Taking the last and the first episodes together we can extract a life-supporting lesson that, what does not kill you will only make you stronger. You will be tossed around in life by known and unknown forces, but you MUST learn to persevere in order to live on. Don't let bullies pull you down, because they exist even more outside the cozy fence of the school and, more often than not, they are stronger than you. Some in physical strength and others in intelligence. The friends you are have now are normally the long lasting and true ones. Hold onto them, respect and adore them, emulate their good behaviour but screen off the negative ones.
b. Be an adventurous person not an injurious one, though. You needn't have an encounter with snakes or dangerous insects, just make yourself busy with something useful outside the school curriculum. Sports are good and mountain-climbing is very empowering. Don't be rebellious.
Posted: May 18, 2010, 2:44 am Thank you very much Sani for sharing your memories and experiences in such a wonderful manner, and congratulations on the young man who joined your family in January. God bless and keep him.
