Growing-Up

Gross post alert The one thing being suddenly pushed out of my sheltered teenage years into shared hostel accommodation (in a very rugged Nigerian University) taught me, was that squeaky clean loos were a luxury. Growing up, we didn’t live a posh life, but thanks to theOOhj Snr’s day job in the academia, we had decent living quarters - complete with a loo I shared with the kid brother. On pain of a severe caning, Mrs RustGeek (Snr), ensured we kept our little loo clean. Unbeknownst to me, that luxury would be rudely snatched away from me in short order. ...

One of my lesser known ’life skills’ is eating piping hot dodo - and that fresh from the frying pan. Looking back, this non-trivial skill was honed in the kitchen of #19 Aiguobasinmwin Crescent. It must have been sometime in 1986 - those were the heady days in which Lawrence Anini our very own Robin Hood-lite and his side kick Monday Osunbor reigned supreme in Benin City. Sane, un-jazzed-up people stayed indoors, the not so sane limited their night-time frolicking nonetheless. ...

I miss the old days. Growing up on a University campus in Nigeria, books were my salvation and the BBC World Service was the information source. We didn’t have decent television (it was an archaic black and white National television set with aerials that never worked), didn’t have the internet, was the weird kid on the block, and generally stuck out like a sore thumb. I got my nose in books, the bulk of which were boring, ponderous, academic reads. ...

Growing up in my own neck of the woods was an experience. We nicknamed our Pops the Ogbodons - not sure where the term originated from any more but my back side was a living testimony to his varied abilities and multiplied skills in inflicting pain. Mum didn’t help matters as she was was as resolute in hammering our ’evil’ proclivities out of our systems. I got the opportunity to contrast that parenting style a few weekends back when I went visiting some distant family members in London. Clearly their less than 3 year old daughter has more leeway with him than I do with my own parents at my (huge) age. ...

It seems only like yesterday that I stood in your shoes, on the verge of turning twenty-one. My mind was a maelstrom of feelings; not all of which I could understand. On the one hand was nostalgia for all the memories of growing up and on the other trepidation. I had just left the University and I was going to miss the ‘mountain top experiences’ - the uninhibited exuberance of worshiping together on a Sunday afternoon, the wonderful friendships that had been developed over the tenure of my stay, the nights spent in raucous laughter as we talked about everything under the sun - everything. I felt some trepidation, a nagging concern at the monstrous changes that I was on the verge of undergoing. Lots of issues swirled around my mind – what final grade would I make? Where would I be deployed to serve the nation? Would I get a job? Was a Masters’ Degree the ultimate coup de grace I needed to launch myself into my chosen career? Had I learned all I needed to succeed in life? I had plans, that had me doing things I had only seen in my dreams. ...