MUSINGS OF A FRESHER

I am sitting here right now looking outside the window of this scraggly old danfo. The journey has been bumpy from the start. As if to remind me, the driver hurriedly dribbles in and out one of the many potholes ahead of us, causing I and the other passengers to bob up and down like beach balls. A few of the older women in the bus protest angrily at the driver in the native Yoruba dialect. The unruly dark-skinned driver says something in reply, his accent having the usual drawl that accompanied danfo drivers. The potholes are only the first problem I have with this bus.

The second is the loud voices of those fuji singers, happily engaging themselves in putting my nerves on edge. I cannot speak the local Yoruba dialect very well so I just keep quiet, offering a silent prayer to God that one of those women who tie currency notes between their wrappers would say something mean to the unheeding danfo driver.

The older women are my saviours as well as my nemesis. I am seated in between two of them- two fat old women. Unfortunately for me, the two of them try to engage various conversations in the Yoruba dialect, acting like I am not there seated between them. They speak over my head, stretching out their hands in wild gesticulations. It is so bad I have to keep dodging their hands. I say a prayer again, Lord please put these women to sleep.

These old women have babies- dirty babies who keep slapping my face with hands soiled with akara (bean cake) oil that their mother generously feeds them. These children are also always hungry, grabbing at anything their mothers buy, yet refusing to eat them and flinging them all over my shirt. Before I left home, my mother had candidly instructed me not to do anything to get me in trouble and as a young growing lad, I had always learnt to respect my elders. So I do not say a word. Soon, one of the women stretches her baby on my lap to change his diapers. I want to throw up at the moment, but I know I just can’t afford it. I say a prayer that God should never make me a JAMBITE again.

I decide to set my mind on the essence of my journey as we progress rather than the journey itself. I am a fresher who has just gained admission into OAU to study Engineering- Chemical engineering. It is indeed a pity because I don’t want to study the course. I actually want to study Chemistry education. I have a passion for teaching and impacting lives. That is why when I first filled my JAMB form, I filled in Chemistry education. That day my mother screamed when she saw it like she had been bitten by a snake. Her words were:

‘God will punish you for choosing that course. Intelligent as you are, you want to go and teach, enh?’

I am sixteen and I was taken aback by the outburst. In my naïve state, I responded

‘But ma is it not a teacher that taught me in my secondary school and that will still teach me in university?’

‘Kenneth, ge nti, if I hear you mention anything about teaching in this house again, you will end your education at secondary school, so you can go and become head master.’ My mother has always been good at keeping her promises, especially the bad ones. Once, when I was seven, I had gone to a friend’s place to eat rice at a party after my mother had warned me severally never to go, saying if I went for that party, she would flog me as many strokes of cane as the seeds of rice I would eat. I took it for a joke. She kept her word and for a week I couldn’t go to school. My mother loves me, but she never jokes with her instructions.

I never spoke about becoming a teacher again.

So here I am, on my way to my dream school to study something I have no passion for. I say a silent prayer that somehow, I would find solace in the course.

The next five years of my life lies ahead of me, unsure. My future is as bleak as ever. I am about to start a whole new life with new people, study with people I have never met before, and read a course I have never liked.

My father has mandated me to come out with a first class. He specifically told me to do nothing but ‘go to classes’ and ‘go to the library’. He told me ‘Make sure Hezekiah Oluwasanmi becomes your Father on campus’ Till now, I don’t know what he meant but I am sure it meant nothing less than a first class.

I am going to school now as an undergraduate, something many would kill to have, but I am not excited. I am distressed. I am pained.

My head bounces against the top of the roof of the bus and draws me back to the reality of the pains that were presently facing me. The two women are asleep- and they are snoring. I say a silent prayer to God- Please let them wake up