Sometimes, it is the sweet taste of milk, the sight of someone thinning the soup with water may evoke it, this time it’s the thought of fish, big, roasted, and peppered fish. Barely a decade old at that time, I remember how what making money was for me; Not exactly the smartest boy in the class at the time, but also not below the first three best students in the class. I would help my classmates solve arithmetic problems we were given in class in exchange for five naira; it was much then. My mum was and is still a school teacher, So of course, I get to learn at a faster pace than the others, she was and is still a very dedicated woman, to her deen, her children, spouse, and whatever matters to her.
The proceedings of my problem-solving business go about three ways; first, to the purchase of fish or pomo; one that is dried, fried, sized, and then soaked in an abyss of well-salted and seasoned pepper, one for me and one for the then LOML Fatimah Sobaloju, the pepper in the fish will be needing a source of comfort, of course, something to quench the fire the pepper(Yes o, Na Yoruba woman dey make am) always starts, hence the need for Fura da Nunu or Zobo. The second goes to my savings for the future purchase of books, the Tinubu Square gave me an adequate supply for my cash worth. The third, well the third fueled my curiosity; my need to know how electronics worked, the Ibo man who had a store at Tokunbo Street got all of my money in a fair exchange with his wires, tiny bulbs, and batteries; sometimes rotors from broken tape players. Sometimes, Business is bad. But I don’t mind.
A fascination for nourishment, of the soul and the body. A constant need to serve curiosity ( I guess it is why I like cats…lol) and to speak so fluently about things I had read amidst peers who stood bewildered and impressed adults, and sometimes there is that friend who feels the need to call us all out on our ‘too good to be true story”, in my case, God bless the soul of that friend who comes armed with poor diction and an unorganized fact-sheet. I was a bully, I bullied friends with knowledge. My parents aided me, Mother stocked the house with books and Father gave me the knowledge of what’s outside it.
All of our worries at some point in our lives were to perform well at school, look good to our friends and family and just be a good boy generally, but then we learned to want more, we couldn’t fight it. We had to want more. It’s in our nature, Humans! Childhood is the only time several people get to do things they really care about, and if you were lucky with parents, and what you loved at the time were available, then childhood was blissful. You hardly get to know how average your family was, it’s of no real concern to you whether Father got paid, you just had needs, we just wanted things and we’d sometimes whine and cry when we don’t get these things.
Then we grow up, we become free and get to know Pain; in its true form, Pure Pain.
