NUMBER ZERO
NUMBER ZERO
I was probably the one they were bothered about the most
when it came to schooling. Five different primary schools all handpicked by my
parents’ joint decision with the help of professional parents, these were those
ready to give unsolicited advice. But it paid in the long run. So when I
decided to put “I didn’t really go to school” on the education segment of my
profile, I was strongly advised against it because it was thought that it would
be a lie. Technically, it is not really….Just that I did not wish to be
associated with any school. I had been schooled so well that I wished to loose
touch with secondary school mates. And alas, when I approached the final year
in college, I breathed the last bit of breath of the life of a student. I’m
done schooling I told myself.
I must confess, I pulled through school with sheer
intelligence not brilliance. Yea, I did. I still have flashes of those days
when father would come back from Lagos and mother would tell him holiday had started.
And that meant he needed to check our results for the term examination. And so
he would lie on the bed while we gathered round him, inspecting every part of
his body, his nails were my favourite. And the fragrance of father’s perfume…
mixed with his sweat… the sweat that made the money to pay our tuition.
He would start by checking the result of the first born till
the last, a toddler. I was the fourth of six children which meant I had to
always wait for my turn. Father never made bad remarks. They were always good results
and with lots of encouragement. So I did not know I was failing woefully. I
would come up with the 30th position in a class of 31 pupils and atimes
29th position. And when I decided to really ‘face my studies’ after
I could understand the comments on my results, I took the 31st
position in a class of 32. I guess a new pupil joined or the teachers decided
to be discreet about not making father feel he was wasting his hard earned
money.
Prior to this, I remember being a student in a school the
teachers never cared about drilling holes in pockets. We were served cream and
cookies for lunch. Yea, cookies. It was a deeply religious school built on a
hill literarily but not figuratively. Father did not care, as long as I got
schooled. And when there was no expected result, with unanimous decision, I was
enrolled into a school I will never forget.
It was a school built with planks and a little concrete. We
would come to school and would be given a slate each to write on plus a daily
‘ration’ of chalks. We ate the chalks we were expected to write with. We sang
Yoruba nursery rhymes while aunty would dish out some beatings to whoever did
not shout while reading Yoruba alphabets. Since we did not understand a thing, Alawiye
explained them to us. It did in the language we could understand…Yoruba. We
learnt mathematics by force through the help of our ‘counters’ which were dried
seeds from African Star fruits. We sang…
and drank durectly from the tap. We went on excursion too. We went to the
proprietress’ 1918 House to touch her dog’s nose. I can’t help but smile as I
recall the way we were told to line up as we all touched the dog’s nose one
after the other. And you must say in a very dramatic tone “How cold it is, the
nose of a dog!” just because the teacher instructed us to. That was the reason for the excursion, to see
how cold a dog’s nose could be. Our proprietress’ dog was the hero.
I remember the break
period. A time we always looked forward to. Why wouldn’t we? We would have perceived
the aroma of fried stew from Aunty Rebecca’s dingy kitchen. She was one of the
best cook I knew. Her foods provided relief to our very beaten young souls. A times
we heard the sizzling sound of fried stew. Sometimes, we saw her ran out from
the dingy kitchen when the very fried red oil caught fire and it often did. Yea, all in our school, it was the best school
I had ever been for it brought out the best in me in its own little way. It was
there I began to learn how to pull through school. I did. You should imagine my
relief as I finished my last project in college. You can’t imagine the pain of
being called “Olodo” (the custodian of number zero) all through nursery
school. I laugh now when I remember. There should be more Montessori!
Alawiye is a Yoruba textbook
Teju duru is a freelance journalist
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