Family Woes

A good week to everyone! My week’s been dotted with a few health challenges. I don’t know what I ate the day before yesterday but I do know that I spent the whole day seated on the throne getting rid of most of my problems. The good thing is, I feel considerably lighter which makes my task of battling this advancing bulge not as much a mirage as it was last week. My mum called yesterday and asked how I was and I made the mistake of telling her how I was, and then slipped further into the mud by telling her I ate outside; the very thing we were banned from doing as kids. “Kalu, how many times have I warned you against eating out?!! You look at the food at it looks and tastes so nice but have you been to the place they cook? Even on food channels here, you hardly see them washing their hands before going from one segment to the other. They wipe dishes clean with tablecloth that’s already laden with germs how much more there in Nigeria where there are no enforced food processing laws!” “Mum,” I started. “Let me finish! You know how to cook don’t you? Even if you’ve forgotten how, settle down with someone who loves you and will look after you and leave those useless girls alone. Look at my teacups and chinaware, all in their perfect places. When will I have little ones
to break them for me?!” Can you imagine that?! I know how many times my bottom was warmed or when my ears sang for marking walls with crayons and charcoal and for smashing the very wares I’m now being encouraged to smash via my offspring blowing hot and cold with the same breath!. It’s okay though; I have long since learnt that life isn’t fair.

The last came last night from my brother Obasi. After reading my previous post, School Ghost, the cheeky blighter not only had the nerve to demand a refund of his school fees that I had ‘appropriated’ during my truancy days in secondary school, but also put his comments on the same post for all to see! The very pettiness of it! If I were to begin to recount the number of times he has taken my stuff and run off to school – we were in different schools at the time – and demand payment, with interest, I’d be a much richer man today. Like the time when he took my, my… I can’t remember but you and I know, Obasi, that if you think very properly you will know that what I’m talking ab… Hey! It just occurred to me that I don’t remember any of the wrongs that were done to me by my siblings in the past! That’s means I’m a very forgiving man, and if a forgiving man, then a good man. If a good man, then a heaven bound man! Yaay! But hey, you’re still a wonderful brother and I love you. E never finish o!

A very dear happily married friend of mine, just because I told her I am the black sheep of my family proceeded to inquire after my unmarried brothers for her very chaste friend! Ah, the dividends of see finish ! The prophet is never appreciated by his loved ones; only by outsiders. But, I am a forgiving man. I will shrug it off and plod on towards my destination. I bestow the hand of benevolence on all; my dear mother who failed to recognize that in the entire six years of my stay here I have not had food poisoning, and this one little incident that I ventured to intimate her with, has brought a roomful of bricks crashing down on me, my dearly beloved brother who cannot let bygones be bygones and my darling friend who has serious issues with colour! “Nearer to Thee O Lord (are these the correct words to the hymn?), nearer to Thee!”

Okay, I’m done with my tirade. Have a great week everyone!

School Ghost

Good week everyone! For some reason I am on a high this morning and I don’t know what it is I am so excited about, which is nothing. Maybe the reason I have so much adrenalin pumping through me is because I am biting my nails in trepidation regarding what I have to do today. Today I go to enrol in a three day course in a field that was responsible for my chronic truancy during my secondary school days – science. Ah, those were the days, the most horrible days of my entire life, and I refused to bow to the enemy – Physics, Chemistry and boarding school! Escape route? Truancy! Man, I was such a pro I had a radar in my head that went off anytime a potential threat – any adult with a questioning look in his or her mind as to why I was not where I was supposed to be, or why I was where I was not supposed to be – lurked behind me. I was so good at truancy that I was nicknamed The School Ghost. I remember my greatest feat; circumventing classes for a full year, and paying the price – I repeated the class. The good thing about my truancy, when I wasn’t roaming the length and breath of the country armed with my school fees and that of my younger brother’s, was that most of it was spent in the library, public or school. I loved to lose myself in the literatures and histories of different countries and times and sometimes hid among the shelves when the library was being locked up for the day only to creep out, switch on a discreet light bulb and continue my devouring of the delicious volumes of fact and fantasy. I learned back then that there is always a heaven in every hell on this side of the world. Now science, my past, has come back to haunt me – and I am ready.

I think I gained my confidence in tackling this monster when I prepared and sat for my GRE exams some years ago. I bought a preparatory book on geometry and algebra, and I think trigonometry, squeezed my eyes shut, prayed and opened it. It was amazing! I was led through a step by step ‘how to do it’ on all the mathematical problems and most importantly why and where it was all going! Suddenly I could see what all this was for. I saw myself, in my mind’s eye, writing calculations that would make the internet go faster, or designing the very perfectly symmetrical cars I loved so much. In short, the reason for poring over the complex figures became increasingly realistic and not abstract like my stupid and visionless teachers in secondary school made me believe.

I think we should be very careful with the way we guide our young ones as we guide them on the arduous path to becoming adults. Education means nothing if it is not going to be applied to some aspect of life in my opinion. Anyway I have a date with science tomorrow at seven and they’d better show me a road map of where what I’ll be learning for the next few days is going or I will take someone’s head off. Early morning tomorrow so early night tonight. Have a great week everyone and do please spare a thought for me. Tara!