I started primary school in Benin City, soon after the dusts of the civil war settled. My school was known then and called Benin Divisional Council Primary School 1. It was located within the present site of University of Benin, Ekehuan Campus, Ekehuan Road, Benin City, before the then Military Governor Osaigbovo Ogbemudia closed it and handed same over to the Federal Government owned University of Benin. My primary school experiences, was the start of an exhausting and exhilarative journey of profound street learning and cognitive development. Every school day, with my senior brothers , sisters, cousins and neighborhood kids in tow, we matched through physical and intellectual valleys and labyrinths.
We matched through koros and uncharted territories. I loved arriving early in school. How I loved to hurry my siblings to move faster, as we trudged to school. But we usually arrived with different motives. Mine, was simply to arrive very early and be the first person to pick the oblong mangoes that fell overnight and littered the famed Apian Way of BDC1! On my unlucky days, I hurled stones and sticks at the mangoes and cashews trees, that purred forth, the most alluringly refreshing frangrance, the scent of which is still stuck somewhere in my nose till date. Since then, that embedded scent , telepathically communicate effulgent and refulgent flowers of mango and cashew trees everywhere for me.
On many occasions, it’s usually the sounds of ringing bells, calling all present in school to assemble in front of our open “Assembly Hall” to begin the ritual of singing, that abated my battles with mango trees. At Assembly, songs like, “The Rivers of Africa are, The Rivers of Africa are, Nile, Niger, Benue, Congo, Orange, Limpopo, Zambezi!!!” were some of the many useful and useless things I learnt. However, I learnt about all the major rivers in Africa, without knowing a thing about Africa.
Wetin concern me with River Zambezi when Ovia River, Ikpoba River, Ogba River, Ogba Water Works, Bata River, and Eminikpo River dey to discover? Wetin concern me with Mango Park and his overzealous mission to Niger State? Well, this short story, isn’t really about my early school days, as it is more about the tragedy of one of my primary school classmates, who was bullied into abyss, making me shoulder at times and shocked at the disparities of learning opportunities and outcomes for many kids of my generation. This is the story of Frederick.
Frederick, a frail looking young lad, from one of those average Bini families, determined to avoid the cyclical poverty that assailed their uncolorful existence, resumed BDC 1, almost same time as me. He was a tall, mouthy, playful, noisy boy who lacked the physical strength of his loud mouth.
One day, he made the grievous mistake of fighting a seemingly demented young girl, after closing hours in school. The fight took place in a specially selected and secluded grassy area outside school, towards Owina Street, where young boys and girls settled scores. I can’t recollect the exact cause of disagreement that took the contestants and supporters to the grassy ring side corners, but I remember clearly what happened and the dangerous turn in the life of Frederick. The fight started, when one senior boy, acting as unlicensed referee, grabbed sands with both hands and asked Frederick and the girl to knock them off his hand. By Benin street tradition then; well, not really our tradition, but the convention of street violence, that defined Benin of that era, whenever sand is knocked off, the agreement to fight is immediately cast in granite, irrevocable like the laws of the Mades and Persians. The die was cast! The girl knocked down the sand and war began.
Swiftly, the stout and rotund girl seized Frederick by the collar of his khaki shirt and threw him down, inflicting a morbid coup de grace! The unwritten protocol of street violence, operating then in Benin City, which I am sure has changed a little, is that, losing a fight to a boy was viewed as an infraction, to be corrected with a rematch another day. But losing a fight to a girl was viewed as an ancestral defeat. More importantly, and dangerously, allowing a girl to feed you grass in defeat was a generational curse and an unforgivable failure of gene. Any boy who allowed and received such a humiliating grace to grass, was doomed. He suffered immediate expulsion and excommunication from age-groups. A break in relations with such weakling.
The following day, after the horrible fight, news of Frederick’s monumental beating spread like wide fire round the school. With no savior and crazy sister to avenge Frederick’s humiliation and restore a little of his pride, the fate of Fredrick was sealed. He was bullied away from class and from school. For weeks, Frederick’s friends immediately turned enemies. Fredrick’s sin was unforgiveable! A girl beat you and feed you with grass! Jesus! What a deadly combination. What an embarrassment.
In response, Frederick changed. Though, fully dressed for school, and left home, he never entered into the school compound. He hung around uncompleted buildings and stores, near and around the school, during school hours, and only reappeared after the close of school, to follow his disappointed senior brother home. The journey home was always silent and contemplative. A suicide walk.
Instructively, Frederick teachers, did not know about his travails and about his continuing absence from school. Similarly, his parents did not know anything about the fight and of Fredrick ‘s deceptive schooling. Gradually, Fredrick started wasting away. He could have been saved by his parents, by relocating him, to another school, to continue his education, but they did not seem to know better. With time, Fredrick and his battles faded from my view and thoughts. He faded even further away from school, from the teachers, headmasters, Chief Inspectors of Education, Commissioner of Education and the Government of Mid-Western Region.
Though I continued my truancy with mangoes and cashew trees, I learned to avoid fights with girls. As a defensive measure against invasive girls, determined to bring fights to me, and probably to serve me the Frederick’s treatment, I grew bushy hair! There i hid three inches long nails, about two at a time, for quick settlements of physical disagreements. One punch, from a closed entanglement, usually ended in a shrieking cry of defeat! I was determined not to suffer like Frederick! Ikpan oghagbi idiot.
Few years later, I ran into Frederick along Ekehuan Road, Benin City. He had joined a very unique and unusual profession as an apprentice catcher of mad people! Holding a little stick like a Fulani herdsman, he was quite a sight, assisting a professional medicant who scouted the city of Benin, for prowling mad people. These unfortunate people were organized into a mobile choir, belting out rubbish songs in return for money. They paraded the streets of Benin, dawn to dusk! Only God knows how many were raped or killed for rituals.
I was concerned and shocked at the benign turn of circumstances for Frederick, who seemed excited in his new job. With time, Frederick broke away from his master and formed his own gang. A large and formable team of violently aggressive men and women, some fettered with massive leg chains. I had this feeling then, that Frederick formed this group to spring a surprise attack on the girl that, beat him up years back in primary school. I was wrong.
Frederick was now a businessman, making money, from using these hapless and unfortunate crazy people to “draw” debts! A new debts collection agency, with Frederick as CEO. Few years later, i hired his services to get my N200 from a stubborn friend. It was the first and last time I tried ït. Frederick’s mobile choir introduced a novel tactics that wasn’t originally in the plan. They were to just surround the home of my recalcitrant debtor and wear his family members and tenants out, by singing “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the wall came tumbling down “. They were to shout this continually and intensely around the house for three hours, at the cost of N50.
However they bungled it, as it cost me about N300 thereafter, to hire a truck to pack off the tonnes of shit, Frederick’s choir deposited inside the compound within two hours, causing a major environmental crisis that united disinterested landlords against me and mum. Though I was paid my money almost immediately, the faeces attack, was a terrifying overkill, that scared even me the contractor. After paying Frederick his N50, I suffered a heavy cumulative loss, that could have been averted only if Frederick’s problems were discovered early and timely in Benin Divisional Council Primary School.
Jefferson Uwoghiren, Esq, a lawyer and former journalist, is a writer of very short stories and Managing Director, Trafex Limited, a perception management firm.
