“There’s Rice at home, Chubi.”
It wasn’t until I grew older that I understood that those words meant, “we are poor, Chubi”.
Growing up in suburban Nigeria was quite an adventure. It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing setting, but it was quite fun. I enjoyed the thrills of being led by older friends to play Police and Thief, Boju-Boju, Street football and other very exciting, yet dangerous games (I have the scars to prove it). My mother disliked the way I played. She probably wondered how a child with a terrible pain threshold was always getting injured. I was even famous in the community clinic. My mother soon restricted me from playing outside. She got me a lot of cartoons to help polish my spoken English while I was imprisoned.
Like every suburban child, I attended an overpopulated school. I think we had primary one A-F or was it G? My memory fails me. The point is, we were a lot. Being a chubby, big belly buttoned kid didn’t make school fun. I was bullied, my grades were on the floor, and I had to submit my beloved lunch to this girl every day (she packed the meanest punch). It wasn’t until a teacher ‘broke’ my head that my mother concluded that she had seen enough. She packed her very little civil servant salary and enrolled me in a good private school. I should add that going to a new private school cost me friends in my area. Their parents didn’t want them associating with a family that was pretending to be rich. I didn’t care to be honest.
Riding on the bus every morning to my new school was more exciting than the years I had spent in the former. I had loving teachers, my classmates were the funniest and the most accommodating children I had ever seen. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with everything and everybody in the new school. As time passed, I realised even more how poor we really were. The school bus would drive other children to their boujee houses before journeying to mine. I was the first to be picked up, and last to be dropped off every day. I started loathing when the bell rang for school closure because I was going to that “dirty place” again.
The class disparity became very obvious when my friends brought holiday pictures from Europe, or whatever country they felt like visiting that summer. All I had were stories of masquerades I saw and was chased by in Kogi state. To be fair, my stories sounded more impressive.
I was never an ungrateful child. I was just one with insatiable curiosity. The type of curiosity parents did not like. “Why don’t we have a car, dad?”, “Why are there 6 of us in a one-bedroom apartment, mum?” “When will we travel abroad too? In hindsight, I was a lot to handle as a child. I’m grateful my parents were up to the task.
Over time, I understood our situation better and acknowledged the sacrifices made for me. We eventually moved up the class ladder, and I was happy to verify that the rice at home did taste better.
