The Millennial!

The famous River Benue. Wadata, Makurdi: the confluence for diversity. An equal Christian and Muslim community, a big daily open community market. Trust to find the biggest tilapia, bonga, native catfish, an avalanche of grains — millet, sorghum, beniseed (sesame), soybeans, groundnut. Some low budget Victorian style bungalows, and rusty zinc roofs. Yellow water making casual pass on the streets like it doesn't know it belongs to the sewer.

wakalogue

Not minding what I know you're thinking right now, the wealth from nature was present in this hood.

Just to the right is Ankpa Ward. Home.

Move farther right. Not on foot ooo! Like a bus of N30 then will take you to Mount Carmel College, Naka Road, where I had my secondary education. Head West and you'll be on your way to High Level, then its sub-area Low Level where I had my primary education at St. Theresa's Primary School. Continue further Westward to Wurukum, where my mother would make a dash at living on her own. There I would go to University Staff School kindergarten.

wakalogue

A Studious 3-Year-Old

One harmattan morning, my mother came out to not find me. I was trailing determinedly behind a set of technical school boys. But keeping my distance well enough.

Wouldn't they snitch on a 3yo? if they find the 3-year-old 'scholar' trailing behind them, instead of cooperating and taking her to that their school like the 'big girl' she was. I kept my distance whilst ensuring that wherever it is that they always pass the front of our apartment (sorry, open face-me-I-slap-you yard) to every morning, in their deep blue coveralls, was a place I wanted to be.

Busted!
Just when I would have crossed Benue State University main road, successfully fulfilling my schooling rendezvous, my mom losing her breath in search-running sighted me from afar, and screamed. God be praised tho!

This happened again. An again-one (a relative's toddler favourite word for "another one") was about to happen. And I had to be enrolled for school.

We straddled it. Kinder 1 — I can faintly remember that the school met some standard mark for kindergartens: fair classroom, average to rich kids, some packed ajebutter lunches, with my tea and bread that always spills (I don't know why), crayons and torn drawing sheets, nice nursery rhymes, and movie excursions by our movie house in the woods of the uni-area.

My kinder 3 experience was sad. I was being kept out of class. I do still remember the foul smell of urine by the class wall sides where they kept us. And I do wonder till 'morrow: did they really have to keep toddlers and post-toddlers by urinaries as a warning trigger to their parents to pay up school fees?

AI image of me trailing behind the technical school boys

First Decade — Nwa Mama!

"Tell me which school is it you want to go?"

I said Mount Carmel College.

Audacious. She wasn't supposed to ask me that. I was just supposed to go to either Government Girls near Holy Ghost Church, or NKST Demekpe. These are government schools that cost almost next to nothing; school fees on vibe, lessons on worse.

She was zealous about my education, same way she was about worship. My favourite memories: me trailing behind while she's walking energetically. We're going to check out NKST Demekpe whether what made me rejected it had changed. We're going to check Padopas where my mom dropped from. I didn't want any of them. Next, we're going to check again at Mount Carmel, where I was delayed an offer. That Mrs. Enyinnaya, our Agriculture teacher noted her dearly and began calling me Nwa Mama!

Then I successfully secured the admission to Mount Carmel College, and my grandmother sourced my school fees, and ensured I got every item and books listed on the prospectus to the T.

Didn't I make her proud! From taking 12th position in first term JSS 1, to 1st position in third term JSS 2, and riding same first position through to SS2. Same as I had in primary school. Then receiving awards as Best in Class. And graduating class awards as Best in Chemistry and Food & Nutrition subjects.

Best student in academics for the year award

Shoes and powder as prizes for hard subjects like Chemistry and Food & Nutrition? Lol! Educational motivation sha!

The Mix That Built Me

Unlike her daughter, who is dyslexic and impatient for intellectual discourse, my grandma is highly literate, an intellectual stimulant, a former teacher who taught at St. Mary's North Bank, an NCE graduate of ABU Zaria. Having a daughter who was unlike her, she must have lived for the moment where God blessed her with an intelligent grandchild.

Mma would pull same stunts when I secured admission to university.

November 2017. She's calling Chukwuzetere, the unpopulous name she christened me .... translated 'God sent'. And she usually calls it in full, not shortened the way I do in my papers, Chizetere.

Kedu ka imere she asked
Mma odinma I responded
Unu oka na ede exam? Iyeoo nwam, guwa akwukwo gi ka igucha ooo, o ga dirigi na mma o
Mma, anam abata very soon I replied

She was unable to wait.

She died. December 12th.

My mother supplied excess neuro-attentive love and Western-style no-hitting upbringing. My grandmother supplied more parental hardiness, sassiness, intellectual panache, and religious piety.

My formative years; a devoted Catholic: Mass on Sundays, Benediction on evenings, choir on weekends, books every other time. By age 6, I was already an avid reader and began writing. My first decade under my grandmother's watch saw me read the most amount of books I would ever read to date. One of such is She Who Must be Obeyed; quite a terrific empress She was tho.

Hope! Ambition! Problem-solving. That 8-year-old who would be planning how our N100 was going to be utilised and spent.

By age 10, instead of giving credence to strife. I lend hope to others. What could be done to make this world better?

Me and grandma Anna