Various events in my Life
Ten years after I left home I was on my way back, on holidays. I do not quite remember whether I came by train or by road but it was more likely by train since my father worked as a railway carpenter. What I remember vividly was that the last …
His real name was V. C. Brown but students had nicknamed him V. C. Bobus. He was a blond, tall and fat bachelor usually dressed in white short-sleeve shirt on khaki shorts. He taught us Latin and was generally disliked by the students. I simply did not like Latin and …
I was just under fifteen when I resumed in St Paul’s Secondary School, Zaria, in January 1954. There was a class ahead of us of less than twenty five pupils. In our class we were less than thirty. The Principal was a CMS missionary called Reverend Freeman who promptly issued …
I arrived in Zaria during the harmattan season and at first lived with my father in Mala Mala. It was dusty and cold and each year, since I had no shoes and walked barefooted, the soles of my feet were so dry and the skin split during that terrible season. …
I had a job to do in Kaduna and I was determined to do it and catch the afternoon flight back to Lagos. I arrived at the airport early to escape the struggle for a boarding pass having learnt my lesson when, years ago, my wad of five hundred naira …
I was just a few months old in London. I had spent the first two days in a University of London Hostel in Holborn and from there moved to the Catholic International Students’ Hostel in Manor House. Finsbury Park was on the other side of Seven Sisters’ Road and provided …
`If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.’ I literally obeyed that Matthew 10 verse 14 Bible injunction and dumped my winter coat, gloves and long pants in the dust bin and happily left London …
During my first year as a student in London, precisely in December 1963, I had been invited by a pen friend, Bessie, to spend the Christmas with her, her husband, mother, and daughter in their farm in Coventry. I found my hostess and her husband very good and friendly and …
`Oga, what is the colour of your money?’ That was the question a puny little policeman in the usual black uniform and oversized boots asked me at the airport. It was a question I cannot forget. No, it was not the usual policeman’s attempt to extort money from me. It …
I have had close calls with death over the years. May be you have too. They say the line between life and death is very thin. Life can be snuffed out by sometimes very laughable situations. I once knew a man who died drinking a bottle of coca cola. He …
