I was born without a silver spoon, and things hardly worked for my good. For what yielded the littlest rewards I always had to work a million times harder. Whatever spoon I was born with began to further rust when, at fifteen, I lost everyone. By everyone I mean the kind soul who allowed me to live right within her, sharing her meals, her every breath; her every essence with me without ever, for once, uttering a word of complaint. I never knew her partner – the one who had contributed to my birth. All I saw were walls that images of his laughter.
In our small village in Adang Itam, in Itu LGA, Akwa Ibom state, life had been peaceful because of my mother’s covering. My mother would wake up by midnight to hunt down the mosquitoes threatening my peaceful sleep. She'd sit and watch my every movement with love in her eyes and sacrifice in her veins. She would wake up early every morning to ensure that the growling beast tucked under my shirt was kept at bay for the day. Naturally, my life lost all meaning and colourwhen she died. Many years after, I would realize that those dark nights, those cold mornings, those colorless skies, and the endless rainy clouds were glimpses of life beginning to reveal itself to me.
Upon my mother’s death, maternal family relatives rose like kings fighting over kingdoms; they were like a cast of hawks watching the dying hen and her child, waiting patiently for a feast and they found me the perfect prey. Uncles, aunties, cousins; home no longer felt like home and I became a stranger to my own inheritance. In addition to the impending drama, there were also the masquerades of July.
Masquerades were the adversary of every come-of-age boy child who wasn't a member of the group. At the time, it was expected that every boy would undergo the initiation. We were required to provide the traditionalists with specific items and some money before undergoing a traditional initiation process. It was only upon successfully completing this process that one was considered a member of the group and allowed to move about freely. Beyond its expense which I couldn’t afford, I was completely uninterested in the masquerade stuff because of my faith. It wasn't particularly compulsory but one would need to be extra careful when going out so as not to be caught.
It was especially worse was when no member of the family was already initiated. The floggings and other forms of punishment one could receive if caught were not a pleasant experience. As the season approached, I kept counting down the days, watching the calendar every day. July 15 was not a date I wanted to spend even a second of in the village. So, I came up with the idea of escaping for a while to avoid the impending ordeal.
As soon as my West African Examination was done in 2018, I fled. I was in search of my peace of mind, greener pastures, any place that presented a semblance of home. A friend had invited me to Port Harcourt, but had I known this trip would have me stepping out of a storm directly into the eye of a hurricane, I suppose I’d have just stayed home. I travelled with other passengers along the Ikot Abasi-Taaba road, the journey stretching longer than I expected. Wallowing against the echo of my unrelenting thoughts, soaking in my new reality, I dreamed of a new world.
Alighting at Taaba Junction, I found myself in Port Harcourt for the very first time. In this unfamiliar place, my only guides were Google Maps and phone calls to the friend I had come to visit. The clock was pushing 6pm, so I placed the call.
“Hello, Abiola, I’ve arrived. I’m at Taaba junction.”
“Find your way to BMGS Bori and I’ll pick you up from there,” he responded, ending the call. The abruptness of the call left me with a sudden eerie feeling like the world was about to end.The strange breeze of Ogoni blew, and I felt my heart sink. I typed the location into Google Maps and my route became clear. At this point, something strange must have whispered in my ear: It's not far. Take the walk. Deciding my company was safer than anyone else’s, I set off with naïve, happy strides.
It felt like the best walk I had ever had in my life. Plantations lined up on the roads, rivers flowed and children swam, happy, free: it was everything I wanted life to be. Little did I know that would soon be the worst walk I had ever gone on. Perhaps it was the awed expression on my face, or the childlike wonder twinkling in my eyes that attracted the agberos of Ogoni to me. Whatever it was, they must have watched me, amused. It was now almost 7pm, darkness was resuming its daily shift. The once bustling, joyous road became quiet. All I heard were rustling leaves and my anxious footsteps. I continued walking and caught a sideward glance of a silhouette advancing towards me from behind.
Confidence abandoned me on my walk and left me with fear. Then, I did something unwise: brought out my phone to check for the time and to confirm that I hadn’t wandered off to the wrong path. Two forms appeared ahead of me now, one on each side of the road, walking in the same direction I was. Frightened, I tried to convince myself that they were just passersby. They weren’t.
The two forms ahead of me and one by my side turned at once, closing in, facing me. I could swear life itself stood in my front, staring into my eyes and whispering a quiet “run.” But it was too late; running couldn’t save me. My stomach twisted into painful knots, while my brain lost count of my heart’s erratic beats. My breath grew raspy and uneven; beads of sweat clung stubbornly to my forehead. I felt like a tethered lamb waiting for the blade.
A hand reached into my pocket, and in an instant, my phone alongside my map and solace in this strange city were stripped away from me.
“Identify yourself,” a voice thundered.
I stood dumb, paralyzed. My brain blacked out like it had just been formatted and rebooted on the spot. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out.
“I… I…” I stuttered.
“Omo, this one na werey o,” said another voice. With each word, the stench of cigarette and alcohol clogged my nostrils. Breathing was impossible. I wanted to yell out “Please let me go,” but still no words came.
“Where you from?”
“A… Akwa… Akwa Ibom.”
"Oh! Calabar. This one go enter pot this night."
The words weighed enough tons than my legs could hold. My knees folded. Every community had its own slangs and jargons; if it were in mine, I would say I was about to be initiated into something I wasn't ready for. But here in a stranger’s land, whatever that meant, it sounded fearful to me, and I was not ready to find out what it meant to “enter pot.”
The blood drained from my veins, and my world seemed to grow even darker. Before I could regain my vision, my feet were no longer on the ground. They were flailing in the air, my hands gripping the shoulder of one of the men as they lifted me off the ground. I lost all hope. My search for peace of mind, freedom and greener pastures had led me to this.
I considered every possible way out and decided that I wasn’t ready to die. But as the night grew darker, my chances of escape seemed to grow dimmer. Then, suddenly, a vehicle approached. I tried to scream for help, but they were too quick. They placed me back on my feet, positioned themselves on either side of me and pretended we were together, silently warning me to play along.
As the vehicle drew closer, I summoned every ounce of faith I had left and prayed without moving my lips, asking my ancestors for as much strength as they could send my way. I called on my mother, my father and every deity I could remember. God was my ultimate memory verse in that moment.
I took a deep breath as the vehicle approached, gathered every shred of strength I had and began counting silently in my head. The vehicle was moving slowly, so I waited until it had crept just past us before I made my move. With all my strength, I stretched out my arms, forcefully pushing them away from me, and bolted with a speed I never knew I was capable of.
“Please, help me!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, pleading with everyone inside the old pickup lorry. The lorry screeched to a halt, its headlights suddenly blazing, and I instinctively jumped into the cargo bed at the back. One after another, the passengers climbed down and found me in the back, gasping for air as though I were having an asthma attack.
“What’s wrong?” the driver asked.
But I was still consumed by panic. I hadn’t begun to process everything that had just happened—the very things I had prayed would never happen again. I stared blankly into the distance, saying nothing, still gasping for breath.
The passengers looked back in the direction from which I had come, but there was no one in sight. My assailants had completely disappeared. All they could see was a frightened boy huddled in the back of a truck.
Thankfully, they were kind enough to drop me off at my destination, BMGS Bori. We arrived a few minutes later. I climbed down, overwhelmed with gratitude, and watched as the lorry drove away. Given that my phone had been stolen, there was no way to reach the person I had come to see. I noticed that I was in front of a school, so I walked over to the security man and pleaded to be allowed to spend the night in one of the classrooms. He had pity in his eyes as he granted permission and showed me a classroom, I could sleep in.
Too overwhelmed with gratitude for another chance to live, I didn’t care that I was hungry. I had just spent the last few hours of my life imagining what the world might be like when I was gone, with no one to mourn my absence, no one who knew where I was. In that class, I went down on my knees, quietly sang a few songs of worship, uttered a few words of prayer and promptly fell asleep, exhausted. By morning, I stepped out of the school, thanked the security men and made my way outside. Nearby, I found a market, and I walked towards it with a mission: I was going to work my way out of this mess.
I began helping people carry their goods in exchange for whatever little money they were willing to give me. When I had gathered enough, I bought some food and ate. With my strength restored, I went back to work, hustling tirelessly to raise enough money to get home. I had set out in search of greener pastures, but somewhere along the way, I had learned that the grass I was searching for was not always greener on the other side. The moment I had enough money to cover the journey, I asked for directions to the nearest motor park, boarded a bus and began the journey back to the familiar evil that was my father’s town.
