My Share of the Northern Cake

Chapter Three

As he later told us, Mallam Balla had forty-three young teenagers with him. Forty-two of them were his students from Al'Amin Secondary School, a school where he was newly posted to as a Civic Education teacher, and one other young teenager, which was Haliru, had joined them from his escape towards this part of the forest. Mallam Balla had run out of the school on that fateful day with fifty-one students, nine of the students had been stroke by stray bullets as they were running out of the school, and had died before they could make it to a safe location. The insurgents had raided the school in a bid to kill every teacher and student found in the school. S S 1 C, the class he was teaching that morning was at the rear end of the school, close to the short fence that demarcated the school from the thick forest that had bounded it. There had been speculations before then that such thing was bound to happen as it had happened in many other schools, the latest being Girls Grammar School, Chibok where it was learnt and heard in the news that about two-hundred and fifty girls were kidnapped from the hall where they were writing external examinations. So, every teacher and students were at alert. When they finally came to Al'Amin, and him, Mallam Balla, had sighted the situation from afar off blocks, he hastened all the students to run from the class and try all they could to jump the fence and run for their dear lives. One of the insurgents who was coming with gun towards their class had sighted them and started shooting from far, the bullets that stroke the nine students who managed to jump the fence in fear, and later died each from blood loss. More would have died. The insurgents would have come after them had the guy, in addition to his shooting, raised an alarm. But Mallam Balla did one brave thing, he didn't jump along with the students; he didn't run for his life leaving the students to themselves. He quickly pulled up a rod from the ground in a corner – one of those rods that would have been used as the legs of the spring bed for the boarding students, should more be needed, if the number of the incoming students surpassed those of the outgoing students – and hid just at the edge of the exit, waiting for the man to come towards that corner. He did. With a highly raised and far stretched hand, and the full force with which the insurgent came, Mallam Balla wiped the rod on his head and he fell instantly into the classroom where he died. Mallam Balla pulled him out of the classroom and into the corridor and still smashed his head some more with the rod until blood poured and his brain showed. Then, Mallam Balla too jumped the fence and ran to meet the students. They ran deep into the bush and stopped at a place that they felt was safer for them to stay until they would be sure it was safe again for them to move on. When they were ready to go after a while, they could no longer locate which way to go. They decided to stay until morning to begin the journey back home. They have not been able to find their way back home until now and as it is, no one knows exactly where we are. Mallam has often strolled out to find a cut to the path but he ended up not seeing which way any path led to.

"What about I?" He asked, continuing the story. "How did I come into the picture? I'll tell you."

We heard a sound from a distant part of the bush cutting him short, we were not sure what it was but we quickly dropped our woods according to our new leader's instruction and lay flat on our stomachs. We kept taking turns standing intermittently to look out for what it was. We later found out on my turn of watch that the sound was made by two bush pigs running across, the male chasing the female for a union. When they had ran past us not smelling that we were there, we breathed an air of relief, picked our sticks and continued on our journey.

"Ok, continue your story," I said.

"Yeah, tell us how you joined the good Mallam Balla's group." Rakia Added.

"Yes. Something happened that affected my father, Baba." He continued with a little shrieking of his face, an act that revealed tears, rage, vengeance and bitterness that waited to erupt from his heart. He lightened up the heavy heart with a sigh.