Bedroom Whispers

SOUTH AFRICA

Why South Africa? I said I was going to talk about it. It's not something that can be completely captured with words, but I'll try to do justice to the description.

For me, it's a spiritual thing. Highly Spiritual. These days, I wake up and feel drawn, like a heart yearning, to South Africa. Born in Nigeria, bred in Nigeria, I suddenly feel a strong spiritual pull to South Africa.

This is not about a search for greener pastures. Well, if you know anything about me at all, you'll know my drive is of a different nature. I really am finding it hard to put words to this experience.

The closest similar feeling I have of this experience was the way I felt when I was separated from home to school in an army boarding school, at the age of 9.

The fence of the school was close to my hostel. I remember how I'd come out after lights out. The lock of the hostel door was bad, so I could open it without making a noise. I'll go to the back of the hostel, and find a platform to climb. I was like Moses looking at Canaan land from the mountain top.

From where I was, I could see life outside of school. The loud hooting of Lagos drivers always came to taunt me. The headlamps of the cars as they crawled in traffic made such a fine sight from afar. Chaos looked beautiful from a distance, and I remembered home, and how dad's car was either amongst those ones still on the road or parked in its usual spot in the compound.

I thought of my siblings and how we could have been crowded in a room, telling stories of the day or creating stories from our heads. Storytelling was a huge part of the evening for us as kids, after we'd had our meals.

I thought of mama, and the gentle way she would have served our food, and how she would care enough to find out why any of us wasn't eating.

Who cared about whether you ate or not in school? I remember having to eat my dinner of undercooked rice while running to class for evening preps. The rice was usually just brought down from the fire, the steam hot enough to burn supple skins. The stew was watery and very peppery. That too was hot.

Immediately we got served in the dining hall, the food prefects would storm the hall like bees at a disturbed hive. Acting like gatekeepers of hell, they would shout all at once, creating chaos in the hall, "At the count of ten, everybody GERRROUT!" The countdown would then begin.

1, 2, 3...

"How am I to consume a hot plate of rice in ten seconds?" It wasn't even much but it was better than having nothing to eat. While I'd still be thinking of how best to start, the food prefects would have positioned themselves in the hall. Some at the entrances, some lining the aisles. Their belts and sticks of different sizes in their hands, swinging it above their heads for us to see.

At count 5, commotion usually broke out. Who wanted to get hit with those inhumane weapons of bodily destructions? Those seniors, especially the sadists who found joy in seeing pain and chaos, would suddenly forget how to count numbers.

And you'll hear "3, 5, 7, 9..."

We were already stampeding, many people abandoning their food untouched. Many falling down in the process. I remember running and suddenly climbing a raised platform. The soft and unsteady feel made me realize it was a fallen student. A pang of pity struck and under normal circumstances, I would have stopped to create a break for him to have gotten up, but these were unnatural situations. You couldn't stop. The crowd would bring you down in no time too. We were like a fold of enraged buffalo.

And so it was that I salvaged my food by bending over it, bringing the plate close to my belly, not minding the stains I got on my shirt in the process or the burns I got on my stomach.

Immediately we hit the door, we sprinted in various directions to avoid the stick-wielding prefects who wouldn't hesitate to trip you so they could unleash their frosting bitterness on their victims.

Once this first phase was passed, while I ran with the plate burning up my palm, I dug into the hot rice with my fingers. One of the first survival lessons I learnt upon entering school was learning how to eat all kinds of food with my fingers. I remember the laughter and the stares I got when as a fresher, I'd bring out my set of cutleries to eat like a human being. Well, I learnt quickly. My fingers got burnt in the process. My tongue got burnt. Have you swallowed hot rice down your throat before? Even cold water wouldn't ease the burn you'll get. Not in the moment at least.

A close friend then had a very strange way of eating. He swallowed his food at the first. He didn't chew. So while we were busy trying to chew and swallow, he seemed to gulp his rice. His hands never slowing down its journey from plate to mouth. When we got to class, he always chewed throughout prep. Upon questioning, he said he taught himself how to chew cud like a ruminant after a lesson in Agriculture. That was his survival strategy. He tried teaching us, but some things are difficult to learn. Try as I could, I never did learn.

He later upgraded this strategy for escaping hard labour. He would gulp his food, and while we gathered under the scorching sun for intense labour, he would regurgitate after a signal had been given. Others would think he was vomiting. We alone knew it was intentional. And so two of us (we were three friends then) would wedge him with our shoulders and feign we were carrying him to the clinic. Survival was key. Anything to stay sane.

That was how dinner was eaten most times. That was how we survived. Students of Command Secondary School can testify to that. Hope nobody's thinking of water to drink? Because there was none. No water. Who even thought of water?

My clothes or a quickly torn page from my notebooks were napkins for my soiled fingers. I remember severally, having to wash my hands with my pee as I ran. You couldn't be caught standing at a spot. I must confess, that period was when I first tasted urine. I wanted to find out if it was also drinkable.

For a 9-year old boy who had never left the comfort of his home to suddenly be thrown into this zoo (for that was how it seemed to me), I missed home. Every. Damn. Single. Day.

No snacks and sweet to scramble for in daddy's bag. No tender voice of mama singing as she cooked. No laughter of siblings as we shared jokes and stories. I sat on that platform at the back of my junior hostel and looked outside the fence. I longed to be outside of those walls. I longed to be at home.

The cars called out to me. The lights sang my name. Everything about life beyond the fence said, "Come."

And now, when I wake up, my spirit suddenly feels like it's back in that jungle. Like it's back within those walls. I wake up and all I hear is the sound of SA. The rhythms drawing me in. The waves of the music's melody tickling my ears, sending rolling tides down my spine.

I sit to meditate, and I see pictures of the land. And faces. And babies. And trees. And the colours. And smiles. And I see the name, spelt out in capital letters, designed with the prints of the native attire...

SOUTH AFRICA.

Home is where the heart is. I long for home.

♥️♥️♥️