Against the Odds. Ben Igwe
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Jamike started elementary school at about the age of twelve. It had not been but a few years ago that he wore his first pair of shorts. He was seven or eight and liked shorts that had belt loops. Before that age, he was naked in the village like every other boy or girl. Skinny Jamike wore his long oversized belt so tight in those days that it almost went twice around his waist. His mother always feared the boy would crush his intestines with the belt he drew too tight around his stomach.
School was for anyone who could afford it. Most children of Jamike’s age in the village were apprenticed to learn a trade. Blacksmithing, bicycle repairing, and carpentry were popular choices. With meager capital received from the selling of farmland or cash crops, some youngsters engaged in petty trading. School meant fees, uniforms, levies, and numerous other requests by teachers. But Uridiya, a woman of determination, had sworn that Jamike would attend school whenever she could afford to put him there. She always said that since she did not know her ABCs, her only child must go to school to learn them. Through him, therefore, she would be enlightened.
Harvest was bountiful the year Jamike started school. Uridiya sold vegetables, palm oil, palm nuts, kernels, and other crops to pay his first fees. Jamike even helped out. He gave his mother the little cash he earned from the baskets he wove and the crude kitchen knives he learned to make at the local blacksmith’s workshop. These he constructed with the help of the blacksmith’s son who was his age -mate and who was learning his father’s trade. It was generally the custom in the village for first sons to learn the trade of their fathers. Because Jamike occasionally visited the blacksmith to help fire the furnace for him, he was allowed to tinker with bits and pieces of iron and scrap metal. He learned to make crude kitchen knives and simple types of cutlasses for grass cutting. It became known in the village that he was talented in things technical.
At school Jamike showed a remarkable brilliance that villagers did not expect from the son of a widow. At the end of every term, results of examinations were called and report cards given out to pupils in the assembly hall with parents in attendance. Parents who could afford school fees but whose children did not do well in schoolwork were quick to point to Jamike as a kid whose widowed mother could ill afford his fees, but who came first in class most of the time. He missed classes only when he was sent home for not paying his fees. Uridiya knew well that once in a while she would not be able to afford the fees, but this did not deter her from putting her son in school. She believed that somehow her god who had provided for them through all these years would not abandon her.
Each time Jamike returned to school after staying away for a couple of days for not paying his fees, he was quick to catch up and would still be among the top students, scoring the highest marks in class tests and examinations. Being sent home from school was what Jamike expected whenever he did not have his fees. Even with this knowledge the boy still went to school when fees were due, hoping he would be lucky not to be sent home.
What happened to Jamike one Monday morning was a situation he had been through often for not paying his fees. To make the matter worse, he was late to school too. It was a cloudy and chilly morning in January during the dry harmattan season. There was dryness everywhere as trees reeled in the wind that sent leaves and debris spiraling high into the sky. Smoke and sparks rose from many compounds where fires were made in the open air and children surrounded them to warm their ashy bodies. Uridiya got up early to gather palm nuts to cook. They needed palm oil for use and for sale toward his fees. She noticed that she did not have enough water and wanted Jamike to run to the stream three miles away to fetch water before going to school.
Jamike came out from the room where he slept on a mat on a ribbed bamboo bed. Stretching himself and rubbing his eyes he approached the fire for warmth, extending his open palms toward the rising flames. He was the first child by the fire. Shortly after, other children in the compound crouched around stretching their hands toward the flame like Jamike. At this time of the year it was a ritual to warm up before getting ready for school.
“Jamike, I noticed I will need more water to cook these palm nuts,” Uridiya said to her son who just got out of bed.
“How did you plan to cook palm nuts when you didn’t have enough water? Were you going to borrow water?”
“No matter what else I may borrow, son, I will not borrow God-made water. I will not cook with empty hands, anyway.”
“That’s what I wonder about.”
“Please, son, can you run to fetch me a pot of water before you go to school?”
“Mama, I will be late for school. Each time I go late, I get flogged. I am not going to the stream this morning.” He stood and staggered away from Uridiya, upset and shaking his head.
“If you go right away you will not be late.”
“I am not going.” He leaned angrily on a mud wall and wiped tears with the back of his palm.
“Jamike, please go fetch your mother some water. I am not going to drink the oil I am making. This is the palm oil I will sell to get money for the fees your teachers never tire of asking you to bring.”
“I know, Mama. I will be late to school and I will be flogged.” Jamike began to look for a bucket so he could take his bath.
“Jamike, please, my son. Please, my husband. Just one pot of water will do. You will not go a second time.” Uridiya called him such an endearing name like “my husband” whenever Jamike did something special or she wanted to cajole him to run an errand she suspected he would resist. Jamike put down the bucket he wanted to use for bathing and picked up a clay pot. He held it by the neck.
“Jamike, do not hold that pot by its neck. It is clay and not iron and will easily break. Before you know it you will be holding the neck while the pot is in pieces on the ground.” Jamike placed the pot on his head and moved toward the wooden gate of the compound.
“I will fetch a pot of water and only one pot. I will not go two times to the stream this morning. I don’t want to be late to school. The teacher told us we would learn new arithmetic today.”
“No, darling, one pot is all I need. Take quick steps. Let me see you back right now.” While he was gone Uridiya set the big earthen pot on a roaring fire with the water available. It was for the second or maybe the third round of cooking that she would need more water.
Jamike was late to school as he worried he would be. There was already a line of latecomers kneeling outside the school gate. The assistant headmaster, Mr. Ndu, was standing with a bundle of canes to administer strokes on each student’s buttocks. The headmaster, Mr. Ahamba, a disciplinarian, stressed punctuality to school, but it was his assistant who enforced it through corporal punishment. The assistant headmaster was notorious for flogging. Students nicknamed him “Eze Nkita,” dogtooth, because students said his teeth were set like a dog’s and he showed no mercy when flogging as a dog would