We Could Do More Parenting in Otu-Onitsha- Part 2[Opinion] by Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

Experience: We Could Do More Parenting in Otu-Onitsha -Part 1 [Opinion] by Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

Many of us in the neighborhood went to good schools but only some of us school good. It was observable in our use of the English language (as that is the standard for rating intelligence in our part of the world), and our application of reasoning.

As primary school pupils, we knew we could speak anything, but some were just not correct. We knew our mates who could not articulate correct English language sentences without having to add vernacular, misplace basic tenses, and so on. Some of us were the standard for basic English for our mates. The correctness of their articulation was dependent on if we tagged it correct, especially in arguments.

Myself, particularly, was not good in English speaking because I carried out intensive and extensive studies but because in my house, you just don't speak anything. If you want to, do not let my dad hear you. I also had older siblings who saw correcting me as an instrument of being on our father's good page.

They would always drag my mistakes to the parlor, our father’s headquarters. My father did not always fail to correct you, sometimes with his long rod. I grew up in the consciousness that it was better to speak correctly than speak all the time.

Some of my mates stayed back at home on school days. In whose house will I stay on a school day? The only thing that could make you stay out of school was sickness. We had a home nurse who would be summoned incase there was any health case, so we could not fake being sick.

I was always in school, stocked with textbooks and all, which my young mum would always come to make payments for, then in installments, because she could not afford to pay for the textbooks of my two older siblings and I.

The day our parents came to procure textbooks for us was always a happy day. Most times, we did not know they were coming so we did not bother finding our ways to the window or even the door to catch a glimpse of them. The whole excitement builds up to climax when our class teacher would bring in the books and call you to come and have them. That feeling, that sweet feeling. It was so because teachers less respected you, or would I say, responded to you, if you do not buy textbooks.

I did go to school with snacks but it was not usual. Some of my classmates then came to school with snacks as if it was part of what was needed for their academics. Everyday, new snacks. I was friends with the children with the best snacks just so I could always have my share.

Like racism and other form of discrimination, snackism started when I was a boy. Snackism was the unusual preference of people who had the same snacks, who had very special snacks, and who were very usual with snacks. I was not a member of this social class. Did I just call it a social class? But it was. They were first class citizens in the class. Our teachers barely flogged them. We had had to take down our assignments when the teacher gave them out. These first class children had theirs written smartly by our teacher. We had to carry our lunchboxes as soon as school dismissed while these bourgeois small school children had our teachers carry theirs while they waited for their parents to come and pick them. Yes, to come and pick them. People in my social class, we trekked home.

On a particular morning, I had demanded for a first class snacks and upon being denied, I left for school in tears. I cried all the way to school till I got to a particular shop where I sat and cried. I do not know what happened neither do I know how it happened. Next thing, my big cousin who stays with us came and bundled me home. My father was already waiting with his long rod. It was a horrible moment receiving twelve of those divine strokes. I was sent back to school, this time, refined. The thoughts of those snacks vanished. I disliked Chima for having to bring me back that morning amidst my pleas. But just like kids, before I thought I disliked him, I forgot everything that happened.

Chima, after a few years of settlement and bloom in business bought me the first and only bicycle of my own that I rode. The feeling of owning a bicycle was indescribable, especially as a kid. Chima, of the blessed memory.

After primary school, I had entered the seminary. It was an entirely different world from Onitsha. It seemed like prison yards. We were imprisoned. It was a triangular movement; from school to hostel to church and a repeated cycle.

We could only go home on school breaks. During those breaks I noticed that I could not converse comfortably with my friends, not because I was bigger and better than them but because they made me feel I was missing out something. They too will have to do a lot of explanations for me so I could be able to understand some of what they were saying.

On every slight embarrassment, people are quick to say, ‘I have not been embarrassed so much like that before'. Same as every insult. People are yet to receive the worst insults, the worst shocks, the worst pains, of their lives. It keeps unveiling. But on this particular day, it was another unveiling of a brand new embarrassment; such that I was yet to receive before. I would have concluded that I embarrassed myself but no, I did not. Maybe I was unfortunate.

They had laughed sanity out of me. While we talked, one of the boys asked me how much I bought my cappa. I was wearing a trending underwear that has its company name as kappa. I was quick, three hundred and fifty naira. They all shared this surprised look. Three fifty kwa ? I answered again in affirmation. The other guy made for the phone I was holding so he could look at it. While he did, he asked why I said I bought a phone as new as that for three-fifty. That was when I knew they were not talking about my boxers. It was my phone they were talking about. God in heaven, phone was now cappa in Onitsha? I was behind in these developments, so to say.

The divide kept increasing till we had just greetings and very few things to talk about. I felt cheated. We were different. I knew very little about all of those things.

The only slang I was familiar with then which I did not have to be embarrassed again before I learnt was waa, as in get out. I would simply use the waa anytime I felt things were not in my favor.

While I kept growing, I started feeling confident enough, enough to know that we were resident in different environments, we could not speak samely, enough to see that they were not even bothered that they did not know most of the things I knew, enough to know that I was not unfortunate to not know those things they felt I should know. I did not want to know them even.

After few years, I had graduated from secondary school and had been admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I had on one of the times I came back for break, come across a guy and a girl discussing, just few blocks away from where I lived, within my AP.

AP was what we called area. The guy asked the girl what she wanted to eat when they got to the restaurant and while I expected a beautiful response from this beautiful girl, she said, 'k'anyi tinye godi there first, by as e dey'. It was shocking, funny enough. It was different from ladies in UNN. They would say thank you.

Most times I feel we have a lot of work to do to salvage this loss and impediment. Umu otu can do better, become better, act better and many more. I was not the only one from a good home or affected by good, or rather, strict parenting. We are many and we are different. If we could employ rounds of sound and moral parenting, we can still brew refined children. Jurist reminded me in an argument that nature and nurture were the biological components of human beings which could go a long way in affecting them.

Let the natural environment be safe, sound, and non-onitsha. We cannot totally scrap the effects of this their social environment but we can raise hybrid children who will have the best slangs and the best brains, the best wears and the best sources of legitimate income, with the best ideology, a vast knowledge and experience. This is an Onitsha I believe in. It is what I am walking towards. It is what is achievable. I am proudly nwa otu-Onitsha.

My name is Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime. A student and a lover of fine literature. I am a process of a continual effort to become better, brighter and bigger. This essay, I would say is my first attempt of prose as a genre of literature. Unlike my poems, I do not yet have a name for this essay as an organically whole material. At the end our collective reading exercise, we, you and I, will give it a name. Stay tuned.

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