At morning assembly, the school proprietress addresses her students. She is incensed, as she paces in front of students. She glances in the direction of some students and her eyes lock with those of a student. The student lowers her gaze and head, promptly.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) administer, to Nigerian junior secondary school JSS students of form 3, an examination for the Junior Secondary School Certificate. This examination is popularly and colloquially called Junior WAEC.

Junior students proceed to Senior Secondary School via the Junior WAEC. The examination generates apprehension and excitement in students.

Students with a high cognitive intelligence readily stay awake at night to study. Low to average performance students either do their best to read their books, take the examination lightly, or handcuff self with an inadequate preparation.

My preparation commenced months ahead of the September examination.

At home, I pored through the several booklets on Junior WAEC my mum purchased for me. While on holiday, I made the most of my free time.

I attended a boarding school and much of my holidays coincided with the academic term of day students in Enugu.

I was on break; my siblings, who were day students, were in session. I had the house to myself, for a good portion of each day. I was Queen and I relished the royalty of privacy to do as I pleased.

At dawn on Sunday, April 22, 1990. I woke to hear martial music over the radio. There was a coup d’état! The tension in me was phenomenal. The next sound I heard was the voice of a coup plotter Major Gideon Orkar. With rapt attention, I listened.

When he sacked the five core Northern States of Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano, and Bauchi, my first thoughts were: Ah, no, that will not work. The coup plan will fail. It did.

He gave the expelled Northerners a week to relocate to their abode of origin. Southerners, resident in the North, were ordered to head southwards.

Within hours, loyalist troops of the Armed Forces, in Benin and Kaduna, announced their opposition to the coup.

Shortly later, Lagos the seat of government was back under loyalist control.

I saw a glimpse in a newspaper of bloodied photographs of mutineers and loyalists. The public were asked to help locate the coup plotters.

I refrained from looking closely at the pictures to avoid being able to identify the coup plotters.

In no way did I favour the coup or the coup plotters. I considered their violent action nothing but a disruption and a menace.

Of course, airports were closed, which meant my mum could not return to her work. She almost lost her job and had to restart the entire process. I was enraged.

Weeks later, I learnt the leader of the coup was arrested in Cross River State.

He was on an escape route to Cameroun and paused to have sexual intercourse with a woman.

That was his way of bidding Nigeria farewell.

The woman reported his location to the authorities.

I was seething with anger that men who could not regulate their libido caused much mayhem.

He could not rein in his private parts long enough to cross into Cameroun, yet he toyed with moving Nigeria forward.

Back in boarding school, I resumed my classes, paying ardent attention to each lesson.

Naturally, all of my Teachers sought to ensure they covered the entire Junior WAEC syllabus.

They conducted refresher classes for the previous two years of study.

One of my Ndenkuzi, who organised extra tutorials for us, was my Onyenkuzi Mathematics.

In the afternoons, he would combine all of the three units of Form 3.

Some one hundred students would gather in one class to receive additional coaching.

Interestingly, students who considered Mathematics an insurmountable subject spent the duration of the class talking and distracting themselves from the Onyenkuzi's speech and writings.

They conversed about anything, except the topic for which they were present.

Their divergent conversations drowned the Onyenkuzi’s voice.

I, who saw Mathematics as my favourite subject, had to strain my ears and auditory nerves to detect the Onyenkuzi's voice.

My Onyenkuzi Mathematics had my unflinching attention.

I benefitted immensely from the unscheduled tutorials he operated for us, as much as I learnt from his regular Mathematics classes, executed within the timetable slot.

In class, my Mathematics Teacher and I cooperated.

Many of my Ndenkuzi and I worked together.

For much of my primary and junior secondary school, respectively, I was the Onyenkuzi's Pet and Teaching Assistant.

Unlike several other students, I did not perceive my Ndenkuzi as a threat.

My classroom collaboration with my Onyenkuzi Mathematics surpassed every other JSS teacher-student cooperation in which I participated.

The sole exception was my association with my Form Tutor, to whom I was the Teaching Assistant.

All of those collaborations were overt.

Between my Onyenkuzi Mathematics and me, was a covert operation not observed by anyone else.

Outside the classroom, we never communicated.

In fact, I avoided greeting him whenever our paths intersected, elsewhere.

The purpose was to ensure he did not deem our clandestine classroom cooperation a licence for something sinister.

Our eyes met, briefly, and our facial expression brightened, in acknowledgement of each other.

Within the four walls of the classroom and surrounded by a brimful class of female students, my Onyenkuzi Mathematics and I understood each other.

We communicated through nonverbal cues.

Typically, for each of my subjects through reading from the textbook, I composed personal notes in my normal notebook, prior to each lesson.

During class, I added what was not in my note.

Often, while other students copied notes from the blackboard, I placed my jaw on my dorsal right hand, which lay on my dorsal left hand. Both arms were angled at the respective elbow and laid on the desk.

That was my posture for comparing the Onyenkuzi's notes against mine, in search of inclusions.

On noticing my inactivity, the Onyenkuzi would stroll over to my desk, check my notebook, approve my note, and gesture that I sit up to maintain my focus on the topic.

With my Onyenkuzi Mathematics occurred all of that relationship and much more. As he solved a Mathematics problem, I followed each step.

On perceiving my Onyenkuzi has miscalculated or scribbled the wrong procedure, I waited for him to turn and face the students.

Once we established eye contact, I frowned. That was his prompt to revisit his workings and solution step by step, detect the error, and correct himself.

When he was unable to discover the mistake, he turned to me and the frown prompt was repeated. At this instant, he would address me, asking whether there was a problem. Only then did I vocalise the error in his written work. He acknowledged the misstep, made corrections, and commended me for my acute observation.

I have loved Mathematics ever since.

I enjoyed my subjects, minus Physical Education, and was held in high esteem by my Ndenkuzi.

The proprietress of the school and I had a warm rapport.

I was welcomed every time I went to her office. We conducted discussions and meetings. When I sought her advice, she accorded me her wisdom. When I needed a loan from her, she lent me her money.

The school was an outstanding, newly established, private Anglican seminary school. I just did not wish to be there, far away from my home in Enugu.

Each term, the trauma took its toll on me. Add a poor feeding programme to the psychological condition.

At the end of each term, I returned, terribly emaciated, to the relative comfort of my home. Weeks later, I regained my stature, but dreaded another round of torment.

My entire family were aware I loathed attending boarding school. My late maternal Uncle advised I be taken out of that school.

My mum would have none of it; my dad was not a part of the solution, either. I contemplated transferring to my former school, on my own.

In a detailed deliberation with my siblings, they were unanimous on the need for a change of environment for me.

They felt there was an enormous risk of our mum declining to contribute a kobo towards my education.

I had no choice, but to continue to endure my mum's punishment. I was in that state, when Junior WAEC came knocking. As the examination approached, my health slumped.

There were periods I lost my vision, temporarily. I walked from place to place, relying on my sense of direction.

One year of psychological and physical upheaval unleashed a nightmare I experienced in prime wakefulness.

Meanwhile, I strove to study hard. During one of such studies, the kerosene lamp which I positioned on the bed, by my head as I lay reading, vibrated, fell, and burnt my flesh. Getting up, I lifted the lamp and reviewed the effect of the momentary pain.

The diagonal scar remains visible on the head of my right humerus. The hot metal roof of the lamp impressed its ORIGINAL imprint on my arm.

Until the injury healed, I read the letters of ORIGINAL, reflected vertically, on my upper arm. Thenceforth, I referred to myself as Original.

[To be continued.]

•Umm Sulaim is the Publisher of Umm Sulaim’s Thoughts (https://iamummsulaim.wordpress.com).

Copyright © 2019 Umm Sulaim. All rights reserved.

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