• Life in my primary school always felt like a race against time and cane. It was a race I struggled to win every day as I have always loved my sleep. I was that playful child that didn’t stop playing until it was too dark to see. Even then, any source of illumination was employed to keep the game going as long as it kept getting interesting, and none of our mothers screamed out their child’s name into the cold night.

So, in the end, I was used to going to bed around 9pm on some days while hoping to God that I was woken up before 6:30am to get ready before a popular radio network tune that was a call to the network news at 7am came on, which was also a sign that you’re late to school if you can hear the tune from any radio device.

Overall, a good school day requires one to beat the time to be in school before 7:30 am and not get caught in the line for not having your white socks on or clean enough for our teachers. Where the first is subject to one being up early, as a child, we got around the second with a technique called wash and wear.

As the name implies, the technique was useful for getting around not getting picked out of the line just because you forgot to wash your socks the previous day or assumed you had a clean sock for the next school day. Disclaimer, the next paragraph is solely aimed at explaining how the technique worked rather than being a means of teaching something most would call a bad character.

This all-saving technique, from the evil called uncles, involved doing a quick wash early in the morning before having one’s bath, throwing the wet washed sock in a dry towel, rolling till the towel completely conceals the sock and squeezing the towel with as much strength as one can muster. The better you are at squeezing, the better the result. This overall gets you a sock that is not too wet to be worn but dry enough to wear and get past these wicked uncles and demonic school prefects at the assembly ground before the morning sun does justice to the rest of the moisture caught in the sock.

Getting past these hurdles without getting caught meant your day was set for good as long as you could stay safe and hope your classmates do the same. So, it came as a shock when in my penultimate year in the school, there was a wave of gossip around the senior classes about a new uncle, different from the other wicked ones that dominated the school.

One thing you need to know about my school is that we never liked our teachers, both male and female. This is because it seemed like one of the requirements for being selected as a teacher in the school, is that one has to be skilled at the skilful and innovative use of a cane and any other available device, as a weapon for inflicting the most pain. So, we had teachers whose style revolved around using the cane not just on your buttocks but on your back, some on your legs or neck, while some go as far as landing their cane on the sole of your naked feet. The traumatizing thing about the latter is that you are rendered immobile and crippled by the pain as the cane lands on the sole of the feet.

So when this news of a new young uncle spread through the school, everyone was eager to meet this new man who supposedly could draw the face of a man from the letters b o y, and on that faithful day, as he walked into the class, picked up the chalk, went straight to the board and majestically wrote on the board, the whole class watched in awe and anticipation of what this mystery man was doing to our unworthy board. He stopped writing, turned around and moved away to reveal that which was written bold and beautifully, ‘Sir Ibro’. Maybe it was the calligraphy with which the words were written or the grace with which it was done, but we were all dazed by the magnificence.

We went on to know that this mystery man would be stepping in as our new maths teacher. We all didn’t like maths that much, but we sure loved this man, and hopefully, this new love could bring some Midas touch to our impaling maths life. This new love for this new ‘master’ as he preferred being called, opened us up to actually giving maths a chance, plus he had his ways of making big maths problems simple. This began to change as this man’s love for maths became bigger than our love for him and maths, but this would not deter him from forcing maths down our thick heads, whether we allowed it or not. Instead, Sir Ibro decided to do the worse – a compulsory lesson after school hours.

As a child, we endured the hours spent in class and longed for the sound of the closing bell. Then it was a race for the fastest to get out of school and enjoy the remaining hours of the day before it became another day, and the cycle began afresh. With this in mind, the news of the extra lesson couldn’t be freely welcomed. Still, again, our dear parents were fine with us staying in school till 5pm if it meant we were learning, and it being a free lesson was a good deal for our parents to make a pass on, so there was no escape. Plus, Sir Ibro made it a duty to take attendance in the evening class and punish those who abscond the next day in class during school hours.

Then began after-school math lessons for the penultimate class, a continuation of what happens in class during school hours. We tried getting along and enduring it, so far there was nothing to lose except the time we spent sitting and looking at Sir Ibro do his thing. How bad can that get? Bad! It was as though the devil took the thoughts of our hearts and made them known to Sir Ibro. Hence, the test announcement for the lesson activity was both heartbreaking and traumatizing. To make it worse, a pass mark and a reward system were attached. The test would be 20 marks, and he chose the passing mark to be 18. This meant that any mark below 18 meant one failed the test, and he designed a caning reward system for everyone who scored below 18.

The thought of it sounded too ridiculous to be true, so most of us felt it couldn’t be true and we could find mercy; so far we scored above average. The test day came quickly, and it was a timed test. We got our questions and got the go-ahead to start. I picked up my question paper, looked through it, and realized it would take God for anyone to pass, but definitely not me. We all started, hoping that mercy would prevail over judgement. In what felt like a short time, his voice rang out in the empty room, ‘time up’ and the sound of a cane landing on the backs of those who ignored the warning followed. In a short time, the quiet room had turned into a full fledge funeral home with loud mourners.

There and then, we realized this man took the test more seriously than we did, and our hope for mercy quickly turned into a new hope, a hope for rapture. In case you missed it earlier, amidst the love and admiration for Sir Ibro, he did pass the school’s teaching requirement as he was an excellent flogger. One time, he singlehandedly flogged the entire school on the assembly ground. Another time, he requested a female teacher allow him to discipline a particular class because he felt she wasn’t doing it right. So we knew we were in for it if God didn’t come down to save us.

Sir Ibro finished marking the scripts and announced no one scored 18 or above. He went on to ask that everyone lays their head on their desk. For anyone in this position before, it is common knowledge that this is evil in two folds. The first is the sound of the cane landing on the stretched-out backs and the wailing that follows from afar, with the build-up as it gets to your turn, and then the cane landing on yours. So it began, and since it was after school hours and the entire school was empty except for the room we were in, the tears and wailing filled the entire school. It was a glorified mourning house, with everyone receiving the number of strokes commemorate with the effort they put into the test. I was part of the wailers.

The caning ended, and to add insult to injury, Sir Ibro announced the test had to be taken the next week again. Our hearts sank even more, and it is safe to say this is what you get for trying to love a teacher in my school. I knew that the odds might not be on my side again, but at least the inter-class football match scheduled for next week would do some good to my soul.

Chapter 3: The Inter-Class Match