Tales Of A Naija Student
Alice Ogar
The first day I stepped in as a fresher on this campus, I was thrilled.
I was also a tired young man.
You see, when I wrote UTME in 2020, I barely had a strand of beard. I remember my big sis teasing me about being a small beardless boy when I bragged and daydreamed about Uni.
She told me to rest the night she caught me feeling myself yet again in the mirror.
As usual, I had my signature wide grin plastered on my face. I’d then rub my beardless chin over and over again before grabbing the rosary on my neck to kiss the cross in excitement. I’d been doing that ‘nansense’ since I saw my results. Man, they were amazing!
“Happening bobo, you better goan rest o!” She’d exclaimed with a laugh.
Well, COVID struck three days later. But it took me four hopeless and tiring months of lockdown, stay-at-home and mom’s obsession with sanitizers, to realize I really needed her advice.
I rested.
Yes, I flung my books aside and took to the craze of “MAKE MONEY ONLINE FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR HOME.” I flung the mirror aside too, chatting all day with my high school crushes while sliding through one free online class or the other.
I remember big sissy yabbing the living day light out of me the day I bought a 1k Masterclass which later turned out to be a worthless class.
Her yabbs didn't last long though, because the next day, Chuchu, our last born, caught severe cold that left him sneezing the whole place down. Bro was running a temperature too.
Although I was trying to act strong like dad, my mind kept drifting to the symptoms mentioned in the COVID awareness series I’d watched that day.
Mom wore a nose mask with panic written all over her. She made us all bath with hot salted water while garnishing heavy doses of ginger and garlic in our stew. Dad would try to calm her down, promising to take Chuchu to the hospital first thing the next morning.
But momma always knows best, yeah?
We had a vigil around kid bro that night. Mom kept snapping out of her sleep with her brown wooden rosary firmly clutched to her chest. She would begin a mouthing ‘our Father and hail Mary’ before drifting off again halfway through the decade.
By midnight, I had lost count of how many times she’d announced the second sorrowful mystery.
“The second sorrowful mystery, the scourging at the pillar… Dear God, by his stripes, we are healed. Chuchu, my son is healed! Oh mother of Christ, please intercede for my baby boy.”
When the next morning Chuchu woke up running round the house, I regretted ever getting worked up.
That was when mom’s obsession with sanitizers began. She didn’t agree that Chuchu had caught a mere cold. God had healed her son miraculously, probably from COVID.
Anyways, I slept with a cardigan every night after then. I wasn’t interested in anyone fussing over me for nothing, I planned to never catch a cold.
Never…
In 2021, exactly one year after UTME, we were called to write post UTME.
And in 2022, we were finally called in for resumption. I would have you know that I matriculated with full ‘bop daddy’ beards. My sister would say I’m over ‘feeling’ myself, it’s why I don’t talk too much about the countless eyes I caught stealing longing glances at me that day.😌
Talk about a cool, fresh guy ready to paint the whole Uni red!
Anyways, the next day, ASUU went on that dreaded 8 months strike.
It was back to square one again.
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