..My three legged high horse!
gimmicks or no gimmicks? I should just get right into the gist I think!
It is most definitely note worthy to mention (more like brag 😜) that I was a very intelligent child (allegedly)! primary school was a breeze for me; acing terminal works, domestic competitions, entrance examinations, in fact, I may or may not have been the best graduating pupil (I definitely was😎😎) and all that jazz. flash forward to (junior) secondary school I encountered a staggering culture shock and made a huge huge nasty mistake that shook me to my core and had me running for my shell! permit me a little detour but I think it is a story that you would wanna hear.
Back in primary school during exams and test, I would always finish pretty early and would help those seated around me! I even took to writing for some not just showing my work to them to copy from! I saw it as an act of kindness and loved that I could help, and Nwachukwu Agaba (rest his soul) would never stop tugging at my uniform until I took his script and gave him mine to hold onto, only making the switch back when I had fully answered every questions on his script! I mean he always did attempt to answer some but that was just what it was - an attempt! the hard part wasn't writing for him, nope! the hard part was trying to make my handwriting appear gigantic and somewhat distorted like nwachukwu's! there were other nwachukwus too but I am sure you get the gist..
This phenomenon (examination malpractice) was not cool as I made it out in my head to be, no it wasn't "an act of kindness" or chivalry or some fancy didactic act I believed it to be- on my part! I was in for a very rude awakening! one that would be both very hunting and daunting..
It was three weeks to first term exams and who but my classmate from primary school gets one of those supplementary admission or whatever it was that made them admit a person three weeks to exams. she was a very welcome sight, by golly she was! didn't know how badly I wanted- needed a familiar face in the midst of a class that had partitioned itself into groups of people that came from the same primary school; ya had folks from nnewi (a not-so-tiny crowd those ones) doing there thing, unashamedly brandishing there nnewi dialect at every turn, and on the political left wing you will find the apparent "elite" students who either had come from the same school in Awka or just knew each other from inter-school academic contest! each group possessing some form of a leader figure that the rest gravitated towards, both not shy to be heard just quite different in content! while one had an air of superiority ridden in apparent show of intelligence about it, the other just seemed deliriously happy to even be in this place, recounting familiar events most of them could relate to by virtue of everyone being next door neighbors whose parents knew each other! the dichotomy was there alright.
some fell through the cracks, some took to "chocorizing" through buying and selling of stories they think might fetch them affection and friendships, me, I just naturally found my crowd, the day students! not that I liked all of them particularly these loud nosy two, but most were alright and some even lowkey very intelligent, I mean chioma okoyeugha (rest her sweet soul) never looked or sounded the part but damn was her brain a marvel! The day students mostly always left class together when school ended and sometimes boarded and alighted buses together too - , it was only a matter of time before some kind of "friendship" or clickism would spring up - just not the type I needed at the time, the type I was about to have with my classmate from Holy Child N/P who had just gained admission. we took to each other like fish to water, me finally having someone from what I consider "home", someone familiar in a setting that was nothing short of intimidating, a place where I clearly wasn't queen and she readily taking all the help I could give to make things easier on her! gleefully showing her around whilst pointing out which building was what! finally someone in this place needed me for something! someone I wasn't intimidated by! not from sky high shoulder awka or loud and proud nnewi, just good ol' fegge. I made my notes available to her and also helped her to copy her notes, we where racing against time and I am not one to see a person only halfway through, I had to throw my full weight in! we became neighbors and managed to grab a locker after what seemed like an eternity of endless trips to the carpenter's workshop! the man would always tell us it wasn't the turn of our class girls to get lockers which was true, it just never seemed to be! the thing naturally morphed into a first-come-first-grab situation and it was bloody. like people literally sustained wounds from the metal parts of the locker in the whole frenzy! looking back now I cant help but cackle! everyone had chosen a "neighbor" and would go with said neighbor to the carpenter's workshop to hustle locker o, madness would erupt when you clearly have your hand on one locker and yelling out for your partner who was MIA, lost in the stampede and some mean girls will come to carry the locker that you suffered a nose bleed for just cause your slug of a partner couldn't fight the crowd! it was a difficult locker to carry alone, (the thing was a twin jointed locker that had sharp edges and metal parts). one time a girl was standing in the middle of the her just acquired locker fending off everybody by herself and these two girls just came, flanked her and started carrying the locker with the girl standing in the center! hian! she held on to her loot o, the girls didn't seem to care, that was how three people started hauling one locker in different directions, it was entertaining sha, students taking sides and giving hot takes on who was right and who wasnt!
My friend and I finally managed to get one! praise be! I mean all this time we've had to haul our books to and from school on our backs trekking from ajasa to sokoto road because that was where we would find the #10 buses! there was a shorter trek route though but the bus fair was #30. we would rather buy this very spicy onion filled pancakes one aunty in main market that always drew elongated black eye pencil and wore metallic blue lipstick sold than pay #30 bus fare( we were both day students at the time). we would lap ourselves sometimes and end up paying #5 each and reward ourselves with soyamilk and chopsy at the tuck shop the next day!
we sat together, went for outside classes together, went home together, came to school together ,it was only natural (or so I thought) that when exam came, I would help her when the need arose! she was no Nwachukwu Agaba (just someone who had three weeks or so to exam to get her shit together) but i was me, always willing and ready to help- I mean what's the damage? well the damage was massive embarrassment that tackled my already intimidated spirits to the ground!
our scripts for visual art exams had just returned and in the usual way most folks were cross checking their answers and exchanging scripts, all that jazz! I see my friend had gotten a correct scoring on an answer I had supplied but I was marked wrong, and I wasn't gonna take it ( it didn't take a prophet to know there was an unspoken fierce competition brewing in the class), we marched off to the visual art studio and fortunately (unfortunately) the teacher was around, I table my case placing both scripts on her desk! she did the needful and remarked my work then boom! she makes a discovery! we had the exact same answers including the theory part. I didn't think it made for any significant trouble - how wrong I was.
EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE!!!!! the words that would go on to become my undoing, my Achilles heel, the dead horse that I would unwillingly dragged around for years to come! I have heard these words before but it hadn't carried the amount of significance I was about to discover it did here, in this new place where I will find myself questioning everything I thought I was or knew.
"so who copied from who?" my visual art teacher asked, I didn't know this tone, it wasn't familiar! what was it? was that an accusatory tone of some perceived crime? ha! in my head I started to analyze the tone and momentarily zoned out till she repeated the question, this time around making sure I got the trajectory things were headed! "aunty I copied from her but not everything" my friend supplied an answer! till this day I try to convince myself that either this woman is a perpetual sadist or is just passionate about discipline and examination malpractice, because the action and reaction that would ensue and linger for months surely seemed exaggerated...I think. I had come in to correct a wrong marking, how did my friend and I end up with our knees on the terribly jagged pot-holed floor of visual art studio crying, snorting and making all sorts of ugly sound people did to exaggerate how sorry we where and how it was just an innocent mistake! between heaving chest and runny nostrils I tried to explain to this woman that my friend didn't resume early and I just wanted to help her this one time but she wasn't buying it! my friend offered to be punished as she alone was the culprit (that was what we believed back where we come from) but the woman blatantly called me mother Theresa, "I know you thought you were helping her but you have to learn a lesson too" we tuned our tears up a notch almost sounding like wailing widows! "ma we have learned our lessons please" "it wont happen again ma"! who? that obiakpo woman? all our tears and drama fell on deaf ears! she seized our scripts and sent us away to class, we left with heads hanging lower than the hang man's noose! felons!
what would follow was weeks and weeks of facing disciplinary panel like the criminals we were! it didn't seem to be nearing an end, each hearing saw my friend and i crying and rolling on the floors of the room in a show of repentance and contrition! "what did you guys do?" our fellow criminals also facing panel would ask! we mostly never answered for fear of the gist getting to our classmates who by the way have started probing us to find out why we were always called out of class during classes!
"we will give you these letters to give your parents, make sure they come with you to school tomorrow" chim o! I thought I knew embarrassment, I was about to unlock an entirely new level! .me, star girl, call who? for what? I was spent! I didn't have it in me to cry or beg that day! we just took the letters and matched off to JSS1 block trying not to draw attention to us or the brown envelopes we held because frankly if someone so much as called my name I would burst a dam of tears! our parents would come the next day, plead our causes to a resounding NO! our fates had been decided! we were to serve lengthy punishments of their choosing and we were to answer when called upon regardless if we were receiving lessons or not! when they feel we have "learnt our lessons" whatever that meant, we will then proceed to writing an apology letter, submitting said letter to the panel for approval and finally reading it in front of the whole school during the Friday general assembly! in other words, we would be paraded in front of our seniors, academic and non academic staff and worse, our peers! something in me died, something I had been fanning vigorously since I got here had finally given up!
for starters, we were made to cut elephant grasses with spikes taller than both my friend and I combined. where was this portion where to cut? next to our class where everyone would see, point, and jeer at us! it is one thing to run a man through with a dagger but to continuously jab the dead man with the dagger is just plain wicked! I mean we got the lesson already, was the humiliation never gonna end? I already fell off my high horse, I have nothing else to give! I have resigned to walking the halls of the place a felon, a fluke, a one-hit wonder!
our punishments were dragged till JSS2 and promptly supervised by our visual art teacher too! we would be called out of class( it was a routine now), sometimes a note would be handed to the teacher in class with our names on it, other times we would be signaled through the window if a teacher wasn't in class! like a clockwork, we already knew the gig( needless to say at this point we had sunken to bottom tier students) and we just went and did whatever it was we where assigned that day! blocked public toilets? consider it unblocked, scooped and scrubbed to perfection! unpaid laborers didn't do this much but we weren't laborers, nope! we were felons who dared not complain! on two occasions, we where made to evacuate the soil washed into the gutter by heavy downpours! we would be provided old cement bags and we would fill them with the soil and stack them onto erosion prone grounds! I wasn't worried about my grades anymore, I had come in 5th or so in the JSS1 first term exams but that was as far as I could keep track of! everything in me was channeled into doing the time for my crime and telling endless lies when asked by my peers why we were always called out of class! when all this was over, I had become someone even I couldn't recognize.
...I tried not to slouch today when I wrote lol! you guys have been nothing short of amazing, I think we are more than 3 doodlers now hehe! my gratitude is never in short supply! love love love you and really hope you like this piece, I think this was a bit lengthy (i am sorry) but I could quite find a way to conclude it that made sense till I arrived at this one.
cheers and happy reading! remember to leave a comment!
