By Dapo Thomas
I was playing ‘set’ -a game of football that you play in turns or batches. A ‘set’ is over as soon as one of the two teams has scored the required number of goals ahead of the other- at Paddington when my friend, Ibikunle Euba came to inform me that they were crying in my house. I immediately understood the implication of that having experienced it once in 1971 when my maternal grandpa, Amusa Aroyewun died. His residence at Alapafuja behind Super Cinema, was besieged by wailers of all manner. It was a very sad occurrence because the man was just 60 years old when he died and Iya Okun, his mother, was still alive. My mind raced to Iya Ibadan instantly because as at that time, she was struggling with bouts of malaria. I started crying from the field without getting the details of the scene. Ibikunle who gave me the information was coming to play “set” and only passed by my house. He didn’t bother to know why they were crying. On getting home, I joined them in the sitting room by adding my own crying tempo to the extant room temperature. People were coming in to mourn with us and people were going out after their condolence visits. It was a full house of indigenes and aliens, home owners and tenants, familiar faces and strange entities.
Suddenly, we heard a baby’s blubber from Iya Ibadan’s room. My mother beckoned to me to bring my 7 month -old baby sister, Kafila who was sleeping in Iya Ibadan’s room. As I entered the room, I saw iya Ibadan beside her. I was surprised but I was not shocked. I was not shocked in that I didn’t really know what they meant when they said someone had died. Yes, my maternal grandpa had died in 1971, there was nothing about his death to explain death to me. Rather, his death complicated things for me. After his burial, my mother was mandated by his brothers namely Shamsudeen, Moshood, Fábio, Alan Aroyewun to come and stay with Iya Okun, my maternal great- grandmother. I moved in with her. One day, Iya Okun asked my mother about the whereabouts of her son. My mother replied: ” Won ti lo sí ilu Oyinbo.” So, I held on to that. My understanding was that any dead person had gone to ” ilu Oyinbo.” Therefore, I told iya Ibadan that they said she had gone to “ilu oyinbo “. She didn’t understand my question. She only told me to carry my sister to my mother which I did. This time I became so confused that I didn’t know what was going on and I did know who to ask. I just kept wondering why people were crying because someone had gone to “ilu oyinbo”. My confusion was premised on my ignorance of “ilu Oyinbo”. Meanwhile, I had stopped crying because my idol, iya Ibadan was still with me in the same. She had not gone to “ilu oyinbo”.
There was a mild drama that happened in the house. Baba Mark (Mr Owhin) ,my mother’s previous husband walked into the room shouting : “O gbo Fausa, Sehinde ti ku?” I heard that clearly. What I needed next was to know what that meant. I knew I couldn’t ask anybody in the room. I decided to go to the field to know if there was anybody who knew what it meant when they said someone is dead. One of the guys on the field broke it down for me: “Eni to ba ti ku, o ni ri mo” meaning “once someone is dead, you can never see him again.” When I was talking about”ilu oyinbo “, they made me realize it was a deception. I rushed back to the house to go and cry properly. I still couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t see “Broda mi Sehinde” again. I wept uncontrollably at the thought of it that I wouldn’t see that nice guy again. I rolled on the floor several times because he promised to be visiting myself and iya Ibadan regularly. No wonder iya Ibadan was crying. She didn’t know that I saw her crying. She so much loved him because he was too good, respectful, brilliant and adorable. He was the exact opposite of Late-tua and I . I felt so empty and sad when I kept processing the reality of his death. How come that the one that was breathing a new life into me stopped breathing unexpectedly? How come that the first death in the neighborhood since the Lagos Executive Development Board (LEDB) relocated them from Lagos Island to Surulere in 1956 was from my house ? How come a 16 year-old was the choice of death and not an 88 year-old woman who was not afraid of death? We were all devastated. Iya Ibadan was more distraught. Like any other child of his age, he made promises to his mother. “I will buy you this. I will buy you that”. He was in a hurry to make his mother happy because the suffering was too much for her to bear but he ended up not fulfilling any of those promises. Not because he did not want to but because death stopped him from doing so. What kind of death was this that broke a covenant between a child and his mother by terminating permanently the life of an innocent child at a time he was studying towards the fulfillment of his pledge? At that time, what was the meaning of life to a mother whose only hope of a meaningful life was the child that was doing well when the other two were straying wild.
Seeing how shattered my mother was, I resolved to be very serious with my studies so that my mother wouldn’t wait for long before she would start reaping the reward of her labour on all her children. I made a solemn commitment to take care of our mother as pledged by my brother. The first hurdle to jump was to pass my first school leaving certificate coming up few months after his death. Once I was able to pass that examination, the conductor’s job I was looking for at Benson and Oshinowo Transport Services would definitely be mine. I started working towards the realization of this resolution by reducing considerably activities capable of distracting me from this new commitment. I got closer to Mr Olaoye, showed a new zeal in academic activities, related more with the best guys in my class, shunned gangsterism tendencies and developed a rare capacity for tedious exercises. This new inclination was simply to confront the immediate challenge threatening the survival of the family with the death of its shinning star.
Surprisingly, this sweeping psychological revolution to redirect the destiny of a whole family was also supported by the one and only Late-tua in the universe. He already gained admission into St. Timothy’s College, Onikẹ, Yaba and relocated to Ilelogo Street from Ajegunle where he was living together with my late brother. To reinforce his seriousness, he chose Lola Ogunbiyi, a big area sister living at Ìbùkún Street as his school mother. Aunty Lola was a form three student in the same school and a sister to my classmate and my football friend, Toyin and Sammy Ogunbiyi. To avoid a rekindling of any negative influence and a re-enactment of old habits between us, I had to move to Alapafuja, Shitta to stay with my mother and Iya Okun, my maternal great-grandmother.
My relocation to Shitta almost ended on a tragic note for me same year that my brother died. At exactly 5am on April 2, 1972, the military regime of Gen Yakubu Gowon decided to switch to right hand drive to bring an end to the left hand drive introduced by the British Colonials in the late 19th century. The government argued that since Ghana and French colonies like Benin Republic, Cameroon, Niger, Chad were doing right hand drive, it was in our own interest to switch to right hand to halt the confusion faced by our drivers in the delivery of goods to some of these countries. Though much enlightenment was done before the change, it took a lot of time before people could really get it right. The spate of accidents at the initial stage of the introduction of the new road policy was somehow high. There were so many casualties and I was almost added to the stats when a Vespa bike knocked me down while trying to cross the Akerele road in front of the Abebe mosque . My route had always been taking Abebe mosque through Ogunmola Close, Suenu Street, Sanya or Olumegbon street before negotiating the Western Avenue road. Crossing the Western Avenue road at this time was the most difficult challenge as many people, mostly students from my school, Salvation Army Primary school,Abimbola Shodipe Memorial Primary school, Oyin road and Bishop Howells Memorial Primary school, Hogan Bassey Crescent were knocked down on that road while trying to cross it.
