The Day Alcohol Showed Me Shégè (2) – By Tunde Odesola
Without cross-ventilation, the staffroom was a dimly illuminated coven where students were flogged together with their shadows. Painted blue upon crimson baseboard, the staffroom always wears a mean look, like a barracks on coup day.
“Where did you fetch the òdaràn from?” Mr Olukitibi asked the senior students. “School farm, sir,” they chorused. “But I told you to bundle him here like a thief, you fools,” Olukitibi barked, moving pseudo-threateningly towards the seniors who bolted away to their classes giggling.
Turning to me, “Oga, what were you doing on the school farm?” “Reading, sir,” I muttered. “Reading with lizards and birds?” he asked. “No, sir. I was doing personal reading; the library is often noisy, sir.” “Personal reading?” he asked, taking a long cane from the bunch on the floor, trimming off its tiny branches, and exchanging pleasantries with another teacher. Mr Olukitibi was a deft leftie.
I saw my fellow criminals huddled up on their knees in a corner. Without being told, I joined them. The most feared female teachers in the history of Archbishop Aggey Memorial Secondary School were Mrs Ojo and Mrs Esan, both of whom were popularly called Iya Ojo and Iya Esan. But behind their backs, students familiar with moonlight tales of witches and wizards called them ‘àwon ìyá Òsòròngà’. If you think the joint hunt of a lion and a tiger was brutal, the Iya Ojo and Iya Esan combo was more brutal. Iya Ojo and Iya Esan? Dare and die!
Unfortunately, it was Iya Ojo and Iya Esan who sat in judgment over us. They urged Mr Olukitibi to hold his fire, explaining that to serve as a deterrent, it was better to give our flogging the trappings befitting an egúngún festival. “A má gbé eégún léni; we will have an egúngún festival today,” they said.
But before the egúngún festival commenced, Iya Esan sent a student to go and buy a packet of candles. When the candles were brought, she lit one at a time and ordered us to stretch forward the back of our hands, one after the other, tilting the burning candle sideways and making sure the melting hot wax dropped on our fingernails.
I can’t remember how many candles she melted on our fingernails and backhand. But I know we cried as if our anuses were greased with pepper; little did we know our torture had not begun.
Then, Iya Ojo and Iya Esan sent for the most feared male teachers in the school, one after the other. They got Mr Ade Elvis aka Super, Mr Adetunji aka TD Master, Mr Lawal, Mr Akintola, and Mr Olukitibi – for the impending egúngún festival.
Mr Olukitibi was the first egúngún to dance at the market square. I can’t remember how many strokes he gave us each, but he beat us like a bata drummer hammering away at his bata in the shrine of Sàngó. When we thought it was over, Mr Adetunji stepped in and gave us just six strokes each because he was student-friendly. Then came Mr Lawal who beat us with the venom of a snake killer.
Upon sighting Mr Akintola entering the flogging arena, Akeem staggered and fainted as Nigerian politicians faint in court. A little panic rent the air but Mr Akintola motioned that Akeem should be left alone on the floor as he reached for a cane from the bundle and resurrected Akeem, who got up wriggling and shouting, “Mi o daku mo, mo ti ji!” “I’m not fainting again, I have woken up!”
Sharply, Mr Akintola turned to the rest of us – Kunle Adeyoju, Jide Oladimeji, Taliatu Mudashiru, Sunday Oshokhai, Aliu Imoru, Akin and me, asking, “Is there anyone of you who wants to faint?” “No, sir!!” Mr Akintola was handsome with his tribal marks. But his strokes were ugly. I should’ve worn a foam and some T-shirts under my uniform as usual.
That day of karma was the day I knew why Mr Ade Elvis got the name Super. Super was like a father figure; slightly big and no-nonsense. In looks and voice, if Nyesom Wike was Yoruba, Super could’ve passed for his father. Super had a little stammer which aggravated whenever he was aggravated. He enjoyed it when students hailed him as Super!
Super’s cane came with questions and answers. Before he started beating each of us, he asked in Yoruba, “Which brand did you drink? How many bottles did you drink?” He had beaten two or three of us when it got to Akinade’s turn and all hell broke loose!
When Akinade stepped forward, Super, speaking in Yoruba, roared in Wike’s voice, “What beer did you drink!?” “Gulder, sir,” Akinade shivered. G-g-ulder!?!” Super stammered. Vicious strokes rained as he continued his interrogation: “You drink G-gulder, I drink Gulder!? You drink my beer, Gulder!? I d-drink Gulder, you drink G-gulder!?”
Super flew into a rage and he took his cane and Akinade along with him, battering Akinade as he asked him how many bottles he drank, with which mouth did he drink the beer, how did it taste, was it cold or hot? He beat Akin so much that we, his co-criminals, pitied him and thanked our stars we didn’t drink Gulder.
After the festival of flogging, we were marched back into the staffroom, where Iya Ojo and Iya Esan were waiting for us. They ordered us to get under teachers’ tables and stoop down – one person per table. This particular staffroom was peopled by female teachers, most of whom were principalities and powers.
Each of us got under a table to serve our continued sentence while the female teachers got on with their work and idle talk. Death is incomparable to sleep; we were glad that stooping down presented relief, away from the egúngún teachers. We were relieved the bombardment was finally coming to an end, we thought we had triumphed over the proverbial Longe, the dangerous man with a treacherous farm. But we were wrong. Longe’s danger was inescapable.
No sooner had we settled under the tables than we entered into another pot of soup. “Get under the tables and close your eyes,” Iya Ojo ordered us, adding, “You all will serve punishment till the close of school.” If we obeyed Iya Ojo and closed our eyes, we wouldn’t enter into fresh trouble. I must confess, we opened our eyes and saw hell.
Each of us stooped down under the tables with our backs to our teachers, meaning that we, the little rascals, could see one another. Madness hadn’t taken over the fashion world when we were in school. Our teachers wore knee-length clothes and never fed their bodies to the ogling eyes of the world.
But their long skirts and dresses were not long enough to shut out our eyes from seeing panties of different materials – satin, silk and lace – worn by our teachers. “Ha!” “Iku de! Death is here!
So, each student briefly sighted the briefs of the teachers adjacent and opposite to him though not all the teachers sat in exposure. And, we got carried away! We turned what should have been a taboo sighting to ringside viewing until Mr Adetunji, who was passing by on the corridor, saw us!
He stormed into the staffroom and ordered us out. “Ah, Mr Adetunji, o ti to, it’s enough, they have got enough beaten today,” Iya Ojo and Iya Esan, along with other female teachers pleaded. But Mr Adetunji wouldn’t listen. He began with a cane and ended up using his fists like Mike Tyson. He beat us like aso òfì, Yoruba’s iconic cloth.
Unlike when we were flogged for drinking and we wailed like one-testicle fellows, as vicious as Mr Adetunji’s come-back beating was, we didn’t wail because we were afraid that if we wailed, Mr Adetunji might be pushed to spill the beans.
The female teachers begged and begged, but TD Master didn’t budge. He beat us until his watch snapped. We couldn’t cry; we could only be grateful. If he had told the teachers what we did, we would’ve been cast into a lake of fire.
We were very lucky that day because in the morning before darkness fell on us, the Vice-Principal, Mr Adeleye, had come to the staffroom to tell Iya Ojo and Iya Esan not to disclose to the principal, Pa John Olatunji Olowe, the real reason we were being punished. He said the principal would expel us for drinking and no school in Lagos was going to take us.
Sparing the rod or spanking the child: If spanking the child was as effective as its advocacy, I don’t think we would commit a much more grievous offence when we were in the jaws of death. Our rascality highlights the daredevilry that pushes people to push drugs in Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Singapore and Kuwait, not minding their heads being cut.
Like the three-year-old boy recently assaulted at Christ-Mitots School, Ikorodu, many students have had their psyches damaged by high-handed beating and corporal punishment. While I’m not 100% anti-spanking, I seek a synergy between moral suasion and spanking.
Concluded.
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
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