by Kester Onyemaechi
Let me take you back in time
My friends always wondered why I have no pictures of myself as a kid, I did actually have one, but is one really enough to quench the undying thirst of friends who wanted to see where this fella is coming from? I guess not.
When I was young, like way young, I mean…. When my mom was delivered of me, I had locks on my head. Dreadlocks. Real ones. They weren’t the regular ones you find on Yoruba children in white garment churches, no, they were locked or let’s say…. intertwined.
I had just four of them, one on the front, another on the back and two on the side (all on my head of course lol).
My mom would say “you could see each stand tracing it’s way back to the root of the mother lock”, just four locks. It was so annoying they always wanted it removed, but how do you cut the hair of a baby? After all, it’s still a baby, ain’t it? Haha
Not just any baby, one that came out as a glutton. (yeah, it’s not my fault, it’s natural).
She said there was this “filling bottle” they use in those days that was massively big. Let me give an outstanding description “it has a wooden cover”, you don’t know it? Ask your mom abeg… I could finish up food in that bottle at once and still be asking for more…
But I digress.
Well to cut the long story short, just few weeks after my first birthday, they cut the hair.
I became really sick… very sick, talk about a Samson kind of child. “thou shalt not cut the locks of his head” *in a heavenly voice* ��. a special child.
But for a sick child, I didn’t reduce my eating rate. Even the amount of food I ate increased. From 1 bottle for breakfast to 3…��
It sometimes was encouraging, that much the amount of money spent on a sick child was actually for the food and not the drugs. You’d wonder if he was actually health sick or food sick.
*fast forward*
It’s a little over 20 years now, and the boy is still kicking. Currently a student of the great University of Benin in my penultimate year, the struggle has not been easy, but I believe in overcoming.
This entry was submitted as part of the Nigerian Voices competition organized by YNaija.com.
We publish, un-edited, Nigerians telling the stories of their everyday lives. Read all the narratives daily on the Nigerian Voices vertical. You can also contribute your own story titled ‘Nigerian Voices’ to [email protected]
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