I don’t recall how exactly it happened, but I remember I was almost in primary 4 when I finally started to read. It was embarrassing to see that most of my classmates could actually point out the words from the reader but I couldn’t.
It was quite easy for me to cram the whole passage and yell: “Edet lives in Calabar… He is eight years old!”
But ask me to point the word ‘Edet’ and I’d be like “huh?”
Everyone was reading fluently in class, but I wasn’t. Usually, we would submit our notes and textbooks to our form teacher, to preserve them from getting rumpled but one day, I summoned courage and took my reader home. I opened the book and started from unit one, down to the other passages.
I don’t know how the miracle happened, but I just read. At first in my mind, till I opened my mouth and said the words out loud. I was alone in my room. No audience, no classmates to jeer at me and no Aunty to yell ‘Olodo!’ incase I made a mistake. I just pronounced the words anyhow I deemed fit. In fact, I remember vividly, the first time I saw the word ‘tablet’, I pronounced it as ‘table’ with a ‘t’ i.e /teibult.
The first time I saw the word ‘sure,’ I said it was ‘sue.’ That’s what I did for small words oh, you have no idea how I pronounced bigger ones, lol…
I recall in that same class, we were given some work to do in our English workbooks. Typically, we liked to compete amongst ourselves in a common game tagged, ‘First-to-Finish.’ So I hurriedly finished my class work and submitted to the teacher, excited that I had beaten my classmates to it.
I don’t know what went wrong, I don’t even remember what I did wrong. Maybe it was my funny handwriting that got her upset, or I had failed one question. Maybe it was the pent up frustration she had brought with her from home that day, but all I recall was the serious thrashing she gave me.
I remember shrieking, begging her to stop and eventually falling on my knees. I remember how a stroke of the cane landed on my ear, how it peeled off my skin and the dampness of my blood and tears. I remember… That was how she finally got satiated, fulfilled that she had taught me a lesson I would never forget (which I never did anyway.) Honestly, I can’t recollect what I did that got her so furious but I remember the cries of an eight year old girl that was me.
My dad was so mad with rage that he made sure he took me down to school himself the next day. He had rehearsed his lines, how he was going to prosecute my Aunty for what she had done, how he was going to dish out simultaneous slaps on her face with both hands before yelling, “I will slap you!” (Warri style.)
He was well prepared for the beating that he would execute on her; how he was going to create a scene at the assembly and afterwards, withdraw me from the school incase the headmaster was going to make a fuss. He had properly rehearsed and ruminated how it was going to be and I became a little bit scared for my teacher.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, it happened that Aunty did not show up in school that day. Maybe it was her guardian spirit who saved her, but we were told that she’d fallen sick and couldn’t come to work that morning.
It’s hilarious now that I think of it. I remember in JSS 1, our Business Studies teacher used to make us ride ‘Okada’ (if you’ve ever been a typical Naija student, you would know what this means.)
I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s one strenuous punishment where you had to mimic the act of riding a bike, bringing your knees down as if you wanted to stoop.
The grueling effect was that for weeks, your thighs would hurt so bad, you would wobble when you walk and as a result of the strain, you had difficulty trying to do simple tasks like sitting on a chair or your toilet (ah… that one was the worst!) That was what this teacher subjected us to, whenever we failed to draw the ledgers, cash-books, folio and all that crap correctly.
One of the reasons I hate Mathematics with a Passion, (note the the capital ‘P’) is the twisted maths uncle I had back then. Ah…we thought it was a little queer that he showed more interest in the female students but that wasn’t so strange anyway, since the boys did better in the subject than the girls.
He would summon each of the girls privately for lessons and it irked me to discover that he was a ‘hand-rover,’ he couldn’t teach SOHCAHTOA without touching. One time, he tried to snap my bra from behind while pretending to pat my back as a stimulation to boost my morale… Believe me, I’m lying!
While I’m not out here to witch-hunt funny school teachers from my past, I advocate that we also face indirect forms of abuse from the home front as well.
That same year at the conclusion of our JSS 1 first term examinations, I came 2nd.
I dashed home in a frenzy. I didn’t even wait for my dad to come upstairs, I rushed to meet him at the car immediately he came from work and showed him my report card. He took a cursory look and handed the card back to me. I waited to see his excitement… But then came the fireworks.
“Second? Why didn’t you come first?”
I was crushed within but I didn’t know. However, looking back, I realize now, because that was the first and the very last time I would ever come 2nd. That was the highest position I ever took in class, not just because I was dull but I felt there was really no use trying anymore.
What’s my point here? Well in the words of one of the most controversial lecturers I’ve ever met, “we are all child abusers.”
Pause.
No applause.
Whether you used cane or ‘Kpankere’ mercilessly on your child, or you spewed out unprintable vituperatives from your mouth when he did something wrong, you’re a child abuser, yes… you.
It’s not only the pedophiles who are guilty of this, not just those parents who send their kids out in the streets to hawk. Not just that. Child abuse is beyond the faces and phases that we claim to know.
It’s in the gestures, the words that we use to kill the morale of our little ones whenever we scold them: “Idiot! Shebi the people who took first in your class have two heads? Mumu! You don’t know where to drop it abi? Be asking me stupid question… if you like, put the tomatoes on my head…! Can’t you see your mates…when will you ever have sense ehn? Dem swear for you?”
It’s in the fact that some of us refuse to believe that children differ in their abilities. Hence, we push them over the edge when comparing them to their ‘unbeatable’ mates.
It’s in our silly Africaness which believes that any little abnormality or misbehavior with the child is caused by envious village people, so the remedy is to lock our kids up in rooms for deliverance.
I know some of y’all may think I don’t understand, that I’m saying what I don’t know but I’m only asking, wondering where we can actually draw the line.
How can we be cautious of training our kids devoid of harsh words and gestures that could remain negatively imprinted in their memory for life?
How can we refrain from these corporal punishments that mete out physical and psychological marks that would eventually become too difficult to erase?
When I began to show early signs of little rebellion in my teens, my folks immediately swung into action. Looking back, I realize that they were doing what they could to nip it in the bud before I would go haywire. At every stroke of the cane, momma would yell, “it’s either you break or you bend!”
Well, it worked though but when I look at a few marks, I smile ruefully, recounting every story that each scar told.
I laugh at some of these stories and sometimes I find myself still brimming with anger when I replay the scenes in my head and wish they could have given me just one chance to explain myself rather than jumping to conclusions and grabbing the cane.
I look at some of the scars and wonder if I would inflict the same on my children, just because I want to make my point or rather discard that method and risk getting them spoilt.
Something tells me it’s either this way or that. So, the former is the better option. It’s the way we have come to know. Shouting, hurling insults and caning is how we do it, that’s why we are Africans. Yelling ‘Olodo’ and ‘Shaaaame!’ is just the way our teachers can spur us to academic success.
While the intention is good, the execution is terrible but our parents and teachers love us after all. It’s the way it has always been. That’s the way it will remain. It’s just a normal part of growing up and training kids. Remember, if we do not ‘abuse’ our children now, they would become unruly and abuse us tomorrow.
Believe it or not… you and I, we are all child abusers and this is not open for discussion.
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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Tobore is a soul singer, writer and teacher whose themes are mostly inspired the humor of everyday experiences. She loves pizza, adolescents and fiction – in no particular order.
