The first time I knew you had changed shone from your response to the biology teacher’s question: Why is the reproductive system the most interesting topic in Biology? Why are both Intelligence and Stupidity hereditary? You’d not question a question in class.
You, although, were mildly famed at the Junior level when you said, on the assembly that you found football interesting because of the swinging limp cocoon and phallic prints of the players. You participated in the end-of-the-year debate competition at the senior level on the topic, ‘Gentle Act or Fierce Fling: Parenting in the current Twenty-first Century.’ Your conclusion occluded the panel’s larynx. You expostulated on ‘Push Back.’ The principal was befuddled. The head boy thought you read more than enough and your neck could no longer hold your head.
“A lot is infuriating to me,” you remonstrated, emotionally. “Things are not standing well. We need to push back. Enough of the dismissiveness. I am tired of reciting the National Pledge.”
After graduation from secondary school, although our external examination results were not out, yet, your brother, Jefferson said that from grade three, people refused your hand. A Muslim classmate at the computer institute you trained, also, shortly after graduation, said you would attract a demon as a wife if you dine with it. He said the stigma vandalized your penmanship. If not for Mrs. Olorunleke, the Physics teacher, I wouldn’t have known that you had to write a personal note on the vertical DO NOT WRITE margin on the answer booklet of every subject.
“Please consider my handwriting,” you wrote. “My grandfather and some teachers destroyed my handwriting. I was never this. Thank you.”
But if you didn’t write that, would you have failed? I guess not; you were enormously intelligent. Do you remember the day Mrs. Balogun, the most famous English language teacher, ran to rescue her son, Ayomide from that short and plumpy senior student? I’m still benignly stunned to remember that a calm woman was fractured at the knee because of rescue. Mrs. Balogun, very sporadically, ran to rescue her son from this senior student who had wanted a junior student to fetch two buckets and then was resentful that Ayomide lifted the bucket, one after the other, with his favourite hand. She ran after Ayomide reported.
I also flashed back how you were not allowed to grill, slice, chop, or stir in the kitchen during the Home Economics practical classes. There was something astonishingly flourishing about your sinistrality. Was it the energy it birth? Was it the perfection it shook? Was it the chirality it smoothened? In the midst of these, you were still intelligent.
Were you cerebral because of sinistrality? Anyone could be. I also remembered the day you asked the Visual Art teacher, Mr. Wusu, in the drawing and painting practical class, “Excuse me, sir, why are the elders so detested and resentful of the Sinistrals?”
“Pardon?” he asked.
I knew you knew he didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘Sinistrals’. But you deflected and then said that you had forgotten how the question came to your head. You didn’t forget. You felt that he would be embarrassed, and then deduct your marks as a penalty for disgrace. What about Mr. Olorunwa, the Geography teacher who always came to the class, always very early, and instead of teaching the subject, would go round and round telling stories with boring clichéd conclusions: “You have to understand and practice humanity. If not, your sanctimony will make you proud and destroy you.”
Do you also remember that instead of him; to teach on Climate and Applications of Meteorology, he taught us the Ethics of Life: Believe before you pray. Think before you write. Listen before you speak. Try before you quit. Earn before you spend.
Ottun Yetunde raised her hand. “Sir,” she asked, dismissively. “Should we write all these things you said in our Geography note or do you now take another subject?”
What about the investigative research that Gbenga Durotimi, the best graduating student conducted? He traveled to universities in the South-South, South-East, and South-West geopolitical zones of the country. He discovered a massive decrease in the university students’ population by thirty-eight per cent, and twenty-three per cent were among those massacred at the Toll Gate during the protest; the protest against the Black Police on a Black Tuesday. Students, who, many years ago, in their respective primary schools recited the National Pledge with excitement. But now, are in their beautifully charmed graves.
I chose the title of this letter because of your love for drugs. You once said in the class that you wanted to be like Dora Nkem Akunyili, that she was your crush, and the only thing that happened to her and still amazes you, was how she escaped the stray bullets from the bandits and one was eventually found to have pierced her headgear. You were the only students in the pharmacology class, at the Department of Human Anatomy, Faculty of Basic Medical Science, the Federal University of Technology Akure, who read everything about drugs. Only the syrup had Shake Well Before Use written in the encased leaflet. Not even the injection or the infusion.
Now we are adults. After reading your debut novel Skin to Skin, which started with the words “The newly assigned Biology teacher was more honest than the previous.” I then thought that the meaning of ‘Shake Well Before Use’ is to understand the importance of terms and conditions before taking real action. Indeed, you were intelligent. I love you my dear friend – The newly appointed Minister of Education, Communication, and Culture. Hmmm, thirty years later. But I also thought about how this novel will be received and perceived in Nigeria.
Remember that Nigeria is a country of controversy, and even if there are no controversies, they would deliberately create one. I read the New Zealand edition of Skin to Skin. How did you think of such a title? What was the purpose behind this? I had thought how balanced the stories would be until I remembered a scene; the scene of denial, the scene of self-evidently true story denial but who am I to blame Nigerians who are so keen to erase even the most recent history?
Who said it? Who pioneered it that the Sinistrals, the left-handed, the left-preferred beings are worse than the others? Who postulated the theory we all now foolishly live with, that anyone who is right-handed is better than the other? How did we get here? Also, remember what you always told us that we should not compromise our creativity; we should be truthful even if it would take our heads off our necks and your novel reflected that, but I am also trepid about something else. Remember when The President after the Black Tuesday protest at the Toll Gate, a few weeks later, admonished young promising school boys in his ancestral home state that those who studied History and English Language had no potential in the job market but only the sciences, I was stabbed; a furious plunge of stabs all over my body. The President of a country said that. Why? What did he want to gain from that? What was the purpose? A sane society or nation needs the creativity and innovation of both the scientists and the artists. The next move then was to commence my relocation to this place. So, if your novel would be banned because of how fictitiously truthful it is, let us start preparing for your relocation. When Nigerians are ready, they will call for you. And then, a few years later, I was stunned to see your face on the newly appointed ministers. If it wasn’t Skin to Skin, was it your fight for sinistrality? Fictional fight through Skin to Skin.
I’ll be forty-seven in three months and now live in New Zealand. My regards to all the citizens of Nigeria. And if the infamy is still overt in Nigeria, I believe in you to change the narrative. I love you. Extend my greeting to your wife, children, and the Nigerian people.
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Celestine Seyon Reuben, professionally known as Celeyon grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a young and promising Creative, Academic, Research, and Content Writer and Producer, who illuminates the complexities of human experience in works and publications inspired by events in his native Nigeria and Africa. Celeyon explores the intersection of the personal and the public by placing the intimate details of the lives of his characters within the larger social and political forces in contemporary Nigeria and Africa. His work has appeared in various publications including The Triumph Newspaper, Readsy Page, Writers Space Africa Magazine, and his website – Humane Letters From Celeyon. His Story “Anywhere Belle Face” was included in the May 2024 Edition of the Writers Space Africa (WSA) Magazine, themed, Rwanda. His most recent story “Item 7” was shortlisted for the 2024 TWEIN Recreate Contest. Celeyon is currently working on his debut novel and debut short story collection.
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Read – The Smell of Carrion Flowers – A Short Story by Joseph Ikhenoba – Nigeria
