CHILD ABUSE!!!

"We say welcooooome! Welcome, welcome, welcome. We say..."

"Alto? I can't hear the alto."

"Welcooooome to you, Mrs. Akintobi. Welcooooooome, welcome, welcome..."

"Girls? Where is ya Soprano? Soprano? Higher!"

"Federal girls are saying welcome, welcome, welcoooooome..."

Mrs. Anah told us to shut up. She said the keys were messed up and our pronunciations were wrong and then she proceeded to correct us using what I would politely refer to as an American accent... Didn't you just hate when people did that? She made us say 'feedril' instead of 'federal'.

It was pathetic.

"We say welcooooome! Welcome, welcome, welcome. We say welcooooome to you, Mrs. Akintobi. Welcooooome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Feedril girls are saying welcoooooome...."

It was very pathetic.

Still, Mrs. Anah told us to shut up again. Evidently something had crawled up and died in her... hmm... you know what! For reasons best known to her, she was just so pissed off. And it was contagious because everyone else was getting pissed off too. Mrs. Akintobi, the minister of education was supposed to be visiting our school that morning at twelve. It was a couple of minutes past one and she still hadn't shown. We'd been singing the 'welcome song' (wonder how they came up with the name...) for the past couple of hours. I hated when the royalties came to our school. Yes, our classes were cancelled for the rest of the day and that was always a good thing but believe me it wasn't worth it. First off, the entire week prior to the visit was almost entirely dedicated to cleaning up the school- Like every other school we did the 'eye service' thing. You know- the school had to be nice and sparkly clean for Mrs. Akintobi. (If that was possible.) Then the assembly before the visit, we were reminded to make our hair neatly, wear proper uniform, proper sandals and yadi yadi ya.

Then on the day of the visit, our classes were cut short and the whole school had to go line up neatly from the main gate. When Mrs. Akintobi's car came, we had to part to make way for her car to go through. And all the teachers started their kiss-Akintobi's-ass competition. Then everyone sang the 'Welcome song.' led by us- the choir (which sucked) and Mrs. Anah (Who sucked even more.) We always sounded like a Kid Rock and Fran Drescher (The Nanny) duet gone wrong! You're probably wondering why I was part of a choir that I thought was so bad. I joined the choir by accident. I'd heard that there was going to be a concert of some sort in F.G.C Enugu and our choir was going. So a few others and I fell prey and joined the school choir. Anything to get out of school. Plus- you never wanted to pass up an opportunity to socialize. After we'd signed up we learnt it had just been a rumor and of course that defeated the whole purpose of joining the damn choir so I decided to leave but no- It was like the friggin' Mafia. Once you were in there was no way out.

Now here I was, pissed off, by a pissed off Mrs. Anah under an equally pissed off sun. Waiting for Mrs. Akintobi to come so that I'd form a neat line according to height with my fellow choristers and lead her to the principal's office dancing tackily- just the way I was too cool to dance. Then while our fellow students were free to go back to dorm, we'd stand outside the principal's window, sweating profusely and dying of thirst but singing softly anyways. And Mrs. Akintobi and our principal would be inside the office making small talk and having drinks and chicken or cake or meatpies... And Mrs. Anah would get confused and keep signaling to us to go higher and lower simultaneously. Then we'd loose whatever little rhythm we'd had in the first place. Finally after forever, Mrs. Akintobi would go and we'd be told to kneel down (still under the boiling Sun.) and then Mrs. Anah would maliciously inform us just how incompetent we were as a choir. Why they could not just quit exploiting us little kids and hook our principal up with a deck of some sort is still beyond me.

If we were really unlucky though, Akintobi would decide to talk to us. She'd give a pretty lengthy speech. She'd talk about the importance of education, the need to be dedicated and determined, the wisdom in taking full advantage of our privileges and all... She'd basically go on and on. Of course, she'd be standing somewhere shaded and we'd still be under the sun... It was going to be a long day.

It had been a long day. Everything had happened just as expected. I was tired and I needed somewhere to unwind. I went to class and got a headache. The whole class was arguing. About whether Left Eye said, "So it ain't like I'm wagging just doing the waggy-waggy" or "So it ain't like I'm bragging just joining my paddy paddy" People were on the verge of drawing blood! It was LOUD! Someone had brought an Ain't 2 proud 2 beg tape and they'd somehow gotten this Idumota spare part assembled tape player from God knows where to verify. The dead duracell batteries that were under the sun getting 'recharged' was the only thing slowing them down. Of course I had very strong opinions about what Left Eye really said but I was so tired that I decided to keep it inside.

I really needed to relax so I headed back to dorm. Immediately my head touched the pillow I was half-asleep but a single sentence later I was wide-awake again.

"Anah's son is sleeping with Temi Johnson."

Huh?

Temi Johnson was in form 2. At most she was twelve years old. I don't know how old Anah's son was but he'd finished high school and had almost made it through University. And he'd probably spent two years in each class in secondary school and at least six years in University before he finally gave it up. So he'd pretty much hit mid-life crisis.

A form six girl had found and read Temi's diary... And Temi had written all her escapades with I.k- Mrs. Anah's son. The boy was just nasty. His physique was zero and facially... he was just... sad. I don't know what Temi could possibly have seen in him. He had these tiny beadish eyes, tiny dry lips that he was always licking... slobbering... ugh! Then he had this massive 'oxygen consumer' nose. Seriously, his face was all nose. Maybe his eyes and mouth weren't so tiny. Maybe it just seemed so cause his nose was so large. Every single time I saw that boy I was genuinely perplexed. Like 'Damn boy, you only need 0.009% of that nose to breathe... the rest is just excess.' And then the way he used to dress. Jewelry everywhere. He used to look like a Christmas tree. Or a pimp's pimp.

Oh and you know what they now say about guys with big noses. That's right- NOSES not feet. I'm not making a mistake- Oh? You don't know? Ok, relax! Let Chikito school you. Bring you up to date. Um... you know what they used to say about guys with big feet? Well, that's what they now say 'bout guys with large noses. No, I ain't playing- I saw the research results on the learning channel!!! Uh-huh... but how I digress...Well, my point is that seeing as Temi was a young, pretty little petite girl and I.k was a big nosed halfway-through-midlife crisis man... it was just sick.

So as Temi was being questioned and pressured for detail, a crowd was rapidly forming. As the story got juicier, the crowd got more and more hyped. Soon, students were putting all the blame on I.k saying Temi was too young and naive. Naive? I thought that was b/s but I decided to follow them to Anah's house anyways. Actually... I guess... I sort of led the way there... I was in the forefront complete with my tree branch. It's funny but most of the ring leaders were school choristers.

We hung around- returning all the insults that Anah had given us earlier that day and demanding that she bring out the child molester who had taken advantage of a twelve year old girl to satisfy his perverse sexual hunger.

And we sang.

"All we are saaaayiiiiiing, bring out I.k!"

Believe me that was the one and only time that choir ever harmonized well. The alto was coming through just right and the soprano was crystal clear. Then we switched to "Give us, give us, give us, give us I.k now. We wanna talk to the molester..." And our harmonizing was still off the hook. We were on a roll, baby! After a while though, it started getting boring. I mean those songs were each a sentence or two long and they weren't exactly Grammy material. Just when we started letting our guard down a bit, there was this huge aggressive wind and I was almost lifted off the ground. So were the hundreds of people beside me. We actually had to hold on to trees to keep from being carried away. It was I.k. He was really mad and he was breathing very fast and heavily... even the trees we were holding on to were swaying to and fro. At first I couldn't even see I.k's face. All I saw was flaring nostrils. It wasn't pretty. And the boy... sorry, man- was waving a cutlass... I was outta there.

I.k charged after us. Right into our dormitories. I don't know how it happened but all of a sudden he had about six other guys with him- In our dorm. He and his friends told all of us to lie down flat on our beds and said that they didn't want to hear a sound from anybody. Honestly, we could have taken them but... they all had cutlasses and no one wanted to make the first move. I know I definitely didn't. After patrolling our dormitories for a while, they finally left. Some girls were still feeling the girl power so they started trying to plan another attack because they just had to revenge for what I.k had done to Temi. Mu a? Should go and fight with a group of cutlass holding touts? See oh? Where do I even know Temi Johnson from? So that my head and body would end up saying peace to each other and flying in different directions? Because I was trying to protect her... what? Rights? Honor? Stupidity? I didn't think so. And many people didn't either so the plan fell through and we just slept off all the excitement.

The next morning, I learnt that Anah's son was asked to leave our school compound and Temi was suspended from boardinghouse for the rest of the term. And that was that. Oh... And a few other ring leaders and I got grass. But hey, what else was new?