Part 3 TheJourney in

I awoke one rainy day to the screams of my mother,there was excrement flowing out of the toilet through the hall and into the living room of her "English Cottage".It was now completely apparent after living there a few weeks that the landlord had contravened every building regulation there was,and the flat was a nicely painted shack.Every time the neighbours flushed their toilet above us,our toilet downstairs overflowed,the smell seeped into the house and buried itself into the walls.This happened on a twice daily basis,my mother begged and pleaded even sending up copious amounts of" waterboy"this was a product used during times of water shortage to hide and deodorise the mess for want of a better word in the toilet,to stop the neighbour flushing her loo until it was fixed .To no avail she continued to flush.My mother was semi-broken at the end of the week, insane amounts of mopping with Izal and bleach had taken its toll on her and she took to her bed with a fever.My dad finally went to see the lady upstairs I snuck up behind him intent on hearing what was said,I heard a few indiscernible words and as I remember she never flushed her toilet again till the piping was fixed.I always wondered what my father had said to her in a few seconds that was so different to what my mother had said to her over the past week.

I was placed in a school called St Saviours but early on found it hard to fit in ,being light skinned made me stand out,I had to work harder, listen harder and was expected to be better in some way,by virtue of skin colour and accent.I had become the latest English mascot for the school and was routinely pointed out when prospective parents came looking for a place for their kids,"Look that's Mandy,our latest child from London."I got a bit fed up with minding my "P's and Q's" and persuaded my mum into transferring me into a more "Nigerian" school.This backfired with my father transferring me into a catholic girls school in Yaba,back to my catholic roots.I had always gone to catholic schools in England and the horrors of my knuckles being rapped on by a ruler came back to me,although this enabled me to read at the age of four which bought me immense pleasure.I prayed these particular nuns were not the violent type,how wrong was I. If you were late for school you were caned.If your uniform was dishevelled,you were caned.If your plaits were not three days fresh,you were caned.My hair had a life of its own so i was routinely caned on that point.

One morning after many screams of "Daddy!Hurry up, if we are late they will beat us oh!"He decided to introduce us to public transport,thus my adventures dragging my five year old brother on to Danfo's and Molues began,and i loved every minute of it.I couldn't quite comprehend how the twelve people waiting at the make-shift bus stop were going to fit into the little yellow Danfo that pulled up,the conductor calling "Yaba!Yaba!" as they screeched to a halt, almost running over the local vulcaniser,always on the prowl for any punctured vehicles.As my father waved us off,my travel route and N3.00 in hand we squeezed into the ramshackle bus,I noticed how intimate the seating was and made myself as small as possible putting my brother on my lap,with the conductor hanging on the outside for dear life,all twelve of us began our journey.Whatever fearful insecurities inside of me faded as I became part of the fabric of humanity on that ride.All of us as one,focused on getting where we needed to go. As the weeks went by I became adept at running after moving buses clambering on at times with my brother on my back,his legs much smaller than mine,sometimes could not meet up to my Olympic runner standards.Before and after school these buses became our second form of education,we were ministered to by various preachers who hopped on and off the buses with mixed messages salvation and freedom in Christ,to eternal damnation for sin.In tandem we observed the principles of pick-pocketing,begging,haggling and the mechanics of fixing a broken fan belt with cheap black electrical tape,majority of the buses we rode in were routinely just patched together,we endured many a ride,observing the road beneath us through a gaping hole. We learned how to be totally independent and street wise,my brother picking up pidgin English and Yoruba well before me and using it to his advantage when haggling over roasted corn,boli or fried akara at our midway palmgrove bus stop.The women so impressed by his skills routinely dashed him extra snacks,whilst pinching his cheeks calling him "fine boy."