My happy memories growing up are those of the scent of on coming rain, the wind, the swaying palm trees, the falling ripe and unripe mangoes, the haze as the clouds darken and a beautiful sunny afternoon becomes dark as the heavy down pour falls from the heavens.I remember my mum screaming our names to run back home from the neighbours' so we could close the clattering windows of our 3.5 bedroom duplex in Kaduna. We knew to always close the big French Windows in the hall way downstairs and leave the Windows facing east open because the rain wouldn't come in through there. At this time it was expected for NEPA to have shut off the electricity as soon as the clouds began to gather so there wasn't TV and at the time generators weren't even a sound we knew. We had the almighty rechargeable lamps daddy always bought from Alkali road. The maid will be in the kitchen cooking up something that always tasted better than it looked with my baby brother strapped to her back or in his high chair in the kitchen with her. The Aunty at home at the time will be ushering my two sisters and I into the bathroom one after the other to have our evening bath. The water had already been set to the right temperature and the various shouts and big eyed warnings of not to touch the hot water tap came at this time. I and Aliyyah were big girls now so we got to pick what color of pajamas and socks we were going to wear to bed that night. We would bathe, pray and wait for daddy to return from Abuja so we could have dinner and everybody will talk about how their week went. Mine will always be about how I and my friends (names withheld 😂) went to mama Ene to cook indomie before club started or how Malam Sani was screaming down the walkways of Zamani College junior side. The new book I got from the library and how I barely passed another maths test. Aliyyah will be on about how primary school is very hard 😒 and how life wasn't fair because she couldn't watch TV in school. Mummy will be in her room or the bigger sitting room bent over some law books and her thousands of case files writing judgements. The rain will have begun to subside now. The air thick with dust and smell of rotten leaves, manure and wet soil. This is when the two dogs next door will begin their daily marathon across the neighbours compound even scaling the short fence into our back yard. Sadiq is patiently waiting for the electricity to come back on and immediately shouts 'NEPAAAA' when it does. Zainab will be upstairs now begging the in house Aunty for a change of her pajamas (third time that night) because her crayons fell on the leg of her pants. I will be sitting down on my reading table upstairs doing homework beside the window facing the gate so I'm the first to see/hear daddy's black Mercedes and announce it to the whole house. The echoes will then start 'Daddy ya dawo'- 'Daddy is home' and four sets of feet will be running through the house in a frenzy to be the first to choose the Pringles flavor of the week. We all went for sour cream and onion. Mummy will come out of her hiding place and starting giving orders of food placed on the table, a new burner of turaren wuta- incense, should be put in daddy's living room, the one in her living room should be taken out because it's becoming smoky, 'take out the roast from the oven and cut it up'. The king will come in wearing either a long kaftan or short one with his babban riga/ agbada on his arm and his brief case in his hand depending on what meeting he had come out of last. He will be followed with his weekend bag and bags of yam, potatoes, goody bags from amigo and grand square by the security and whoever else is there at the time. He always comes in smiling and everyone will move to him for a hug and a kiss on the cheek with cries of 'daddy sannu da zuwa'. We will have dinner together on some nights, watch news and sleep off in his living room. One by one he will carry us to bed where we will all swear that we took ourselves in the morning as we rush to get dressed for Islamiyya. Our family driver (may he RIP) will always be late so he ends up driving like an F1 driver in the old white Mercedes Benz '94 model which is now blue btw. We will arrive two minutes before the gates close. Islamiyya ended at 12 and saloon was at 2:30 every fourth night for the girls. The boys will go off to Safaha for their hair cut. We always had something to do, somewhere to go during those weekends. If not we would trek down to Bambinos and get popcorn which we will mix into the ice cream and eat together while we bickered and fought. The evenings were spent on fences, making amala with sand and soup with mummy's well gardened flowers or on the guava and mango trees eating up the barely ripe fruits until we got constipated. These are my childhood memories but will my children know this, or even be alive to have this much peace and fun? Will they only know the sounds of gun shots and bombs? Bloody soils and streams? Dead bodies in the street or will they live lives full of fear and insecurity?
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