Like a bird born in a cage, I thought flying was an illness. I was taught and brought up to believe that anything outside of what I knew or was taught was strange, and that strange was bad. There was a limit to knowledge, and if I did not want to go mad like Adesewa, who peeped while the awo cult was having their ritual procession, or become blind like the affluent Koleosho, who disobeyed Bimbi, the goddess of the land, by going into her shrine that was meant for only women, I knew better than to be inquisitive.
Baami had always preached against curiosity and exploration: leaving the village, going beyond the almost dried-out yellow tree at the river at dusk to fetch water, asking questions, looking into their eyes or the eyes of any older person when they spoke, being around when they talked to people their age or generally above our age, and even going near the new school around the village square. His brief, rotund self always waded through our tiny corridor as he would call out his warning on his way to the farm, and I always wondered why Maami chose to marry him. He never allowed us to work with him on the farm; it was always him and Adebayo, his younger brother. "Farming is not for kids," he would always say, even though the combined ages of myself and my two siblings were two scores, with Adisa, the youngest, being 6.
Maami, on the other hand, was a curious mind like me. One could tell from the look in her eyes when Baami blurted out his dissonance against her questioning him whenever he scolded us for being curious. "They are just kids." She would say it lightly, but Baami’s deep, bellowing voice would bounce around the room like a rubber ball in disagreement, and you would almost think he would soon hit her. She was bullied into silence. She was on her way to the market when this first happened, and like clockwork, it happened every week without fail. Maami got tired of nagging after a long time. She would try sometimes, but you could tell she was a tired tigress. So she supported his thoughts, being the humble, submissive wife she was taught and brought up to be.
Our daily routine included doing housework, such as going to the river to fetch water as soon as the sun rose and returning home to stay with Maami. We played games amongst ourselves, especially ten ten, my favorite. We did not interact with the children of the villagers and did not go beyond the market. Those were forbidden.
"Don’t do what you don’t see me doing or what I don’t teach you. Don’t go where you are not asked to.”
It was their daily mantra. It was our lullaby and our wake-up chant. They said it as often as they breathed.
When the school first started, it was just a poorly constructed thatch-roof shed, barely standing the test of the winds of Ajase town, so much so that it collapsed twice in the first three days. Surrounded by the great Aiye river, it was no news that the winds would be strong around the school, which was quite close to the market square, just a few yards from the river. Some people argued that it was a setup; if the winds did not force them to close up, the noise from the market would have been.
From the market women who laughed at them while selling different commodities—dried panla, fermented locust beans, long healthy, and fresh tubers of yam, clay pots, and salt—to the passerby fishermen who came to the market to deliver their catch of the day to the market women for sale, making fun of the school’s fruitless adventure and questioning the town council’s decision to permit such a thing, Ogbeni Ajadi was undeterred. Some called it sacrilege, and others argued that the gods would not be happy with it and would soon descend upon the town in anger.
When he arrived in town a few months earlier, Ogbeni Ajadi settled in as a trader. He sold yams from his farm, a tiny piece of land by the road that led to the outskirts of the town. At the first town hall meeting he attended, he introduced himself to everyone as a visitor and sojourner. Not many questioned this rather strange man with no ties and no family in the community. The people of Ajase were loving people.
"He is now one of us, as long as he lives in peace and harmony with the people of Ajase," our Kabiyesi, Oba Adeoyo, had said.
He charged the young man to be hardworking and preached the values of the Ajase people to him, to which he promised to adhere and live amiably among them. When asked what his occupation was, he said he was a trader but would love to venture into farming as he had loved watching his father farm while growing up. When no further questions were asked, he asked Kabiyesi to help him start up his farming adventure. Oba Adeoyo was unexpectedly willing to grant him possession of the land, even though everyone in Ajase town knew that it was the hardest part of the town to cultivate due to its aridity.
It was a shock to many when he decided to first plant maize and then yam, and they grew in abundance. Villagers who passed by his farm marveled at the wonder before them. They were convinced that the gods must have decided to specially bless him or that he had a charm he was using to fortify the land. The speculations were many, yet none were true.
When he was not selling yam, Ogbeni Ajadi told everyone about how he went to Oke Aye Teacher Training College. The villagers looked on at him like hypnotized lab rats as he spoke of his teachers, the subjects he took, and spoke English, a language they had never heard of before.
While some thought it was the gods speaking through him and were privileged to be in his sight, Amope, the one who was betrothed to Aremo, the Kabiyesi’s son, aggressively eyeballed him, hissed and called him a fake. In the evenings, Ogbeni Ajadi told long, sometimes amusing stories of his experiences to children whose mothers had lost control of them and who moved around of their own free will in the market square.
I thought children like Taye and Kemi, whom my mother had chastised me for moving with on several occasions, were good children and held wisdom in their tiny heads, even though they were a lot younger than I was. But I liked them and would call them my "aburo."
“Their mother is not in her husband's house, so there is no one to call her to order," she said one sunny afternoon while she was serving our lunch of ila alasepo and amala. Baami nodded in agreement and looked around the room as if scanning for eavesdroppers.
I knew better than to tell her what the situation really was: that it was not their mother’s fault that she was out of her husband's house and that their mother allowed them their freedom, but they had to be back home before the cock embraced the earth. I also wanted to tell her that these children knew their limits and were not troublesome, as against popular belief among the villagers; they just suffered an extension of the ostracizing their mother was experiencing at the hands of her kinsmen and fellow villagers. But if I did not want the back of my mother’s dry, wrinkly hand to find a home on my face, I had to internalize my thoughts and only answer, “Yes, maami.”
The day I went to the market with Bisi, my older sister, and Maami felt like an adventure. We never left the house, and even when we did, it was only to go to the river for water in the morning, which was every other day of the week.
As we moved through the town to the market square, Maami greeted 'en le o’, ‘e kaasan o’, ‘awon ara ile nko?’ to a handful of women. She was more friendly than Baami, but she knew when to move along. She was well aware that the women she greeted were gossips and would stop her to talk about what the child of their neighbor did to their cat and how Kabiyesi saw nothing wrong with it, or how one of the women in the village was having an affair with a married man, and then pretend they did not tell her anything. Maami made sure to avoid all of that, so she simply said hello and quickly went on her way.
We had just gotten to the stall of Iya Oniru, a rather short, wrinkly old woman with a lisp when the new school structure caught my attention. It was nothing like I had seen before in the village, with the tall, yet fat logs of wood that supported the somewhat better-thatched roof, the few palm branches around the structure that stood like guards on watch, and the bare, open floor that the two children sat on. It looked better than the last.
Ogbeni Ajadi had on a pale blue danshiki and a grey-colored sokoto that looked like the sacks we put our dried yam sticks in before taking them to Iya Ola’s stall at the market to break and grind. However, what was most impressive about him was that he continued to teach his students despite the sun beating down on him in the heat of the day.
I looked on curiously as he gestured and spoke softly to the children in front of him. I remembered my father's warnings about going beyond my assigned jurisdiction and trying new things, but I was curious about what Ogbeni Ajadi was telling these kids that held their attention so much. They looked like they enjoyed listening to him, as they mumbled words after him and clapped their tiny hands when he prompted them to.
Maami’s voice brought me back to Iya Oniru’s stall, but Ogbeni Ajadi had seen me and smiled at me. In that instant, I knew I was going to defy Baami and go to Ogbeni Ajadi’s school. Baami’s two-mouthed koboko would crack on my back, and my skin would rise in pain, but at least I would satisfy my curiosity, the one thing he did not want.
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