The room I grew up in was slightly bigger than my kids’ toilet, but not up to the size of my kitchen. No. It wasn’t just my room, It was room for my mother, my 8 siblings, a cousin and another girl my mother brought home from work on a breezy afternoon.
In this little room, we had a bed with a metal frame, a retro room divider where our old wooden TV sat for years, my mother’s wooden wardrobe, a sofa and a refrigerator.
My mother’s dark brown wooden wardrobe tilted towards the bed frame. There was little or no space between the wardrobe, the bedframe and the brick wall. They all worked in harmony, snuggling up tightly. To open the wardrobe, you had to kneel on the bed and push your hand through the metal railings to access my mother’s wardrobe.
Our Room In Picture
This little room had a green colour wall, but through the peelings, you could see a dark blue quote of paint peeping through. The cemented floor had cracks. Sometimes, the cracks in the cemented floor let in rainwater. The door was wooden and it was hard to tell its colour. It had seen splashes of colours over the years. With years of dust and specks of dirt, our door transformed into a unique stronghold.
Our room divider’s components fit the most priced belongings of this little room. The room divider was adjacent to the bed. The bed was central and had witnessed the making and the birthing of many of us.
Our retro television took the largest space on the room divider, then there was the radio and right at the top were piles of my mother’s most priced chinaware. They were as old as I could remember. These chinawares had never been used. But they graced the top of this wooden piece graciously; a minimalist interior decoration.
Our ceiling fan was attached to the roof of our room. My mother told me it was bought just before my birth. The roof had openings. A rat once found its way through the cracks in the roof and landed on the rotating ceiling fan. It got dizzy and lost its hold. It fell right on me and bite hard on my index finger.
We had a window. It sat just above our sofa. We viewed the world through this box-shaped cut in the wall.
The Spaces Inbetween
The space between the sofa and the bed wasn’t up to a full yard. My tall cousin would rest his tall legs on the edge of the bed while sitting on the sofa. The sofa was later replaced with a wooden bench. It had seen better years of usage.
We all had ownership of the fragmented spaces of our tiny room. I had my clothes tucked away at the base of my mother’s wardrobe, the only access to my share of space was under the bed.
My eldest sister was the most privileged of all. She owned one of the few components of our room divider all to herself. She tucked her books, makeup, money and keepsakes neatly away.
Our room wasn’t the only room standing. Next to it were other rooms belonging to other families. An open gutter was a few steps away from the doors. It ran like a stream down to the end. It was unprofessionally built for waste collection.
Sharing The Infrastructure
A communal bathroom and makeshift pit latrine were at the far end. The bathroom stood at the corner not far from the last room on a roll. There were 12 rooms in total. These rooms were built to back each other with rigid cardboard in between.
My room stood alone. A tiny path separated my room from the other rooms. There was a door wedged within the wall of our room. It was oblivious to the visitors because the room divider hid it away perfectly. The door was never open. It led to yet another room.
Most mornings, neighbours queue up to use the bathroom. The bathroom had a door and the door was made out of used metal roofing sheets. Growing up, we heard stories of men peeking at odd times. I was overly conscious when using this bathroom. No free shows for the paedophiles.
I grew up with a bunch of professionals in their own rights. Sessional fruits seller, food vendors, sewing mistresses, carpenters, bus conductors, spiritualists and automobile mechanics were a few of the professions my neighbours held.
They were determined individuals who strived to make ends meet despite the hardship of the time. We found common ground through living together. Each one with his own.
Food: Gracious Food
My mother brought home a stool and we placed our kerosene stove on top of it. Many of our neighbours did the same. Sometimes, we use our indigenous stove: a flat-bottom stove with a carinated wall, fed with dried wood to create heat. This was our kitchen.
I embraced the knowledge that came with this experience. This was where the love of good food manifested itself in me. On the main street, vendors of various kinds hovered around selling food. The night came alive with arrays of delicious foods. The taste of good food was part of my upbringing.
Next to our house was a storey building, “the second house” as we called it. It was old, sturdy and far better than what we called home. I had used it to cover up the shame of where I lived. I had lied that I lived in this one-storeyed house in my teen years. It had many occupants. This was where Iya Paulina sold mouthwatering staple foods.
I have travelled to a few major cities in the world and explored delicious foods in all their glory. In spite of my adventurous and exotic tastes, I still long for the food of my childhood. The aroma and the taste of this woman’s food couldn’t be replaced!
Across The Street
A bus stop named after my street was a few yards away from the place I call home. It was the final stop from downtown. Here, the hoodlums had a community and the use of hard drugs was part of their living. The bus stop was at the centre of the streets which ran in a regular crisscross pattern.
Many shops lined up nearby. Notably among them were shops with loudspeakers promoting the latest music releases. The barber shop and the sewing shops were in view. The stoic blending machine always had people queue up in front of it, people paid the owner to have their vegetables blended.
The water vendors with gallons of water on each shoulder called out; the bus conductors shouted for passengers. Women and their children with trays on their heads hawking; they had a song or two advertising their wares and attracting new customers.
It was never quite on my street. Bickering, fighting, dancing, jesting and laughing were all part of my growth.
The World Outside
The world outside our little room was crowded. A church was not too far away from my room. The church was immediately after the mechanic site. Right in from of my room after the open gutter was the mechanic site; with damaged cars nesting on the engine oil-stained ground. My father’s old car was among the vehicles. In sheer desperation, he had dropped it off for repair, but it ended up being used as a real-life roleplay toy for the children. I remember crawling through the window with my friends pretending to drive.
There were other cars alongside my father’s car: abandoned. Some old cars had seen better days choosing the site for their final resting place. The local mechanics were neighbours living in the community. The church and the church members were like family. We grew up learning the doctrines without any plan in place to learn.
The SeaView
A few yards away was the infamous third mainland bridge. The 10.5m bridge is one of the three bridges connecting Lagos mainland to Lagos island. Under the bridge was the shore of the great Lagoon that lies between Lagos state and the Atlantic Ocean.
The shore closer to my house harbour the Okobaba sawmill, one of the biggest sawmills in Nigeria which contributes over 90 per cent of wood used in the metropolitan city. A crowded bursting place for all activities.
My earliest memory of the sawmill was hawking by the shore of the lagoon, with a tray of goods placed on my little head. Looking back, my experience of hawking food, vegetables and iced water was not something I enjoyed recounting, however, the softness and the cushioned effect of the sawdust stayed with me.
As I write, I remember my bare little feet burying themselves in the moist sawdust, the coolness gave a temporary bliss to the harshness of hawking under the scorching sun. The Okobaba sawmill was noisy. It had hefty machines of all types near the edge of the lagoon cutting and slicing large trunks into timbers and planks. There were packed lorries and trailers not too far away from the machines. And there were men sweating profusely under the heaviness of the planks and timbers they were loading in.
The Making Of Me
I grew up in the little room ashamed of my making. I often compared the fancy world outside this little room and how beautiful it would be to escape its ugliness and shame. My teen years were clouded with the illusion of false dreams and determination to move far away from this little room. Many of my university friends knew nothing about this humble room. I covered it up, I dressed like I wanted to be viewed and learnt all the tricks convincingly.
However, the apple never falls far away from its tree. I crawl back into the warmth of this little room time after time tapping from its wisdom, beauty and lessons. Its warmth radiates humbling of self. The ambience of the room vested in me the emotions of wanting. The lack of sustainability groomed me to be self-sufficient. The simplicity of living and the love of nature are part of my learning. Richness isn’t in material wealth. Poverty is a state of mind. I was fortunate to grow up in the affluence of my little room.
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This is the origin, it can never be Forgotten. Home sweet home indeed.