My friends and family often say I have a photographic memory. They may be right. Twenty-five years ago I walked through the gates of Federal Government Academy Suleja, in far away Niger state, Northern Nigeria (FEDACAD for short) for my secondary education and I remember that day like the back of my hands. Most of my life’s memories are etched there. I was young, innocent and guileless at the time. I learnt obedience, respect and attention to details there. It was also there that I learnt to be naughty. The world had just turned the millennium, democracy had just been birthed in Nigeria, and kerosene lanterns were still very much in vogue when I arrived in Suleja, 14 hours from Owerri.

My dream of going to FEDACAD (also called ‘Gifted Children’) was simply wishful; the sort of things you say to yourself to put yourself to sleep. There was a family tradition of not venturing too far from home for school and I wasn’t about to be the exception. Only two years earlier, my older brother was denied the ‘luxury’ of attending boarding school in Federal Government College Port Harcourt, just two hours from Owerri and here was I dreaming of going a whole day’s trip away. How dare I?

But it happened. I wrote the Gifted Children entrance exam in primary 6 dutifully, more than any other reason. I knew I won’t be going to the school even if I passed. It turned out to be one of the most difficult exams I’ve ever written all my life (perhaps after my Obstetrics and Gynecology final exam in medical school). I recall sometime in SS3 we came across our quantitative reasoning question paper. It took hours of brain racking by the Math gurus before Chidera Ibe (now an Architect) eventually cracked it. That’s how tough the exam we sat 6 years earlier was.

I had resumed JSS1 in Government College Owerri (a school famous for many reasons) and accepted I would be spending the rest of my time there. In fact I had forgotten I wrote the Gifted exam. The result is usually released sometime halfway into the 2nd term of JSS1 by which time we would have already resumed in other schools. I recall bumping into Mr Nwakamma, my Physical Education instructor in Alvan primary school, on my way to Government College one bright morning. He informed me I had a letter waiting in the Headmistress’s office (there was no phone or email in those days). I thanked him and thought nothing of it. After school, I walked back to Alvan from Government College and picked up the letter.

At home, I delivered it to my mum, nonchalantly. She opened it, read it and screamed. I wasn’t sure why. My Mum has always believed in me (even more than I do in myself). She beamed with pride and told me I’d passed the entrance exam into Gifted Children (it was a big feat then). I wasn’t as elated. What was the point, since I won’t be allowed to attend. She looked at me with a ‘leave it with me’ eye, took my Dad into their bedroom and locked the door. Looking back now, that’s what I would call a closed door session, and it only happened when important matters were to be discussed. Half an hour later, she emerged. Victorious! Then my elation began. A dream come true.

That same afternoon, we went to Eke Onunwa, Owerri’s main market. We bought a travelling box and a ‘Ghana-must-go‘ bag, singlets and hangers, cabin biscuit and milk, exercise books and pens, you name it. I got packed the same night. My Dad had already sent word to my grandfather in the village that I will be going far away, to ‘ugwu Awusa’ (northern Nigeria) for school. The next morning we bought tickets for Chisco Transport’s night bus to Abuja. In the evening, my father called me to the dining area and gave me my first ever father-to-son pep talk. It was emotional. He told me not to disappoint the family. I assured him I won’t. He told me he was only letting me go because he trusts me. I nodded. Later on in the bedroom, my older brother told me to make sure no girl performed better than me in class, because if it were him he wouldn’t allow that. I told him to be rest assured.

I left that night with my mum. My father dropped us off at Chisco bus park. I remember looking out of the bus as we about to leave and saw him waving. I waved back. I didn’t feel a thing and I wondered why people cried when they were leaving home. I was totally preoccupied with the adventures of boarding school that lay ahead, having just read One Week One Trouble and Eze Goes to School. Exciting times ahead.

We arrived Abuja in the early hours of the morning and spent the next few hours in the park waiting for daylight. By mid morning we crammed ourselves into another bus that took us to Suleja, about an hour’s trip. We did some more shopping at Suleja market, picking up mandatory items like hoe, rake and cutlass, those kind of things that makes one wonder whether they are resuming at a farm or in a secondary school. From there we took a taxi to the school.

We arrived around midday. I wasn’t impressed. I expected a posh school with tall, elegant buildings. I met an unfenced, massive expanse of land (three times the size of most Nigerian universities), with tired bungalows and cows grazing the fields. Was this the school they said Babangida built? I told myself the finer buildings were hidden further down. I noticed the well trimmed lawns, a characteristic of FEDACAD. We walked the long distance to the administrative block and started the registration process, where they checked my hoes and cutlasses and rakes were complete.

We met an Igbo woman (I can’t recall her name now) in the admin block. My mum entrusted me to her care but she said she had many people under her care already but if I had any problems I should let her know. Then we met a ‘senior boy’ who had just walked into the office, Senior Chimobi Ibekwe, coincidentally in the same Red house as myself. My mum asked if I could be his ‘school son’ (she attended a boarding secondary school herself, so she knew how these things worked). We got a similar reply that his hands were full (and they really were. He was campaigning to become the next Red house captain at the time). As fate will have it, another senior boy overheard the conversation and walked over. He said he was willing to take me as his school son. He was Idoma from Benue state. And that’s how my lifelong friendship with senior Joseph Odoh (O-Jonz) started. I was to serve as one of his grooms men at his wedding 16 years later.

My Mum hugged me, waved goodbye and left. I walked away and didn’t look back. I was taken to my class, JSS1C and my life as a FEDACADian officially began (I still couldn’t find any tall, elegant buildings to my utter disappointment). I met my new classmates; people from Bayelsa to Zamfara. That was my first shock. Call it cultural. Hitherto I was only used to having people from Mbaise, or Ngor Okpala, or Awo Idemmili as classmates. Here I had people from Kafanchan to Gboko to Okitipupa and Biu. It was my first time seeing what a Fulani looked like, with their fair skin, slim face and long nose. And then I had to get used to the names; Summaiyah, Surraiyah, Abdallah. It was no longer Chuwkuebuka, Chisom or Udemba. I heard people speak Hausa, the original Hausa from the horse’s mouth and it sounded nice. I sat down quietly in my allocated seat, feeling very lost. I still didn’t think about home, neither did I miss it.

After classes we went to the dining hall for lunch. 10 people sat across 2 benches with a long table in between. Food was dished from a pot into 10 waiting plates by deftly combining two forks into a serving spoon. I watched in awe. It was probably a rice and stew day or an eba and soup day, I can’t remember. After lunch we went to the hostel for siesta. Senior Joseph took me to his room (room 5 by your right, red house) and introduced me to the roommates; Senior Ndahiri Watafua (Bazmo) SS3, Senior Joshua Aigbirior (SS2) who I recently met at work after 22 years, Senior Chukwudi Okafor (Kokane) SS1, Senior Chinweuba Ezeigwe SS1, Senior Uzoma Nwaelewa (Malewa) JSS2 and Senior Chigozie can’t-remember-his-surname (Gote) JSS2. Esi Omonokhua was the other JSS1 student who had just resumed a week or two before me. I was given a top locker (an overhead space) and he (Senior Joseph) helped me unpack. Then he settled me into my bed space in the outer corner (the inner corner was for the big boys).

After what was supposed to be siesta (nobody actually sleeps), the bell sounded for afternoon prep and I left for my first prep. This is the part that made me write this memoir. I remember sitting on a stool at the very back of the class, using the slab on the wall as my desk and staring into the thick bush that bordered the class. Suddenly the thought of home hit me, finally. I thought about my parents, my siblings, my friends, Lazarus street Akwakuma, and my life in Owerri and became very emotional. For the first time and what would be the beginning of a very long and tempestuous journey, I felt home sick. One of my classmates walked over to me, Charles Amabaowei. He must have noticed something was wrong for I looked lost and dejected. He introduced himself and asked my name and where I was from. Then he asked what the problem was. I tried to speak with words, but instead communicated with tears. I felt something rising in my chest, then forming a lump in my throat. I cried and cried. He consoled me and expressed his empathy saying he went through the same and it was transient. I was inconsolable. I began to regret coming this far away from home. I cried till the end of prep then went back to the hostel to prepare for evening games.

After games we returned to the hostel to prepare for dinner. Everyone assembled in the central courtyard with their buckets of water, took off their clothes and started having their bath. Poor me, I stood there flummoxed, staring at 50 naked boys! I felt dizzy. Senior Joseph came to my rescue and got me sorted. After that we had dinner (must have been watery beans and garri) and then night prep.

The crying continued for a very long time. I think my tears eventually dried up in SS1 first term (nobody knows this). I cried whenever I was alone. The tears flowed endlessly. After I’d navigated those difficult early stages and settled in fully (thanks to Cherechi Ndukwe, my classmate and friend-turned-brother, whose help was immense) I went on to have the best time of my life in that desert land of northern Nigeria. When I went home at the end of the term, my mum told me she’d waited for another hour at the admin block after I left thinking I might come back to her crying. This is just the story of my first day in FEDACAD. I will need a whole book to write about my entire time there. It was too adventurous to be covered in one article.