Last year at Saint Patrick's

The Return after JAMB

It was the first time you went home after being away for four months, you thought the front view of the house seemed larger and the kitchen smaller but you let go off the thought because you felt that the image of your home was slowly finding its place back into your memory. The last thing you did before leaving in January was to pack your things for school, you packed extra muftis in case you didn't get the opportunity to come back for clothes to wear, extra books to kill off boredom.

Waec result were yet to be released but you were sure that you would get at least three A's and three B's and maybe a C in Mathematics because you never took algebraic equations and logarithm seriously not to mention differentiation that looked like abracadabra in the text books and past questions. It was a good reason that you weren't worried about the missing mathematics past question book.

The only time you ever passed mathematics was first term of SS2, because the teacher made you fall in love with the subject.
He told jokes while he thought and explained equations and his teaching techniques worked for you. You had a C graded for mathematics but you went back to status quo at the next term as the teacher resigned.

You walk into your nearly haphazard bedroom that needed thorough cleaning as your sister was too lazy and spoilt and never cleaned until a day to your arrival. You discover that she had worn all your clothes and left them dirty like she intentionally wore them to play with pigs in the mud. Your own bedroom would give you that strange feeling that came once you come back from school after a long time; like the nostalgic feeling of wanting to hear buckets clang and noise fill the bathroom, people splashing water everywhere and you would have to rush out quickly before your body began to itch you.

For the first time you would wonder what it would feel like to experience another chapter of education without the people you got used to for four years. You will wonder about that feeling of growing apart from you parents—boarding house was a preamble for them but life in campus would be totally different; perhaps you would change, grow a beard, have enough friends and phases that you wouldn't take time to remember that person back in school that confessed their possessive love to you; you will think that you still had a long time to bother about those thoughts because Waec didn't mean it was all over and according to the countdown to graduation calendar you and class mates had crafted you still had approximately 82 days to your valedictory service plus this day that you're writing your Jamb exam which makes it 83 days. You hated that you had to wake up as early as 5:30am for an exam at 8am. Your mother took you and your eight months old sibling strapped behind her back like a knapsack and journeyed to Abeokuta the day before, lodged in Mokland hotel after whiling away time at Sweet Sensation close to Sacred Heart Catholic College Okelewo and watched your sister stretch to the next customer across the table and dipped her hand into the plate of coconut rice he had diverted his attention from because he was engrossed with his phone.

Your mother laughed about it for a long time before she pulled her away from the man's food. The smile over your face faded almost immediately because it wasn't what really bothered you. It was the doubt that lingered around your neck, the exam anxiety.

You've never felt it before and you guessed it was as a result of the stories pumping up in your head about people telling their tales of their own experiences of how their computers would log them out before they even got through half of the questions and how efforts came to vain when results came out. It sacred you but you'd rather have a different tale to tell juniors if they asked and a good score that would boost the cut off mark you desired for the university of first choice to study Law.

The anxiety didn't let you sleep that night and you found yourself still awake at past 2am going through the past questions you had finished before you even commenced Waec. You brushed through everything consisting of McPherson and Richard's constitution, systems of government, brushed quickly through the Christian religious knowledge that past question you had completed and made up your mind to take a little rest to save yourself from brain fag and you slept for one hour and thirty-seven minutes. Your mother's alarm woke you by 6am and you were upset that you had to write an exam as early as 8am, but you didn't know she was saving you an extra one hour to revise things you might've skipped and make necessary adjustments. She caught a taxi and chartered it to take you to your exam center—the national open university, it was close to Kugo market and that was the only nearest landmark you knew as you weren't an indigene nor had you lived there before. By the time you arrived the place was crowded with participants both old and young but what got you agitated a bit was the number of folks in blue uniform and black berets carrying metal detectors about and rudely instructing people to go this way and not that way. You grabbed your exam slip and left your mother after she laid her hands on you with silent prayers and she watched you join the crowd of students that all seemed to be five or six years older than you about to write jamb for the fourth or fifth time. You climbed the stairs to your computer room with a group of people behind, all like young soldiers enlisted for a terrible battle frontline. Obediently you took a seat next to a boy about the same age as you as the man in white shirt instructed and you input your profile and began your exam. You smiled to yourself not because it was the questions were cheap but because you felt like the Holy Spirit had showed the exam questions before you even left that hotel but it wasn't an excuse to misuse the aura you felt; you still took your time to answer questions and cross check and you logged out of an exam you attempted and finished in twenty four minutes. You picked your slip and got away from the hall leaving the supervisor with mouth agape and his face white-washed with surprise that a first timer would confidently finish Jamb within a short time. Even your mother had to check the time and ask you several times if you were sure of the answers you chose and you shrugged easily and said yes with so much certainty. Three days later your result came out and you scored 260. You smiled to yourself and thanked God, at least you had stories to tell about your experience and everything that happened in the hall from the girl who had her exam slated for 7:30am and showed up at past 8am, the one who had sneaked in a phone and the old lady that showed up at the wrong center and a good score to back it up.