The Second Path

Chapter 20

NOTE: The town name has been changed from 'Barnawa' to Mansur.

Chapter 20

January 2010. A new decade to celebrate.

Unlike everyone else, my only celebration was that I was back to school. Everything else was grief.

I have been running for 20 minutes now. And guess why? Because I was late for school.

If there was anybody to win a trophy for late comers, it should be me. Coming to school on time was a miracle for me. My house was about 35 minutes walk and no matter how I try to go to school on time, I still end up being late and I find myself on the late comers line during assembly time. And that's why I was the disciplinarian, Mallam Ibrahim's best friend.

Zainab lived close to my house but she was on the lucky side because mama Halimat had a car and she drove her to school every morning before going to work.

I finally got to my school street and it was crowded because both my school and the primary school opposite mine resumed today.

I walked into my school compound and to my surprise, assembly had not yet started. Even though I was ten minutes late for it.

I spotted Mallam Ibrahim by the gate with his long cane, rushing student to get to the flag stand, where our Monday assembly was held. Then he turned around and found me before I could escape him.

"Ah Miriam." He said in surprise, "Happy New year. No cutting of grass today."

"Hallelujah." I waved my hands jokingly and rushed to the assembly side. At least for the second time in history, I was not on the late comers line.

I rushed to get to my class line and immediately stood at the back, even though we were meant to line up according to height. And I was one of the shortest.

The assembly started with the national anthem and then everything else followed.

It has been 20 minutes since we stood under the hot sun for assembly and the principal, Mr Adebayo, was just about to start his speech- which was another extra one hour of hot sun. He was a Yoruba man, the first non-hausa principal we had. The only reason why the school chose him was because they wanted to create 'diversity'.

He started by apologising about the strike and how it was affecting our education. He talked about how there was no inter-house sports this term because of the strike. I could hear most of the senior boys groaning and the juniors cheering because they don't have to suffer under the hot sun, practicing for a match pass that won't add any value to their lives.

As Mr Adebayo continued his speech, he went on to talk about the unnecessary new rules that keeps coming up every new term. And most of the time, instead of talking about the new rules, he goes further to expand the old rules. Most of which had to do with our uniform and appearance.

Our school uniform was the colour of our school flag; white and burgundy red. We wore white long-sleeve button up shirt with a burgundy red collar, and a burgundy red skirt or trouser. Depending on your gender of course- unless you're both. The informality with the uniform was that Junior students wore t-shirt uniform while Seniors wore long-sleeve shirt uniform.

There was one thing I hated about the uniform. We wore berets. It was burgundy red as well and it was compulsory to wear them on Mondays and Wednesdays. The only people that didn't have to wear berets were the Muslim girls, as long as they had either a white or burgundy red hijab on.