Born A Crime Or For Glory? (|) | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
By Gloria M. Ballason (GMB)
One Thursday afternoon, my pregnant mom returned for break from her office. She began to experience birth cramps.
Mummy along with paternal Uncle Ibrahim Ka’ah were staff at Gaskiya Ta-Fi-Kobo (Gaskiya Corporation).
My dad doubled as the secretary of Northern Nigeria Publishing Company (NNPC) and as the private secretary of the Company’s General Manager (GM), Mr. John George Watson, an American national.
The big premises also housed Macmillan Publishers. Those were the three big publishing houses that defined Northern Nigeria’s intellectual landscape.
Mom’s cramps intensified; and so, she was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital, Wusasa. Let’s just say that by the time her colleagues were done for the day, mom had a black chubby baby. She says it was her easiest birth- that is if you take away my big head that I imagine made her push a little harder.
I was named Gloria, Mabeiam. Gloria is the anglicized form of the latin Gloriae (glory, renown, praise, honour). Mabeiam means “In Love”; signifying I was born into love. My mom and dad soon began to call me ‘Woman’ for two different reasons: Mom said most of the pregnant women at the time gave birth to girls. Dad said I represent the essence of womanhood. ‘Woman’ went on to be the most endearing name my parents call me and the identity they have given me.
My earliest memory of life was a day my maternal grandmother came for a visit to our home at the Gaskiya Corporation Quarters which was opposite the institution known as College of Advanced Studies (CAS). Rubbing my eyes from my afternoon nap, I moved towards the parlour to her shrill, firm voice singing to the rhythm of her kim-kim : ‘Ka nyu kyehn miyan nyi jhig a ngha, bunghi munun hwori ngha, nyi jhig kadi taghi o’ (If you have a mind for evil, the day I (God) will return, evil will end).
Our home then housed a minimum of twenty people and usually had more. Students who had no accommodation lived with us. Families who moved into the historic city of Zaria to start off, lived in our house as a transition home. Due to the numbers of people who lived with us, my dad, mom and Uncle Ibrahim Ka’ah pooled their salaries to feed the people. So really, my siblings and I were born into an ubuntu communal living.
One night in 1987, we were saying our night prayers and were singing the hymn ‘Have Courage My Boy to Say No’ when people outside our doors began to run helter-skelter. A neighbor ran into our house, dad tried to keep us all composed through the prayers but it was obvious that something serious was going on outside. I looked up the wall before me, staring back at me was the long-term calendar that endured on our wall which read: ‘This Same Jesus is Coming Back Again. Are You Ready to Meet Him?’ I skimmed off the memories of what I had learnt at family devotions and in Sunday School; I wondered silently if that was the day we would all see Jesus.
We couldn’t round up the prayers. We ran through the back door and there was thick smoke and darkness bellowing from the College of Advanced Studies (CAS) premises.
It was a religious riot. My baby brother, a twin, was only a year old. We had lost his twin sister, Godiva. I was four years old, hemmed in as a second child by an older and younger sister and then my brother. It was the longest, most terrifying night up until then. We made it through the night, but many were not so lucky.
The next morning, dad hobbled us into his KD9223DC blue Volkswagen beetle car. We drove past Nassara Baptist Church, it was burnt. We got to Ahmadu Bello University, Kongo campus, Rev. Dr. Ben Oruma had been beaten and left for dead, the chapel he preached in was razed down. Churches in GRA Sabon-gari and environs were burnt. We would later learn that there was a religious disagreement in Kafanchan which snowballed into a crisis and what happened in Zaria and environs were a reprisal.
The beautiful world I imagined was shattered. Was I born a crime or for glory?
Thankfully, my kindergarten school was everything amazing. My elder sister and I attended Playgroup Nursery School which was a few blocks away from dad and mom’s offices. The proprietress, Mrs. Ogidigbo, was fantastic. She had returned from the overseas and ran a really good school.
The only girl I remember now from kindergarten was Carol. Carol was the life of the party. Everyday she arrived school, we ran out and continued to clap for our mothercare-socks-wearing, Queen Bee. Carol had this tea flask that had an amazing click sound. She was also generous with her Nasco wafers.
We were never hungry and always came to school with variety of snacks. Mrs. Ogidigbo loved baking too, so there was often a generous amount of cake to go round but why Carol caught our fancy, I would never know.
Looking back, that girl was a born mobilizer, or how else would you describe our mass exodus from our tracing, paintings and writings to do oyoyo for Carol?
To be continued.
Ms. Ballason, a lawyer; CEO, House of Justice, can be reached at: gloriaballason@houseofjusticeng.com
