GCI found me a new family

I read a piece from Ekundayo Awe (1976), (http://www.gcimuseum.org/content/field-house-blues-abe-and-locker) on his locker experience, and it just brought this smile on my face and made me wish I could turn back the hands of time to experience my one year at GCI like 5 times over. Much as it seemed a "nasty" experience, so is masochism to the masochist: you just can't get enough of the "pain". GCI had an excellent blend of pleasure even in pain.

Let me set aside the bewilderment of finding my properties from Swanston House in as far-land as Grier and being just too astonished to reclaim, and present my own locker experience.

There was a certain mid-term break I returned to school (must have been my second or third and final mid-term break in/at GCI) I came back "loaded" with my goodie-bag bursting. I crammed all my goodies in my locker, married my "t'oko-t'aya", and sealed the union with a nice "dependable" Yeti padlock. I had gotten in early, and my room looked out in the direction of Powell House: this made for easy escape and avoiding "paying taxes". I went AWOL till after dark.

Upon my return, my Yeti padlock had been made an Arsenal FC of: completely decimated most likely by the underdog! My entire goodie-bag had been reduced to a "goodness me! bag". You can imagine what it felt like to stare the next six and half weeks in the face having to "munt". There were no GSM phones then, and it would be faster if I trekked to Lagos to hand-deliver my S. O. S. letter myself than rely on the postal agency/services. There was only one visiting day before close of school term, you know that kinda visiting day one's parents would most likely not come for since one would be coming home on holidays in another 2 weeks after,.....and with a terrible result anyways!

Broken like a Chinese guitar, I sulked myself to sleep. Okay, fine, I cried myself to sleep......only for one senior to creep up at night to try lifting my key strung around my neck as we junior boys of Swanston House did in the days. I just told him between tears I was shedding even in my sleep and dreams he could have the key as there was nothing left. So painful was this experience for a 10/11 year old like me, my mother still remembers like it was yesterday, 37 years after, but all laughing and rolling about it, and worse, teasing the grey-haired baba I have become. Just imagine! I was really a novice.

GCI was my first time away from my parents, and a first time experience on and for so many issues. But one thing was certain: GCI found me a new family added.

By: Fadahunsi Abiola