Forgive my little digression from hard-core sports. Instead, enjoy this little story of a particular day in my life. I am 10 years old. I am with several of my age mates playing our daily evening football on the huge open field in front of the Magistrate Court and Police Station, off Sukuwa St, Jos.…Forgive my little digression from hard-core sports. Instead, enjoy this little story of a particular day in my life.
On this fateful day, shortly before the game starts, Lawrence, the shortest boy in our group, but the most streetwise, comes to the football field with a set of new football jerseys. It is the first time any one of us will come close to seeing and using jerseys in our lives, not to talk of brand-new ones.
My father soon comes home and immediately notices the glittering jerseys in the corner. He wonders who owns them. What are they doing in his house?It is ‘our’ team’s new uniform at the football ground.I sense trouble. My explanation, apparently, does not sit well with him. I can still hear his voice as he calmly tells the officer at the desk to detain me until I confess the source of the jerseys I am carrying.The policeman is the most dreaded person in the world of children, and the police station the worst place to go to.
Within one hour, the police station is full. All the players with me living on Yandoka St. and the adjoining streets are brought to the station with their parents, brothers, sisters, dogs, cats, everybody and everything that moves in their houses. The station becomes a beehive of families of crying children. All of this because of 11 jerseys that one of us brought from ‘hell’ for our game that evening.
One of the police men leads me home eventually to my waiting mother and father. They are relieved by the Policeman’s explanation and plea for my pardon.Then he returns with a cane in hand and all my siblings as witnesses to my further humiliation and punishment. Hot tears pour like rain from my eyes. Even my ‘hardened’ mother cannot take it anymore, and begs my father for leniency to allow me get up from my ‘stoop down’ position. He finally obliges her.