I grew up in the suburb of Lagos Nigeria in the early 1990s when the imposing clouds of globalization were not as dark and frightening as they are today. As a child, I had no access to such things as the internet, had no access to such things as mobile phones, had no access to electronic toys like the lucky children of the 21st century. To catch fun as a child, the only option available was to mingle and play with the many children crowding the neighbourhood.
After school hours, my friends and I would gather in an open field. We would play football. We would play and build fantastic castles in the sand. We would, sometimes too, build kites and fly them high into the sprawling blue curtains of the sky. At moonlight, we would gather under a coconut tree near my house and listen to folktales from our older brothers and sisters. We lived a communal life.
On a particular night, I was about seven at the time, I noticed that Seye, my closest friend then, was unusually absent. On the next day when I asked Seye where he had been the previous night, he simply smiled and said nothing. However, he asked me to come along with him at nightfall. I was, of course, curious throughout the day, looking forward to the new playground Seye had discovered.
At night fall, I sneaked to Seye's house, where he was already waiting for me. Seye led me to a small plantain plantation a few minutes away from the open field we usually played football during the day. Once there, we joined a distinguished assembly of other notorious boys in the neighbourhood. They had all gathered for one purpose, to smoke, to smoke wrapped paper from old textbooks. I was shocked but I didn't show it. I feared being labelled a bloody coward, so I cooperated.
Shortly our arrival, Seye and about a dozen other boys there present began to take turns to tear up pages from an old textbook on the floor. When everyone of us had grabbed a sheet of paper each, we folded it into long, cylindrical pipe and set the other end ablaze. A ball of flames filled the air. I noticed Seye was smoking like a chimney, flames coming out from every opening in his body.
Nevertheless, that was my first and only night as a smoker. This was because our party was invaded by my mum on the following night. To this very day, I can't tell how she discovered the plantation. We had gathered in the plantation as we did the previous night, to smoke. We had all wrapped up our papers into a cylindrical pipe and was about to set them ablaze when I received a powerful slap on the back of my head. It was my mother. The party came to an end immediately as every boy scampered to safety.
That night, my mother chained me to her bed and beat the little demon that had, to use her own words, possessed me. I screamed on the top of my voice as the cane caressed my body but my mother would not let me go. She made me promise her to never smoke again. At last, she freed me and started weeping. She told me how much she loved me and how smoking at such a tender age had the potential of destroying my future and cutting my life short. I knelt before her and promised never to smoke anything again for the rest of my life.
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