Nigerian Childhood Days By Funmi James

Nigerian Childhood Days

4 ‘o’ clock was my favorite hour of the day while growing up, why?.. because 4 ‘o’ clock was pink ranger time!.. I would rush home after school lesson which ends by 3:30pm to play pink and yellow ranger with my cousin and kid brother, transforming into pink ranger wasn’t so hard, all I needed was the paper watch my brother and I made and a pink skirt on top of anything I was wearing.

The instrumental of ‘Ise Oluwa’ on Channels tv brings nostalgia, what usually follows after that was news or cartoons, we were more interested in the latter though.

Channels tv at that time was my favorite station, it was like my cartoon network and nickelodeon at the same time. Dazzling my young self with cartoons like Carebears, Ultraman, Voltron, My little pony, Super ted, Scooby doo, Frekazoid, Flintstone, Yogi bear, Rugrats, Simpsons and Power Rangers.

Asides cartoons I can remember using empty cans, sand and water to cook my own delicacies which I usually use my chin to taste, sometimes I add leaves and flowers to the mix just to give the impression of cooking efo riro like my mom. My bestie then was an old brown teddy bear which was usually tied to my back, it was almost as tall as I was, with its one eye and so many holes in it thanks to my kid brother’s experiments.

School time!

Going to school was fun too, I always looked forward to the goody goody, okin biscuit, frunas sweet, the chocolate and milk paste that comes in tiny plates with small spoons, Gogo (that was a common form of m&ms then).

I didn’t like the recitation of multiplication tables in class after morning assembly though, because our proprietress comes to the class to ask us one by one. We get two strokes of her cane if we are not correct. Lunch breaks were fun too, we get to buy food, play suwe and do our swinging competition, although the school serves lunch but its always glued to the bottom of the previous plate.

And how could I forget the Ghanaian teachers we had, they were always teaching pronunciations in their own accent. I remember how my teacher used to condemn and correct our intonation while taking turns to read Chike and the River, Gulliver’s Travel or Oliver Twist in class.

Sadly those days are gone but I like to reminisce as an adult because life was much easier then. The only thing I worried about was my yoyo getting stuck or how to get the tennis ball under my dad’s car. It’s funny how I was so eager to grow up then… now I wish I could go back and pause time a little.