On 12 May 1996, I was knocked down by a car, along the Abuja-Keffi expressway, in Mararaba, Nasarawa state, Nigeria. I was just five years old, a small boy whose fingers almost always hung in my mama's. Nigerians call this 'mummy's handbag'; of course I was.
I remember in bits: it was immediately after Sunday service; we were standing by the road, waiting for it to be empty, we were ready to cross over to the other side.
'I will cross o,' I joked. Of course, the reply was a scream from my mother and other people around, 'No, no cross o!' But I was impatient; I just wanted to be the first to cross the road. Something new to try, you know. It has always been the nature of childhood to play with everything, to win over something, to assume everything must taste like your favourite chocolate.
The things that followed were: boom! Screeches, shouts of Jesus, etc.
I was right under the car, small me. Nobody understood how I left my mama's hand. Nobody understood why. Nobody understood why an accident will happen on a Sunday. Nobody.
I heard the shouts and cries. But I can't detail everything that happened. I woke up in the midst of people praying for me at the nearby hospital. Thankfully, a hospital was just by the junction of that road — an old hospital close to the famous mosque near the highway in Mararaba. (A google map search can help show you the site — that site of my death and life.)
These are some of the few things I remember about that day. Others are that, I was bedridden for over a year. No school, no plays; just hospital smell and food and surgeries and prayers and help from people. Some lessons this history has gifted me:
1. The driver that knocked me down became a friend of the family. This shows me the possibility of gold coming out of whatever situations we find ourselves — friendship is golden, and it came.
"It is perhaps one reason they say I am effeminate and carry a body that sings blues and juju and makosa and offbeats."
2. I became famous. Fellow Sunday school members got to know me, friends of mum and dad also became my friends. My name was in the mouth of everyone. Not gossip, but some words of hope for me, for my future. Of course it wouldn't have