REGISTRATION

1999 was a significant year in my life. After three years of sweating it out with pre-university exams I had finally gotten admission into the University of Nigeria Nsukka. High school wasn’t fun for me because it was an all boys military school so I was very excited about the real world where there were boys and girls and more girls. Infact there were 10 female hostels and 4 male hostels so this was heaven for me.
I was set out to make a great impression of myself as a freshman’s (or Jambite in Nigeria) first day on campus. They just had to notice there was a new bad guy in town. To my upmost dismay my plans were crushed when my over loving mother decided she must follow me to campus on my first day. Oh crap this cannot be happening to me.
Even Lecturers children dont bring their parents to campus, why me mom?
She smiles and answers, I heard theres a rush and I have contacts that can make things easier for you.
Easier for me? I say with disbelief, let me suffer like the rest of them now, this is my first day in campus and you want to hold my hand and take me to school like I’m in kindergarten. Please mom you can’t do this to me.
Don’t be silly, she answers reaching for my cheeks and pulling gently. You should be grateful you have a caring loving mom like me unlike those cultists that their parents never showed them love.
Mom, interrupting her, right now I wish you could hate me , dont worry I wont be a psycho cultist killer you’ve already done a great job raising me.
Are you ashamed of me she ask’s with her piercing blackmailing eyes.
Yes! I yell , if that would stop you from following me. Might as well breast feed me when we get there.
She smiles and says dont worry I’ve got lunch packed come on Obi lets go before we miss our flight.
Hi, my name is Obinwanne Chukwu and I’m reaching you live from University of Nigeria Nsukka. (UNN).It’s my first day in college and I’ve already made history as the first Freshman to bring his Mom for registration. The History department has already put me in their books.This definitely wasn’t my idea of getting noticed but my mom was doing a good job at getting us all the attention I didn’t need. I’m totally screwed because she just can’t remain concealed for long.
I’m playing a game right now called avoid your mom. Some of you might have heard of it. In this game you keep a safe distance from her so she can see you but no one will know she’s with you. Keeping this up was really difficult especially because she knows my name and can yell it out at anytime and she knows how to draw attention to herself. Right now she’s having an argument with some dudes sitting behind me on how Tupac may still be alive, I knew I shouldn’t have left all those magazines lying around.
I’m standing in a long tight queue where its hard to move and everybody is rubbing against each other in the hot Nigerian sun when this hot chic walks up to me and asks if she could stand in front of me thereby jumping the queue.My mind starts running an analysis.. hmm this girls backside was like a shelf. I mean you could place a book on it and read it without the book falling off. The point here is, if she gets in front of me in this tight line we’ll surely get compressed together . I then swallowed hard and without thinking about the vicious impatient people behind me I say why not? you may enter. Immediately she stepped in some punk from behind yells Hey! Would you go back? I turn around and see him walking towards the girl but as I gear up to confront him, my mom steps up between us and asks
Yes? Can I help you ? What has my son done to you?
At that point all eyes were on me and someone on the line yells NWA MUMMY!!! Meaning mummy’s baby in Igbo. Like that people around that vicinity picked it up and started yellin thesame thing with laughter everywhere. I felt like I was in a stdium and a high capacity crowd was yelling at me me. At that moment I started praying seriously for a tsunami to take me away or better still my mom.
I made sure she left that day after collecting my key from the hostel porter. As I walked to my room alone thankfully I recounted what a disaster the day had been. No thanks to my overzealous mom I had to work extra hard to build my rep in this school and I have four years to achieve it. Finally I’m at my room phew need to rest as I try to open the door a sudden stench hits me. Wait whats that, oh crap my room is next to the toilet.