Good morning Blogpals. My people Ndewo nu.
It feels like I’ve been away for ever but that’s not true. It’s the beginning of the year, and one needs to write their vision statement down and make it known for what it is they are expecting from God this 2007.
As many of you know I went home for the Christmas and New Year break. I was sort of tired of my cooking, and I wanted to go and really be pampered and feast on my mum’s food. She’s one of those that will keep you awake all night chatting and eating at the same time. You end up having 4 meals a day, plus plenty of snacks in between. And later on she will be the first to tell you, “your fine figure has stared to take a turn for the worse. You know you are a beautiful girl and you need to loose some weight – only a little will do”. So to say when I was growing up in my parent’s home, my weight always fluctuated, and would loose weight when I was away from home. Her food was too good not to eat. It was simply belisimo!!!
It was fun catching up with all my sisters and brothers and to hear that my baby brother – let’s call him ebere – was running a protection commotion at school. Yep you heard it correctly.
Let us start from the beginning. Our neighbourhood is an all white neighbourhood and ebere has always been very tall for his age. Year 7 boys in my high school (which is first year of secondary school) always had their own lavatory room, so that they don’t get bullied by older boys, and they would always have teachers and 6th form prefects monitoring their toilets. When ebere was in year 7, he was never allowed in these toilets unless he had his school book showing his name his year and his form teacher, a form of Id for him, and sometimes he would cry (bless him). All his class mates were significantly shorter than him and the prefects and teachers would never believe ebere was a year 7 student. This carried on throughout year 7.
When they moved to year 8, they were now prime targets to be bullied by older boys, so his friends had a meeting with other boys from the same year and they agreed to ask ebere not only to be their friend but to also protect them. They told him that they would each pay him £2 each day for the honour of standing next to him. Imagine!!! Ebere agreed, he didn’t really care. Every day boys from all over the year would come and pay him money just so that they would hang out with him. The other older boys never came round them whenever they were with ebere, cause not only did he sound like a man, he was built like one too.
My sweet brother would run home every day and give my mum his change to hold for him. Ebere has always had money. I sometimes send him money weekly to charge his cell phone and he has 3 other older sister to give him money apart from me, so my mum never really thought anything of it, because she was ebere savings manager, and at the end of the month, they would go to the bank together and deposit it. So on the second day, my mum felt that the money he was exchanging with her was a little more than normal and felt to ask ebere where the sudden increase in funds was coming from. He subsequently relayed the whole story about how all the boys in his year came to him for protection. After the third day, the sweet boy he was, told them not to pay him anymore for protection and that he would protect them for free. He felt sorry for them and allowed them to hang out with him if they wanted (Imagine – If that was me, I would have made some serious money out of this venture – but that wasn’t his style).
I also think there’s more to the story. Ebere is the only student in his school to have scored top marks consecutively in the years he has been in that school. The school sends out postcards at the end of each semester informing us that he is the top scorer in all of his subjects and that they would like to congratulate him yet again. So I feel that they probably hang out with him to see if there was something they could learn from him (maybe not all of them, but at least some). We as a family have been blessed by him. Not only is he a blessing to his friends and all that know him he is also a delightful and generous Youngman. I think He also gave them back their money (Silly boy!!). He is still growing and acquiring more friends by the day. He is well respected – Imagine that from a young boy.
