EWEJE: RUNNING FROM PARENT INTO GOD'S ARMS

#pastorbiodunsoretire

 The aspect I found most interesting in his speech was that we would be boarding. 

Whaoh! I've never been a boarder all through my education thus far. Here is my golden opportunity to have a taste of the pudding. I grabbed it with both hands. A life away from parent! My curiosity had the better of me. And I got Mama Sho, that is, my mother, informed. Of course, my longing for freedom away from her was edited out of my presentation. Thank God, she had no objection.

God worked in mysterious ways! I went to Eweje looking for freedom from parental encumbrances. But He had a better deal for me.

Eweje was an experience indeed. It will need another memoir to recount that side of my life. But I will have to stay with the brief of this memoir. I was a nominal Christian for the greater part of Eweje episode. I lived my Goje life of student fun to the fullest within the first four or five months of our pilgrimage. 

Being together as students in a dormitory all through the day and night could not promise anything less. The experience was better than the one I could have had in a secondary school boarding house. Here, there was no housemaster, no light out and no other signs of externally regimented life. Apart from lecture and agric practical periods, we were f-r-e-e!

It was in short some sort of a tertiary hostel. We fended for ourselves, food and cooking inclusive. And that comes at times with "kre" moments: moments of short or stall in supply as my pastor will call it. And we were very creative in managing such situations. 

Have you ever heard of jollof Eba? It was there I came across and got involved in its preparation and consumption. The recipe is simple. Just put ground, grated or cut pepper (any pepper will do) in a pot of water. Add palm oil, salt and diced onion if that is available. Heat the concoction to boiling. It is time to put your gaari and turn it to a cream. Yours sincerely, there you are with jollof Eba ready to be taken without meat or soup. But please, eat it while still fresh and hot. At times, when we get buoyant, courtesy of fresh supply from the headquarters, Mama Sho in my own case, our pots get a feel of soup.

And as for animal protein, we don't go too far. It is either "tapa-titan" or "mortal". I will explain before you crucify me for using foreign lingo from the Mars. "Tapa-titan" is the "technical" jargon for the head and legs of chicken which have been cut off from the chicken sold or supplied to eateries and hotels. We were there as the waste management agents to mop up the head and legs into our pot at "shikini" money. But, "Mortal" is the senior of "Tapa-titan". These are the chickens that have just freshly died from the poultry around. We were always on time to take delivery of them at a ridiculously reduced price. Whatever killed the bird is none of our business. Even if it is bird flu. Let it go and be explaining itself to the boiling water if it can. Whenever we "jam" such luck, it will be festivities for us and our pot. We tried inventing another animal protein from the abundance of strange sounding, smelling and looking bats living between the roof and ceiling of our dormitory. The adventure was a failure. Those bats tasted horrible, just like their sound, sight and smell.

The only aspect of Eweje life I hated was the "face your arable" part. Cutting grass or clearing farm would never come easy for me considering my build and background. Even if suburban, I had lived in the city all the while.

Eweje life sped on with speed, to be cut short three months to go with an admission offered me by Ogun State Polytechnic. But it was not meant to end uneventful with respect to my spiritual life.

All along, a man usually came to our dormitory to spend long hours with us discussing football and politics. He was so versed in many fields that one could be tempted to label him a living encyclopaedia. We called him Booda Tunji. That was all I would have known about him but for two or so months to packing my bags and baggage out of Eweje when I discovered this was my destiny helper in waiting. 

Booda Tunji was neither a football analyst nor a politician. Here was the committed and word-of-God-rich pastor of the only Pentecostal church in the immediate neighbourhood using one of the school's deserted dormitories for their services. It was an interesting discovery as I sat with my mouth agape watching the hitherto football analyst ministered as a guest minister in a church where many of us students had been invited to for this their special programme.

The sleeping born-again giant in me instantly awoke. Indeed, the deep would definitely call unto the deep. Automatically, I gave his church a try. And that was it. My spiritual life has found a breeding ground. In no time the divine destiny that has brought Booda Tunji and I together transformed our togetherness into a mentor-mentee relationship. And so it is till date.