Holidays, Childhood And Nostalgia -By Nafisa Muhammad Dzarma

The end-of-the-year holidays have always been the best vacations. These are the days when family members from different places gather back home. Uncles from here, aunts from there, lots of cousins and relatives whose connections seem too complex to remember. Not that you were never told, but who can recall relationships like the great-grandson of your grandfather’s older brother’s daughter or the daughter of your grandmother’s half-sister’s son? Not me; a relative is a relative, simple.

The days get busy with hunting wild fruits from surrounding trees/shrubs with stones and sticks, storing them in our veils, only to return home to the scolding of our mothers for spoiling our clothes with the gum. We share and eat the fruits of our labor with full delight.

The scorching sun bakes our innocent skin as we run down the stony paths to the river, all the while careful not to spill the snacks we carried along. The cold water is a good respite from the sun as we play in the shallow waters; the deep waters are for the grown-ups who can swim. And by ‘grown-ups,’ I mean anyone with taller limbs than us. The feasting on the snacks comes last.

We make dishes inside large broken spoons and tins until we are in tears from the smoke of the fire meant to keep us warm. I almost set a whole house on fire during such cooking sprees; luckily, it got contained. That didn’t stop us the next day, though.

The nights are the best of them all. During the cold nights, we huddle together in one house, and stories keep us warm. If not, our voices, chanting and clapping, echo through the night’s silence under the bright moonlight. The elders sit close by on tree trunks, picking/peeling something, talking about the days or adult stuff. They get involved if necessary, irrespective of whose child you are, and if you show some disrespect, home you will be sent. It is the worst and most dreaded punishment. The cold nights send everyone in with our hands and feet white from dust.

The cock’s crow in the morning wakes everybody to a new day, with little routine chores teaching us responsibility before our new adventures and explorations begin for the day. It seems never-ending, just as it is so exciting.

It hasn’t been that long, but I see lots of kids these days missing out on such fun; it’s saddening. Those memories are so nostalgic that each year when the cold harmattan air blows, I am reminded of those years and think, ‘Oh, if only I could be a child again!’

Nafisa Muhammad Dzarma, Naphee, is a final year student of Chemistry at Modibbo Adama University, Yola.