“One Heart”

If you grew up in Onitsha (maybe even anywhere in the east), and you didn’t go to any of the ‘tush’ private schools, you’d be familiar with the phrase, ofu obi.

I’m about to recount two events. One person especially holds the stories together. She was the youngest and smallest in the class all through our junior secondary days. And she went to Deeper Life, so her standards weren’t like ours. For the sake of this post, I’d call her Vivian.

Act I

Nzu in English is Calabash Clay/Chalk. To be frank, I just googled that sh** right now. But for those who don’t know, it’s this chalk that people eat.

One girl in our class would bring lots of nzu to school and we’d all jump on it. Some would chew, some would lick, while some would grind it, put a pinch in their mouths, and puff it out like smoke. We were balling then; living the good life.

One day, the vice-principal walked in on us. The thing about nzu is that you cannot chop and clean mouth. It will show. Every one of us had our mouths painted white like Nollywood dibias.

So she kept asking questions and arrived at the point where she wanted to know who brought the nzu to class. We all denied knowing. I was one of the first people she asked, and I told her I just saw nzu and ate. She left me.

All the other people that refused to give her a name, she took them out to punish them. Vivian was one of them. By the time they returned, the others were angry. They took their share of the whooping, but Vivian couldn’t, so she spilled.

Our nzu plug was punished severely. I wasn’t angry at all because I wasn’t flogged. So I had no right to be.

Act II

This happened months or even a year after the other incident.

One of our seniors walked her silly self into our class one afternoon and asked Vivian to write the names of noisemakers. She must have been bored that afternoon because the last time we did that rubbish was in primary school.

But when she left, we turned around to see Vivian happily tearing out a sheet of paper. She actually wanted to write names. That was when the whole class turned against her and remembered all the times that she screwed up.

I didn’t hold back either. I gave her a piece of my mind. I wasn’t one to make noise normally, but I kept shouting and made sure that my name was the first one she wrote. Everyone was really pissed.

Hours after, the senior came for her names. To our utmost surprise, Vivian told her there was no list, and that everyone was quiet. It was like a movie; we had all watched her fill up her pages with names.

The senior threatened to make Vivian take the punishment for all the offenders, but she stood her ground till the very last second.

When it became obvious that the senior was going to flog her, I sprang up and claimed that all the noise she heard came from me and that she should flog me instead.

I hadn’t even finished speaking, and three others joined me. Another three followed. Then it was the whole class.

She saw the smiles on our faces and knew that we had won no matter what. No amount of strokes could break us at that point. We’d spend the rest of the day laughing and celebrating our victory.

So, she gave us the speech: ‘You people are doing ofu obi for me. Bla bla bla.’ And eventually, she let us be without laying a finger on any of us.

If she was any smart, the only way she could have broken us was if she had flogged Vivian and no one else. That would have left us sad, angry, and feeling like we betrayed one of our own.

Maybe she knew, but admired our stance. I really can’t say.

The Practice

Ofu obi in English means one heart. It is a rule that protects the individual by putting everyone together in difficult situations. It served as the only power we had as kids against the adults.

Now, there’s the question of what is morally right or wrong, and I may not be able to answer that.

But I feel stories like this deserve to be told, for these little things determine who we turn out to be as adults.