John was notorious for smash and grabbing provisions from junior students or anyone he could basically obtain. I knew because he had come to my room countless times to obtain my bunk mate Japhet’s provisions multiple times. Japhet almost always cried because his food rations were going down.

Only a handful of people could stand up to John in our block, so I knew having him as a friend or so would give me some form of protection.

There was a week my mother came and visited me, she had brought provisions for me all the way from Warri just so I could be alright.

I was losing a lot of weight back then and she noticed whenever I came back to town, so she started coming out to see me when she could.

I remember on one of our visiting days at school, my mother visited me and brought an abundance of food and provisions. I sat down and ate. When I tasted my mother’s cooking I almost cried, memories of home started flooding my mind, I hated school, but I had to be here.

I remember walking out the hall with my provisions and seeing a lot of eyes staring at my stash, one person I was surprised to see was John, I was beginning to wonder why he was always hanging around the dining hall so much.

He offered me protection going back to the hostel, which I definitely needed, because there were seniors at the entrance of the hostel waiting to dig into everyone’s stash, but John wanted a small portion of my provisions in return for getting everything to my room safely. I agreed and rendezvoused with Japhet and told him the plan, but he warned me to be careful about John.

John kept on his end of the promise and helped bring my stash of provisions straight to my locker. We weren’t allowed provisions and gadgets in the hostel, so we hid them in the ceiling or we took a risk and padlocked them in the lockers next to our bunks.

After paying off John, he made it a bad habit to come to my room every Saturday to come get food from mine/japhet’s locker or whenever he was hungry and didn’t have food. This pattern I didn’t usually mind, but Japhet wasn’t having any of it.

The next time John came, Japhet stood up to him, I remember being on my bunk expecting a confrontation, but it had quickly turned playful after John tried wrestling Japhet for telling him no. It was obvious that he just liked us cause we knew how to save food.

That morning John had come to the room, we were having regular sanitizing so everyone was cleaning up all the corners of the block, everyone was always meant to be doing something or you would get lashed.

I remember not wanting to do anything that particular Saturday, so I walked out the hostel to dispose of the trash that my room had accumulated and then just wondered off into school and away from the hostel. I knew there wasn’t going to be people at school cause everyone was buying sanitizing, all except one person.. or so I thought.

I walked towards the entrance of school hoping to see the ice cream man or any local street food vendor that was passing by. They usually stopped by our school’s gate on weekends. On my way to the gate, I saw a tall figure playing basketball. He was wearing Blue like me, so I knew he was in my faction, but I had never seen him once until that day.

I watched him play basketball for a few mins and asked if I could join in and then he said “why not”. I was so surprised, so shocked, usually the seniors wouldn’t let any of the juniors go near the basketball court while they were playing, so this was new for me. I picked up the basketball and kept catching rebounds for him out of respect. His name was Jason and he was American.

Jason eventually got tired of me catching rebounds and started passing the ball out to me to put up shots, that was the first time I played basketball at that school and it was the beginning of the friendship of Jason and I. It was so peaceful, I forgot I was in school.

Jason was bigger and stronger than John, but John was a year ahead of Jason, so he had Jason beat in terms of the hierarchy. Jason was also a fan of video games and kept talking about he missed his PlayStation. I quickly grew fond of him I couldn’t let him out of my sight.

After a few more mins of basketball, I saw other students walking towards us, they had finishing with sanitizing and everyone was gonna just hang around till lunch time. But it was still quite early in the morning so there was time to kill, I followed Jason back to the hostel and after cleaning up I went to his room.

Jason was a ladies magnet and everytime the pretty girls saw him with me they’d say “what are you doing with that jew guy” and Jason replied “Naaah that’s my boy” he disregarded her remarks and defended me. He felt like an older brother at this point. I stopped hanging out with John and started moving with Jason. This would later become the beginning of new troubles for me.