The birds chirped happily and the trees clapped their hands as Moriah, a buxom fourteen year old girl, made her way to school that morning. She was overjoyed that it was a new school term. Her mother had had to curtail her from jumping out of the house at the break of dawn.
"Moriah, you still have to fetch water at the river o!" Mama had reminded her that morning.
"Oh, no!" Moriah had wailed in disappointment. "Can't I fetch it when I come back from school? Today shall be a short one since we only just resumed," Moriah had pleaded with her mother.
Not that she was a lazy child like a few of her mates, rather, she was quite a hardworking child and she had overheard many a mother counseling their lazy children to 'borrow a leaf from Moriah!' It had taken her father's explanation of that maxim for Moriah to understand that the mothers only wanted their children to emulate her good and hard working behaviour.
Moriah was not one to balk at an errand. In fact, she relished it and had even helped her neighbours run errands when her mother did not need her.
"No!" her mother's emphatic answer had broken into her reverie. "You have to go early in the morning, Moriah. The water would still be settled and clean at that time ," Mama had explained further as she had begun the preparations for the day's breakfast.
As quickly as possible, Moriah had taken her earthen water pot and had headed for the river. She had met a few girls in her age grade and they had all gone on to the river in a group, already chatting happily and looking forward to the delights of the new day.
As it was only Moriah that was still going to school among them, she got teased to no end by her friends. Truth is that most of them envied Moriah, whose parents, though quite poor, could still afford to send her to school, being their only child. And, though most of the girls were sent to the local primary school in their village, where only two teachers taught from Levels one to five, their parents had flatly refused to send them to the neighbouring village, where the secondary school was, on the excuse of lack of funds. The girls all knew the 'norm' was for them to be married off to prospective grooms, who were supposed to help 'better their lots in life'. Many of the girls accepted this fate resignedly but only a few, like Moriah, fought it with vehemence.
"Baami has no excuse!" Boye, a smallish-looking but very smart girl among them, had argued once during their playtime. "I am an only child like Moriah too, but he has refused to send me to school! And the head master said that I was brilliant!" she had said sadly.
"Maybe your father does not have enough money," one of her friends had offered.
Boye had hissed angrily. "He cannot tell me that, o! He cannot tell me that! He doesn't have enough money, abi?! Yet, he has enough to use in getting drunk and making a fool of himself in the whole village!" she had said spitefully. Her father, 'Ololade, the repairer', as he was fondly called, was the village drunk who always made a nuisance of himself whenever he got drunk with the local palmwine. He never hesitated to buy drinks for whoever was willing to hail him during his drunken stupors. Boye, his daughter and only child, felt his magnanimity was ill-directed.
Boye's friends had comforted her with endearing words that day, but the atmosphere had been soured as each girl had seen the reflection of her own disappointment mirrored in Boye's embittered outburst. Each had sauntered off to their different homes without as much as a goodbye to their mates.
That very morning of the school resumption, after fetching water in their various water pots, the girls had bathed in the river and had left before more people arrived. Back home, Moriah had swept the compound and hurriedly eaten the meal her mother had made while she had been to the river.
Now on her way to the school, she basked lazily in the early morning sun, not caring that she was running late on the first school day. This session, she would be in Form Two! Form Two! She smiled delightfully as her heart soared in joy! She counted the remaining years on her fingertips, One, two! Two more years and she would be done! She would be done with school! Oh, how she would make her parents proud! She would go to Ake township to look for a job, save enough money to help in furthering her education and send some of the money to her parents too. Then, when she becomes a lawyer, she would help establish her parents in a big way. She would build a state-of-the-art foundry for her father, just like the one their Technology teacher had showed the class the previous term in Form One. And her mother, oh, her dear sweet mother.
That selfless angel God had sent her way. She would open a huge shop where her mother would not be the 'onidiri' again but the one supervising those that would be employed to make hair for others. Moriah dreamed on in careless abandon, a happy smile plastered on her face.
"Ouch!" The sudden jolt shattered Moriah's dream world and she crashed back to earth as her eyes flew open and she starred, horrified, at the girl she had bumped into. The girl's books lay scattered on the ground and she was already bending down to retrieve them.
"Sorry, sorry," Moriah mumbled in apology as she bent to help the girl gather some of the scattered books. Their heads collided in the process and the girl, contrary to Moriah's expectation, burst out in laughter. Her voice was rich and inviting.
"Are you normally this clumsy, or is it the jitters of being in school for the first time?" the girl asked as she straightened up and looked at Moriah quizzically, a playful smile hovering on the corner of her lips.
She accepted the books Moriah had helped her retrieve and looked at Moriah in a friendly way. "Is this your first time in a school?" The girl asked kindly. Though they could easily pass for contemporaries, she was much smaller in stature than Moriah, but she was way smarter, as Moriah had guessed. She also spoke the Queen's English with an accent much different from that of their Form teachers.
