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"Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong." The time Prefect rang the bell along the veranda. The proverbial saying "saved by the bell" came to life in this instance, for the bell brought joy to the ears of hundreds of students in each classroom. It was closing time, and each student hurriedly packed their books in their bags. Unlike other kids in my classroom, I was impassive to the sound of the ringing bell. To me, the closing bell is just a transition from one part of the school to the other. Yes, it is close for all schooling activities for the day and to move to the dormitory.
I was sitting in my seat as I watched the other five- to six-year-old kids in Primary One, waiting for someone to pick them up; some had older siblings in the higher class who would take them home, and some were waiting for someone from home to pick them up. I began to daydream about home; it had been months since I visited home, weeks since I last saw my dad, and even months since I last saw my mom. Right there in my seat, I felt lonely and sad; I couldn't experience the joy the old kids were having about having to go home.
"If only I could go home," I said to myself. I left the classroom and went to the field facing the school gate. The school gate was a beehive of activities; I watched my classmates leave with their loved ones. I stood there and began to fantasize about the road home every time my dad came to take me home.
"I could go home and perhaps I could see Dad once again," I thought to myself.
I began moving towards the gate; I noticed few kids were allowed to move out on their own because they lived near the school. I decided to join the throng of students making their way to the gate. My uniform was a bit distinct from theirs to mark the day students from the boarding students, but the closer I got to the gate, I realized nobody seemed to pay attention to me, even the gatekeepers. Maybe it was because I was unusually tall for my age range, but I didn't care about anything at the moment other than going home as I walked past the gate.
I got to the main road; I could breathe the freedom I had always fantasized about, and now it was time to go home. But there was a complication: I thought I knew the way, but when I got to a crossroads and I didn't know the way forward anymore, I didn't know whether to move to the left or right.
I was so confused that I decided to use the children's counting-out rhyme, "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe." It fell on the right, and I began to walk. The farther I walked, the more I began to realize I didn't know the way home at all. I walked for hours in the school uniform, and it was already getting late in the evening.
I got stopped by a group of women who asked me who I was and where I was going. "I told them I was going home." By this time I was already far from home, and I was moving in the opposite direction from home. The women told me to sit as they called other people in the neighbourhood in case any of them knew me. But no one knew me, and during this period only a few had mobile phones in the country, and I also didn't even know my dad's mobile phone number. The night came, and I was taken to one of the community women leaders' homes, and I slept there.
In a twist of fate, my dad went to my school that evening to visit me. He sat in the visitor's lodge in the dormitory while the other kids went to look for me.
They ran about the dormitory, shouting, "Ife, your daddy is here."
Soon, the younger and older students went around the whole dormitory, asking about my whereabouts, but nobody knew where I was.
The dorm manager became aware, and the owner of the school was put on notice. The school proprietress came to deliver the sad news to my dad, "Sir, we can't find your son."
My dad was angry and sad; he couldn't believe this news. The whole school was searched, and nobody could find me. It dawned on everyone that I was missing; it was discovered that I attended class on Friday, and it must have been Friday afternoon that I went missing.
My dad informed people in our neighborhood, while the school made a missing child report at the police station. Since my dad was then working in a media company, he decided to go to work to make a report so it could be made into the news.
I, on the other hand, was still in the house of the women's leader, where I slept crying about wanting to go home or back to school. I was treated well there, but I was so far from home that no one there knew the school my school uniform represented. I sat in the front of the house, thinking how my dad would come and soon take me home. But with time passing, I realized this might not happen, and I began to cry.
It was already late in the afternoon of Saturday, and a visitor came to the house to visit the owners of the house—my now host. As luck would have it, the visitor was a friend of my dad's, as his workshop is very close to our house. He noticed me sitting on the porch; he told the homeowners that he knew me and where my school was.
They took me back to school and reported to the police that I was found. My dad was already on his way to work to make a report after a sleepless night when he received a call that I had been found.
Calm returned to the school afterwards, but the gatekeepers were fired, and the security apparatus of the school was improved; also, the distinction between day and boarding students was made more evident. To this day I still remember how my daydream of wanting to go home by myself caused a lot of trouble and pain for the school and my parents.
