‘My Parents Thought I was Evil’, Keji, Chess In Slums finalist, tells Neusroom
“The day I left Ibadan, my mother gave me N200 to buy N150 food and bring N50 change. I left the house and never returned.”
I met Keji engrossed in a game of chess. He came second in the Chess in Slums competition under the bridge in Oshodi and had become a sort of a local celebrity. He smiled when I teased him that his second position was befitting, considering his name.
There was something different about Keji. He seemed reserved, and his voice was low, so I had to strain my ear to hear him. His responses were thoughtful, too, as if his small frame bellied a lot of secrets.
Keji could not recall dates and times. He only divided the period into when he was happy and sad. He would refer to specific periods not in years or months but in how he was feeling at that time. He would say: “I remember the period I was with my grandmother and I was happy….”
Early life
“My name is Olajide Morenikeji. I don’t know when I was born, but I think I am 18 years old,” Keji said. Unlike others who came to Oshodi after fleeing home, Keji was already sleeping on the streets of Ibadan before moving to Lagos.
“I did not know my parents growing up. I lived with my grandmother from a tender age, and I only knew my parents from pictures she showed me. According to her, my mother dropped me with her since I was a baby and never came to visit us.”
Keji was registered in school but only attended once in a while. Instead, he spent several hours of the day helping his grandmother sell groundnut and akara. She was the first family member he knew, and he grew to love her. Despite this, however, he still longed for his parents like the other children he knew who either stayed with both or one of their parents.
One day, Keji went to school and left before the end of the day because he was bored. He had lost interest in school and instead found solace on the street. When the teachers could not find him in class, they went around the town to find him among some boys on the street and took him to his grandmother.
“That was the day I told my grandmother that I would like to see my parents. She asked me to sit and told me about my parents and how my mother dropped me in her place shortly after I was born. She then sent for my father to come around. That was the first time I saw him.”
Keji said he was happy when he finally saw his father, and he insisted on following him home to live with him. After much deliberation, his father agreed, and he packed his things and moved in with him.
“I found out when I moved in with my father that my mother was not living with him again, and he had a new wife. My mother, too, had remarried. I did not see her until the day my father’s new wife gave birth, and my mother came around to celebrate with them.
“I liked my mother immediately I saw her, and I again insisted that I wanted to live with her because I did not want to stay with my father again. They both agreed, and I left with her to her new husband’s place.”
Keji met one Alhaji who sold pepper in Lagos in his mother’s place. “He saw me one day and asked me to follow him to Lagos and help him in Ketu market for a small fee. I agreed, and that was how I started to go to Lagos anytime Alhaji needed me.”
Keji’s life took a dramatic turn one day when he overheard his stepfather telling his mother that things had been challenging for him since her son moved in. He described Keji as an evil child who had brought bad luck.
“He did not know I heard him. He told her that since I moved in, he has not been able to get money to pay his child’s school fees. He said life has been difficult and that my ‘leg was not good’. This caused a big fight between them, and my mum moved out. When the family helped them settle the fight, I decided to move out because I did not want to be the reason the two of them would be fighting.”
Keji felt that the only way to stop the fight between the two of them was for him to leave so peace could reign. He left there one day and moved to his grandmother’s house.
“I wanted to go back to school, so I told my uncles and aunts about it to help me, but they said there was nothing they could do. He returned to his mother’s house, and the fight between her and her husband resumed. In frustration, Keji decided to leave.
From the street of Ibadan to the street in Lagos
Keji did not find life on the streets of Ibadan easy. Although he did menial jobs here and there, he always seemed to go hungry because the money he made was small, and it was not enough to survive. After days of hardship, he decided to try his luck in Lagos.
In early 2021, he boarded a bus to Ketu, the only part of Lagos he was familiar with. He started working there, helping people carry their loads from their vehicles to the market. He would also help them carry what was unsold back to their vehicles for a fee in the evening. At night, he would sleep in front of stalls.
“One week after I got there, I saw some boys at Ketu market that I knew. We used to live on the streets of Ibadan together. They asked me what I was doing in Ketu, and I explained to them that I was tired of staying in Ibadan. They told me that Oshodi would offer a better life than the one I was living in Ketu.”
So Keji moved to Oshodi, joining other boys who lived and slept under the bridge. He worked as a conductor and a porter and used the money to eat. When he did not have money, he would borrow from friends until he had enough to pay back. He had selected food sellers that he helped wash plates in exchange for food in dire cases.
But the life he envisaged on the street turned out to be hell. Instead of freedom and opportunity to make money, he was stuck in an endless cycle of a vicious and dangerous life where he sometimes had to beg for money.
It was the rain he feared and worried about the most and having to find a place to hide to avoid being drenched. The night rain was even more unbearable, and he longed for the sanctuary of his mother and grandmother’s house.
“I regretted leaving home. Most nights, I dream about my grandmother and how she must be feeling about my actions. I might just be on my own, and her image will come to my mind. If she knew I was here, she would have come to see me and asked why I fled from home. I miss her.”
Keji decided one day that he was done with life under the bridge in Lagos and told himself that he would leave the following day.
“The day I decided I was done with this life and wanted to return to Ibadan was the day I saw these chess players, and I decided to join them.”
Meeting chess
Keji was already on his way out of Oshodi to Lagos when he spotted the Chess in Slums team. The joy on the faces of the young boys learning the new game drew his attention to it, and he approached them. In a few hours, he was engrossed and wanted to be part of them.
“I did not even think I would know how to play it or even think I would get the second position in the tournament. I just saw that people were happy and I decided to join. Now everyone knows me. If I move around, people know me as the boy who took the chess tournament’s second position. It has brought fame to me.
Keji’s heart is still set to return home despite his newfound joy. His grandmother is one of the reasons why he cannot forget Ibadan.
“I want Nigerians to help me get back home and also to help me apologise to my mother and grandmother. My mother would be disappointed, but I am sure they will be happy to have me back.”
Keji said he would return to his tailoring apprenticeship if he went back to Ibadan, but he is grateful for the opportunity to learn chess and find a little joy somewhere.
“This chess game brought me joy just as it brought happiness to a lot of boys here. However, I still want to go back home because I cannot stop thinking about my grandmother and life under the bridge is not what I thought it would be.”
A few minutes after our conversation, Keji returned and told me he was serious about wanting to leave Oshodi.
“I don’t mind if I have to stay with someone in Lagos, but I want to be staying in a real house and not staying here where rain and sun beat me all the time.”
