After Church Olympics (80s-90s IBADAN)
While Deacon Clement Ojeh was in meetings after service, Mrs Olusola Ojeh was also caught up in meetings with the teachers of the Children’s department. These teachers often prayed and held weekly reviews of all their activities in the small auditorium. With all the adults busy, Uche and the rest of us had our own “meetings” with the football or with the table-tennis egg.
Our field was right in front of the Pastorium, where members parked their cars, but it often became available once the cars were gone. If we were not playing soccer, we were breaking flat pieces of wood into two. The flat pieces of wood were used in place of the table tennis bat, while a long piece of bamboo and 2 supporting stones served as the dividing net. Sundays were fun – play music in church, exchange stories about movies and play sports. Little did we know that our Sunday soccer Olympics were to be cut short.
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After a few Sundays of raucous sporting encounters, Uche showed up and said something about his mum saying that we were to keep the Sabbath day holy. Keeping the Sabbath day “holy” meant that football was no longer to be played. I was shocked that football was not on the heavenly list of approved activities on Sundays. It was shocking to me because my parents were supposed to be higher on the spiritual hierarchy, but had not informed me of this divine ordinance. We stopped playing soccer and stuck to table tennis.
For some reason, there were no ecclesiastical complaints about table tennis. Years later, I realized that the noise levels we produced with table tennis, a two-player game, were much less than Soccer, a sport which could have 10 children playing at a time.
