Strike The Shepherd (80s IBADAN)
Uche and I were kids in the children’s department of the church. The Church we both attended was a part of the Nigerian Baptist Convention and was ultimately a reflection of its inheritance of the (American) Southern Baptist Convention’s religious practices. While other denominations, such as the Anglican communion, referred to where kids assembled on Sundays as Sunday school, Baptists referred to it as the Children’s department.
All the kids in the church, till about JSS3, were expected to report here while service went on in the adult church. Children were divided by age grades into classes, and the classes were assigned teachers whose responsibility was to conduct the service for the kids. These classes also doubled as classrooms for the Church’s primary school, except that the individual desks were moved behind the chairs and the chairs were arranged in a semicircle. This arrangement had the teacher in the middle, usually with the boys in one section and the girls in the other.
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Uche and I had enough knowledge of the bible to last a lifetime, so we felt no need to listen in class. Exchanging funny glances and laughter was our stock in trade while our teacher tried her best to complete the lesson plan. Our teacher (Mrs Durojaiye) soon realised that the Pastor’s son (me) and the Deacon’s son (Uche) had little interest in her mission of converting our young souls to the Lord. As time passed, we began to recruit other classmates into our mild laughter sessions unti our teacher realised that the spiritual seriousness of our parents had not rubbed off on us. It dawned on her that her work would be made easier if Uche and I were not sitting beside each other.
One fateful Sunday, she doled out the greatest punishment known to boykind at the time by making me go sit among the girls. It became a fulfilment of the prophecy spoken to Prophet Zechariah in the 13th Chapter and the 7th verse – “Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will scatter”. Peace and calm descended on the class as the noisemakers were split up and the ring leader sent into exile.
