Two Sides Of A Coin

DAYA

Ungwan Rimi,Kaduna state,Nigeria.

      MARIAM

"Mariam!" My mother called from downstairs.

"Ma,I'm coming". I carried my bag and went down.

"Do you want to be late for school? It's already 7:15, you know the gates are going to be closed by 7:30".

"Mummy you worry too much. It's first week of resumption, nothing will happen and besides I'm in Ss 2 now".

"Ss2 no Ss2, still ki yi sauri ki tafi. Your father sent money for the week into your account, he had to leave early for work".

"I know, he's always busy".

"He's your father Mariam he's trying".

"Bye sai anjima".
There is never a day that my father is not busy, I thought to myself in the car as the driver drove me to school.

Danbo International College, a thirty-forty minute drive from my house. Due to the fact that it was in Barnawa and I lived in Ungwan rimi.
It was the school where you could find the crème dè la crème.

And,the fact that my father worked with oil and gas, it wasn't much of an issue as to why I will also be there with the likes of ministers, senators, directors and commissioners children. Maybe Dangote's child even graduated from there. Who knows?

The school had a strange policy, if you were able to make your WAEC papers, the proprietress will sponsor eighty percent of your schooling to whatever university of choice you wanted. Well the rich people's children couldn't care less about the scholarship but an average student especially financially struggling, would... So the competition is still there.

I looked around the school, senior girls wore blue and white stripped pleated skirts, with white long-sleeved shirts and matching tie with the skirt along with a dark blue blazer to go with it. The junior girls on the other hand wore short-sleeved white shirts and striped pinafore.

The senior boys wore the same thing with the senior girls with trousers, while the junior boys wore short-sleeved shirts without blazers.

I stood and waited by the gate along with our head boy;Lawal. I was the uniform prefect female and I was supposed to stand along with the head-boy, head-girl and the uniform prefect male. Infact virtually all the prefects were to stand at the gate first week of resumption.
Then the following week, all the prefects would follow the prefect daily rooster.

And as usual Yamana; male uniform prefect had not come. Just because he was uniform perfect, he was actually taking the prefect thing to heart.
Yamana and I always quarreled, due to the fact that he was always late and he saw me as someone who wouldn't mind her business about his late coming.

I mean are you serious that's why there is male and female prefect.
Does he expect me to also be checking whether the boys didn't dress well? Habah,they would say am trying to touch them. Perverted children.

So Lawal and I stood by the gate;waiting for late comers and people wearing wrong uniforms respectively. Around 7:35 we closed the gates after giving them five minutes grace. Lawal handled the late comers by giving them punishment of weeding the grass while as for me, I told the girls to not try it again. Yamana on the other hand didn't want that as he told the boys and girls to sweep and mop the staff room.

Well the teachers didn't mind, they temporarily moved to the common room. I didn't want to waste so much time on supervising them so I sent an Ss 1 student to check them. I stopped along the way to my class like I was forgetting something.