7 7 LONDON HAS SPOKEN

The day London spoke I was in school. I was in a class I really didn't like. It was Arithmetic's class.I didn't like it not because I didn't like figures but because they didn't create as much wonder and imagery in my mind as words did, even though I had learnt to deal with them.

I also didn't like Arithmetic because of the teacher. His name was Mr Ojo. He was a tall man with a bald patch on top of his bushy head. He was old and he was not exactly friendly. Actually, I called him mean. All he did was ask questions after questions and punish you when you didn't give him the correct answers. His punishments were always strokes of the cane. Six strokes on the open palm for the girls and on the buttocks for the boys. None of us liked him, but because we didn't also like the strokes, we were forced to work hard to get the answers to his questions. I would stay up late in the night thinking of what would happen in the class the next day if I didn't get the correct answers to the questions that would be asked. It would make me break out in a sweat and then I would stand up, put on the bedside lamp, pick up my textbook and begin to read through all the notes.

At the time, I never bothered with understanding the calculations behind the problems to solve. I just memorised all I needed. But the more I did it, the more I missed the answers to the questions I was asked because Mr Ojo never asked me the same questions that were in the textbooks. The same questions and answers I had memorised.

One time, when I came home crying and my mum asked me why I was in tears, I told her that Mr Ojo had beaten me because I failed the questions he asked.She hugged me tight and told me how much she loved me. It was a long and tight hug. She sang to me as we stood there while Kompa ran around the kitchen chasing after what only he could see, and my sister sang to herself as she sat at the table with food all over her chin and on the napkin that hung over her chest.

When I stopped crying, my mum sat me down and explained to me what it means to be educated. What it means to understand. What it means to have knowledge.She told me how to look beyond what I saw on the page and see what lies hidden behind the words and the figures. It was very confusing at first until she told me to bring my textbook and open it to a page, which I hadn't read or studied before.

I opened it to one of the last pages; a page I had looked at before which had problems that looked very difficult. They were verbal questions that involved the use of multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. You had to understand what the question was in order for you to know the right formula to apply to get the answer. My mum told me to read the first question. I did. Then she asked me to answer it. I silently stared at the open page for a long time. She asked me to read it again. I did. Then she asked me to read it again. I did.She asked again and I read it again and again and again and again. Then she told me to go to my room and change from my school uniform while still thinking about what I had read and what the question required from me to solve it.

I went to my room, still thinking and repeating the question loudly to myself.

Kompa came with me.

He kept looking up at me as I spoke to myself.

"If it takes one egg, five minutes to boil, how long will it take twenty eggs to boil?"

As I took off my clothes, Kompa jumped on the bed and lay his head down on his paws.

I picked up the clothes my mum had laid out on the bed for me and began getting into them as I repeated the question to myself.

"Can you just get the answer instead of going on and on?" Kompa asked me with a tinge of irritation.

I looked over at him and gave him the side-eye.

"Look at me like that all you want, it won't make you get the answer," he said laughing.

"Can you please keep quiet?" I asked him.

"Can you please stop repeating that question?" he asked me.

"I need to get the answer!"

"Mum says you should think about the question and what it needs to be solved, not to keep repeating the question to yourself."

"But if I don't repeat the question to myself how would I know how to get the answer?"

"Well, if you keep repeating the question to yourself, you won't have time to even think about the answer. You have repeated it enough. Just keep quiet and think."

So, I kept quiet and thought.

When I got back to the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table, which was close to the open window, I was still thinking.

My mum watched me closely as she laid out my lunch in front of me at one side of the table, while my sister sat at the other side of the table making a mess of her food.

"Mum, if I stop repeating the question, would it make me get the answer?" I asked my mum as she sat down to watch me eat.

"Everyone has their own way of solving questions, sweetheart. Now eat."

"Kompa says I should stop speaking and start thinking."

"Kompa doesn't have to go to school and do Arithmetic."

"But he said that is the way to get the answer."

"Have you tried what he said?"

"Yes, I am trying it."

Kompa walked into the kitchen and settled by his food bowl and before he began wolfing down his food, he said in a growl, "You are still talking instead of thinking."

I turned to him and said, "I am asking a question."

"That is still talking. Please stop, and just think." And he began to eat.

I turned back to my mum, she was smiling as she looked at me and then at Kompa, before she said, "You look so funny speaking to a dog and behaving like it speaks to you."

"He does."

My sister began to laugh but didn't say anything. I looked over at her and gave her my side-eye. It was a warning. She knew the look and fell silent.

"Eat your food, and then we will solve that question," my mum ordered.

I ate and later on, as I sat down beside my mum and thought through the question again, I began to ask my own questions.

"Mum, so will all the eggs be in one pot?"

"Yes, they should be. Won't you put them all in one pot if you were to boil them yourself?"

"Yes, I will."

"Great."

And I thought some more.

"If it is five minutes for one egg, and it is in the same pot of water, with the other eggs boiling, then the hot water must be cooking all of them together as one, right?"

"Yes," my mum responded, smiling.

I thought again for a moment, then I slowly whispered, not too sure of myself, "That means they should all boil at the same time, right?"

"You think so?"

I nodded.

"Is that multiplication, addition, division or subtraction?"

I hesitated for a moment, then whispered, "Multiplication."

"You multiply what by what?" my mum asked.

"Five minutes by one egg, because all the eggs are now acting as one because they are all in the same pot together. So, five minutes multiplied by one is five minutes."

"Is that your final answer?" my mum asked with a frown on her face.

I nodded.

"Correct!" my mum said as she began to clap loudly.

For a moment, I was surprised that I got the answer correctly and looked at my mum in confusion before I asked her, "Did I get it?"

"Yes, you did my love. If it takes five minutes for one egg to boil, it will take twenty eggs five minutes to boil."

"Yaaaay!" I screamed, jumped up and began to run around the kitchen.

My mum and my sister laughed at me, and Kompa totally ignored me as he drank from his water bowl.

That day, I began to get an understanding of Arithmetic and lost most of my fear of Mr Ojo.I could think through whatever problem I saw by repeating it to myself and looking beyond what was on the page to get what was truly required to find the answer. I could understand the relationship between figures and words and how to apply my multiplication, addition, division, and subtraction.

The day that London spoke, I answered an Arithmetic question that no one else in the class could answer and Mr Ojo told the whole class to clap for me as he stood smiling at me. It was the kind of smile my mum and dad had when I did something that made them truly proud of me. For the first time, I realised that Mr Ojo wasn't really a mean man; he was just a man that wanted me to understand my Arithmetic.

I was very proud of myself and later that day, I was smiling broadly as I stood at the school gate waiting for my dad to pick me up. There were other boys and girls playing around me, but I kept to myself. It was as though I was now older than them all. More grown-up. My mum having become a star, my sister being ill and the need for me to be a match made me feel like I had too much responsibility to attend to rather than spend my time on the things children do. I felt like I was an adult.

When my dad's car finally pulled up and I ran to it with my school bag on my back and lunch box in my hand, all I wanted to do was tell him all that happened in Mr Ojo's Arithmetic class. I did that even before I shut the door behind me.

"Dad, guess what?'

He looked over at me.

There was no smile.

I could see it very plainly; the deep sadness in his eyes. He looked like he had been crying.

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"Where is Boom Boom?" I asked.

I was gripped by fear, and every bit of the story I had wanted to tell him about Mr Ojo's class had suddenly disappeared from my head.

"She is at home," he responded solemnly.

Eghe Boom Boom closed earlier from her own school, and my dad would sometimes pick her up, go shopping and then pick me up, but sometimes, he would drop her at home before coming to pick me up. This was his new routine ever since my mum became a star in the sky. Before then, it was my mum who did the drop-off and pick off, and then when she first left us, my aunty did it while my dad hung around the house with a broken heart. But when he began to smile again, he took over doing everything for us. It was as though he was afraid that he would lose us too.

I looked at him as he sat staring at me.

"Dad, were you crying?" I asked him.

He nodded.

"Why?"

He was quiet for a moment, then he let out a loud breath before he said, with all the sadness in the world, "Osaik, you are not a match."

My heart suddenly felt heavy, and a deep sadness started in my stomach and rushed up my chest, up my throat, and exploded out of my mouth in a loud cry.

"Noooooooo!"