The Space About Us

 I sit in the bus, staring through the hazy window, on a journey from Awka (where I had just concluded my National Youth Service Corps) to the capital city of the Eastern Heartland, Owerri. The whooshing sound made as we drive through houses and trees that seem to be apparently moving sweeps a dense feeling of nostalgia and mixed emotions all over me.  I journey to its far depths in my head and what fills my thoughts next is a picture of a nine year old me in primary four, who is apprehensive about writing First school leaving and Common entrance examinations because I had stumbled upon a "Tabansi Christian Religious Knowledge book 6" written in tiny, congested fonts, with uncoloured pictures of old people and lots of dates. The exams suddenly feel like a living nightmare. The thought of the burden of having to read and cram all that for just one subject!  and a lot more other subjects make me worried sick.  Those were also the times when I had not really grasped the...