Everything in Life has a Smell
When I was younger my mother would often scowl when she caught me sniffing a slice of bread or a cup of Fanta. I was inquisitive. I wanted to be able to know what everything smelt like even if my eyes were blindfolded.
Everything in life has a smell.
Our nostrils can tell stories of every phase we pass through.
For instance, I know what it smelt like to pass common entrance. I remember eavesdropping on the older people in my family and hearing them say I might have to enroll for primary six because I was too playful. I remember, because I ran into the room and dusted the old copies of Ugo C. Ugo my sisters used years before and went to the family’s study. I did not want to read primary six. And so I remember clearly that passing common entrance smelt like cakes of dust on the old pages of my sisters’ textbooks.
I would find out months later that I had gained admission into Queens Secondary School (Enugu) and University of Nigeria Secondary School. Those weeks smelt of tree trunks, freshly cut and made into lockers. They smelt of yards and yards of materials that came at me from every angle as the measurement for my new uniform was taken by my mother’s tailor in Kenyatta. They smelt of metal, of chains and padlocks, of that rubber key holder that we fastened to our rubber belts, of renovators and new books.
And when I finally made it to senior secondary school, it smelt like an old wardrobe. Me rummaging through my sister’s old drawers till I found her over-sized uniform. Me wearing it around the house, regardless of the fact that school was yet to resume, until my mother threatened to burn it. At school, senior class smelt of old lockers — old stolen lockers from the school hall.
I remember the smell of everything. Mrs Alaribe’s fish pie; the sweetened flour sold to us as butter pie from that blue Pepsi container; the toilets at UNSSEC. I’m not sure but I can almost swear that I know what Rev. Anya’s pinches smelt like. I remember what it smelt like to run away from the toilet in primary school because one idiot decided to start a ridiculous story about ‘madam koi koi’ or ‘Bush baby’. I remember how the fields smelt. I remember how dusty the path leading to the primary and secondary schools used to get during harmattan and I remember what it tasted like to have some of the dust in your mouth. I remember that it was impossible to get through that road without squinting.
And so whenever I pass a street or a person that makes me remember a particular phase, I am grateful that my nostrils learned to tell beautiful stories.
