Chapter 1

Running Away from the House

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” – African Proverb

The Two Worlds

My first escape wasn’t metaphoric. It was real.

I ran away from home in Warri—twice—while still in primary school. I can still remember the pounding of my feet on the red earth, my small body trembling not from exhaustion but from the terror that lived in my house. The house wasn’t merely dysfunctional—it was dangerous.

My father possessed brilliant sparks, but his tormenting demons often took over. He would spiral into bouts of rage, mostly fuelled by alcohol. A chain-smoker and pool addict, he turned our evenings into a roulette of pain. The sharp smell of Benson and Hedges, the interminable pouring of beer, and the haunting echoes of midnight arguments became our nightly lullabies. He’d wake me at ungodly hours to buy more alcohol. I was barely ten.

Some nights, his rage would turn on his wife—my first stepmother. Their fights were legendary and terrifying. I’d stand between them, a child mediator, pushing back his hands closing in to strike while pleading with her to drop the knife. I had no training for this role—only a broken heart and a desperate desire for peace.

From Adored to Abandoned

To understand how I ended up in this house, we must go back to the beginning. I was born out of wedlock. My parents met in Warri, where my mother was serving tea to my father—then a University of Benin intern at Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). I like to say that “he drank more than tea,” and my mother conceived. He rejected the pregnancy and demanded she have an abortion. She was living with her aunt at the time—her mother was in Sapele. When my late grand aunt heard about the situation, she told my mother to inform my father that he didn’t have to accept the pregnancy, but they would keep the child. In their family, they didn’t throw away children. Years later, whenever my father praised my progress, my maternal relatives would smirk, saying, “This is a child he wanted to abort.”

Because of these circumstances, my early years were filled with compensatory love. I became the darling of my mother’s multigenerational family home. Relatives competed to have me sleep in their rooms. Every school morning, I would go from an aunt to an uncle collecting multiple lunch monies. During breaks, I would buy food—bread and butter, fried yam, and fried fish—for classmates, attracting a bevy of students who clustered around me like admirers around a politician. I was on top of the world—a boy with clout and influence, the undisputed leader of the pack. At Cavegina Primary School in Warri, a popular public school, I strutted with the confidence of a child who knew nothing but adoration. At home, I enjoyed special privileges: whenever food was ready, I had to be the first to eat, and I had to serve myself. If someone else dared take food before me, I would refuse to eat altogether. Once, during a fight, I struck a peer’s head with a stone. He bled. Furious relatives descended on our house seeking justice, but my uncles threatened them until they retreated. Looking back, I see how dangerously spoilt I’d become.

Everything changed when I was six. My mother decided to marry. Her suitor made it clear: I couldn’t come with her. She accepted and summoned my father to take me. That first rejection would haunt me for years. Ironically, the stone that was rejected would later become the cornerstone of something greater.

Moving in with my father was traumatic. I experienced the polar opposite of my former life. Every request brought pain and beatings. No one explained that this stern, distant man was my father—I would only discover that much later.