Mama Joy was something of a legend to everyone who attended Federal Government College Ugwolawo (FGCU).
MJ, she was called.
She was a legend for various reasons. There were those to whom she was something of a myth; an urban legend…scratch that. She was more of a rural legend because Ugwolawo was a village nestled at the foot of a hill deep in the heart of Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi state. But I digress.
To some others she was part of the big adventure that made up the six years they spent in FGCU.
I was somewhere in between these two.
I could never really quite make up my mind about whether she was a good or bad part of the overall experience of being a student in FGCU. Looking back now, after all these years, I think Mama Joy was like those bacteria in the human digestive system which were inherently good and beneficial but could also kill you if the slightest thing went wrong.
Who was Mama Joy you ask? And what made her such a legend?
She ran a Buka on the outskirts of town famous for its Akpu. I honestly cannot remember if she even sold any other meals. She probably did, but her Akpu had something of the stuff legends are made of.
I went to MJ for the first time in my first term in Ugwolawo. I have Idoko Amana a.k.a Venom to thank for that.
It was an exhilaratingly terrifying experience (I’m not sure that expression makes any sense. Lol). You see, the thing was this. We were boarders and to get to MJ, we had to break bounds. This was never a problem for anyone with just the right dose of bravery because as my Geography teacher put it, “There are well over a hundred illegal entry and exit points in and out of this school, and those are just the ones we know about”. However, to break bounds as a first year junior student was taboo. So even though I was excited to be going to MJ, I was terrified of what could happen to me if some random senior student decided Idoko didn’t have enough cred to grant me protection. Being caught by a teacher and possibly expelled was second on my list of worries. We really were in our own little Sicily back then.
I had been eating MJ for quite a while. Whenever I went to Idoko’s hostel to see him, I was almost sure to meet him unwrapping some Akpu. On this particular day he wasn't. So I had asked him if he would be going to MJ that day. I was in my hostel wear (a green and white chequered shirt) and was shocked when he asked me to take off my shirt. At first I thought I had overstepped some boundary I didn’t know about and I was going to get brushed (slang word for a serious beating). Maybe I had been disrespectful in asking him if he would be going to MJ and he was going to teach me respect. Kinda like when Don Maroni takes Penguin upstate to “see a guy about a thing” in the Gotham TV show. If you are a fan of Batman in any form and you haven’t seen Gotham…I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, there I was with my mind racing, trying to figure out what I had done wrong when he laughs and tosses a black tee shirt lying on his bunk bed at me.
”Put that on”, he says, “We are going to MJ”.
I never went to MJ again till my last year in school, after my set had rioted, set a few buildings ablaze and could do pretty much anything they wanted. But over the next couple of years, I would always find someone who was willing to help me buy take out from MJ.
A lot of students were expelled for breaking bounds to patronize Mama Joy and even more were suspended or got punished in one form or the other. But no matter how many gutters were dug or acres of grass cut as punishment, hundreds of students still dreamt of the day they would become seniors so they could finally thread the hallowed paths that led to MJ.
The second senior boarding house master during my time in FGCU seemed to have sworn an oath to completely abolish the MJ culture. I heard stories of him laying ambush along bush paths or hiding in trees to catch people on their way to MJ. He even went as far as fixing some of the breaches in the fence. One time I heard the guys who came across one of such repairs just climbed a nearby tree and swung down a branch on the other side.
Somewhere in the midst of all this adventure was something more malignant.
I don’t know if it was because the food at MJ was so good some people just had to have it at any cost or it was the thrill that came from breaking rules of any kind. I could call it an addiction but it wouldn’t sound quite right, but that was the only thing that could explain students stealing to buy food at MJ.
Money, clothes, soap, books, buckets; Mama Joy accepted virtually anything in exchange for Akpu. She asked no questions. She just took whatever you brought, attached a monetary value to it and let you have food for the value. There were stories of students running into people wearing their clothes when they went into town. I could have bet half my termly allowance back then that more than half of those clothes had been swapped for Akpu at Mama Joy’s Buka.
I don’t know if MJ still exists.
I don’t know if the school has finally been able to put a stop to students breaking bounds.
But of one thing I am sure. The legend of Mama Joy still lives.
It lives even if just in stories told over the years to new students by others who had heard it or by siblings who had been students of FGCU.
And oh, there was another Buka much closer to the school gates called MA (Mama Achenyo), but I’m sure me forgetting all about it until after what was supposed to be my final full stop tells all there is to tell.
If it wasn't MJ, it just couldn't compare.
JAIK.
