Waiting To Be Found, Unseen

When I was a little child, my favourite moments were the ones I spent playing with my younger sisters: Rashedat and Hamdalat, and my neighbourhood friends: Blessing, Temi, Abudulahi, Ibro, Sayo, Iyanu, Sefunmi, and Deborah. Our preferred play was Hide-and-Seek. We used my big house with its bigger compound. On most afternoons, after taking off our school uniforms and flinging our sandals and socks in whatever direction, we met in my compound to plan the day’s play. Hide-and-Seek came last, looking for Kuluso would come first. There was an uncompleted building behind my house, inside it, there were tiny little holes made by Kuluso—a little insect whose origin I thought of as a big mystery throughout my childhood but found out as an adult that Kuluso is an antlion. We would enter the building with little broomsticks and our eyes very close to the ground, looking for the holes. When we saw them, we would squat, poke our broomsticks into the holes, and turn them repeatedly while chanting:

Kuluso kuluso

Abiyamo feyinso

Kuluso kuluso

Abiyamo feyinso

Most of the time, we got lucky: the Kuluso would be forced to dig deeper to escape our pokings but that would also reveal it. It was exhilarating dipping our fingers inside the holes to bring out the kuluso and drop them on our palms. They were quite tiny and they moved backwards, I never saw one move forward—I would later learn they do so because it is energy efficient and makes hunting easier. There was an infamous story that Kuluso could make the breasts bigger. I don’t know its origin but we all believed it as kids. Everyone talked about it, and no one doubted it. I remember raising my clothes and putting the kuluso on my breasts. I waited for them to get bigger, but they didn’t. So I assumed the transformation wasn’t immediate. Later, when I woke up one morning in the boarding house as a JSS1 student, before I was taught puberty and how it transforms the female body, and I saw that my breasts were bigger, my mind went to the Kuluso: “Ah, it truly worked”. I was happy.

 

Usually, we started Hide-and-Seek after looking for Kuluso. Hide-and-seek ended the day’s play and most times, while in the middle of hiding, the loud and shrill voice of Abudulahi and Ibro’s mom would dominate the air, their house was right behind mine, telling them to come home to prepare dinner or, sometimes, to cut their hair. Abudulahi and Ibro’s mom cut their hair crudely with Premier soap and a razor blade. She would rub their hair with the Premier soap till the hair became very soapy and soft like a foam sponge, take out a new razor blade from its red paper pack, and use it to scrap the hair on the head of Ibro and Abudulahi. She thought this method was cheaper than taking her children to a barbing salon and in her view, using a new razor blade every time cancelled the risk of diseases, so she saw no reason to waste her insufficient money in a barbing salon. One time I witnessed her pouring spirit on Abudulahi’s head after scraping it bald and seeing spots of dandruff. Abudulahi cried as the sting of the spirit didn’t just combat the dandruff, it relished the tiny wounds made by the razor blade that scraped the head. Abudulahi cried hard. I was subject to the anguish once too. My mom took my sisters and me to the barbing salon to get rid of our hair and at the bottom laid several kingdoms of dandruff that my mother effectively laid ruin to by pouring spirit on our heads. I cried harder than Abudulahi did. I screamed and held my head while rolling on the floor, wailing.

 

We always played Hide-and-Seek at my house. It was big enough to provide hiding spots for all of us: my house stood as a bungalow with six rooms— each had a personal toilet and bathroom—two living rooms, a courtyard, and a long corridor. We had a lot of spots to hide.

One afternoon, after looking for Kuluso and after we had smoked paper rolled into cigarette shapes as we saw in Yoruba films, we decided it was time for Hide-and-Seek, boju boju. We gathered inside my house, and I can’t remember how we picked the first person who would seek the hiding spots of the rest of us but I remember how I hurriedly looked for a place to hide while—was it Abudulahi or Rashedat—counted from one to ten. I picked my room as of that time as my hiding spot. I opened the wardrobe and climbed inside a big Ghana Must Go that was in it and waited and hoped to be found last—that would make me the winner.

I heard the countdown and the seeking began. I listened as Abudulahi or Rashedat found everyone except me, and it made me happy in my hiding spot. I was waiting for Abudulahi or Rashedat to give up on the search and declare that I had won when the sound of Abudulahi and Ibro’s mom’s voice filled the entire house. Before I could climb out of the Ghana Must Go to declare myself as the winner and to see what was happening, all my friends had picked up their slippers and headed toward their respective homes.

I wasn’t found and I couldn’t acknowledge my win. Now as an adult, I know the word that qualifies how I felt at that moment is unseen. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as an adjective that means not seen or perceived.

I no longer play Hide-and-seek but I still feel like I am in that Ghana Must Go in my wardrobe waiting to be found, unseen.