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. We loved playing Hide-and-Seek. We used my big house with its even 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 small insect whose origin I thought of as a big mystery throughout my childhood. I would later find out that kuluso is an antlion. We would enter the building with little broomsticks and our eyes close to the ground, searching for the holes. When we found 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 dig deeper to escape our poking, but that would also reveal it. It was exhilarating dipping our fingers into the holes to bring them out and drop them on our palms. They were quite tiny and 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 a story that kuluso could make girls’ breasts bigger. I don’t know its origin, but we all believed it as kids. One afternoon, I picked a kuluso from its hole, raised my top, gently placed it on my tiny breasts, and waited for them to get bigger. They didn’t. So I assumed the transformation wasn’t immediate. Later, when I woke up one morning at boarding house as a JSS1 student—before I was taught about puberty and how it transforms the female body—and 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, in the middle of hiding, the loud and shrill voice of Abudulahi and Ibro’s mom would fill the air. Their house was right behind mine. She would be calling 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 soap until it became soapy and soft like a foam sponge, then take out a new razor blade from its red paper pack and use it to scrape their heads. She thought this method was cheaper than going to a barbing salon, and since she used a new razor blade each time, she believed it cancelled the risk of disease. To her, there was no reason to waste her insufficient money at a 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 his head. Abudulahi cried hard.

I was subjected to the same anguish once. 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 she laid ruin to by pouring spirit on our heads. I cried harder than Abudulahi. I screamed and held my head, 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. The house was a bungalow with six rooms—each with its own toilet and bathroom—two living rooms, a courtyard, and a long corridor. We had plenty of places 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. I can’t remember how we picked the first seeker, but I remember how I hurriedly looked for a place to hide while—was it Abudulahi or Rashedat?—counted from one to ten. I chose my room as my hiding spot. I opened the wardrobe, climbed into a big Ghana Must Go bag, and waited, hoping to be found last—that would make me the winner.

I heard the countdown end and the search begin. I listened as Abudulahi or Rashedat found everyone except me, and it made me happy in my hiding spot. I was waiting for them to give up and declare me the winner 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 my victory and see what was happening, all my friends had picked up their slippers and headed home.

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: unseen. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as an adjective meaning “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.