I never found this experience amusing but every time I share it with people, they usually wonder how naive and silly I was. So let me throw it out there to you.
When I completed my SSCE (secondary school leaving examinations), I was getting bored sitting at home, waiting to get into the university. So I decided to look for a job: a teaching job was the best I could find. I joined a tutorial school to teach UME physics (this is a story for another day). During the course of this, one of the commercial students, for whatever reason, liked me and introduced me to his mum to teach his younger sister who was in SSS2 and failed in some subjects in her promotion exam. She had to resit for the exam so they needed a home tutor.
On the day of my first encounter with the mum, I tried my best to look old and mature (forgetting I was just 16 years old) and took my elder brother along to ensure we negotiated the fee well(he is just 2 years older than me). We arrived in this palatial home, with their monstrous dogs asking for just a second with us but thankfully, they were not granted that honour.
The mum received us well and agreed to have me teach the daughter for a month, 3 hours daily. I charged N60 ($0.3) per hour and it seemed like a good deal to me. All through our effort to appear like experts at this, I noticed a smirk on the woman’s face. Now thinking back, she must have been wondering who these babies were which makes me wonder why she granted me that opportunity.
Also, leaving a 16-year-old teen and 14-year-old girl alone in the house, was probably not the best idea but thank God I kept my sanity and faced my job squarely. I don’t know what was on the girls mind but I did not bother to ask and she also did not let it out so we were cool.
The tutoring went on well and the girl wrote the physics, chemistry and maths examinations (which were the subjects I taught her) and she passed. I went back much later to check with the mum and she was quite happy to see me. She then offered me a meal of amala with enough meat to last a week. I descended on the food, alone in the room, and finished it quickly. Albeit, there was a stumbling block. There was liver in the bowl! Now, those who know me well know I don’t eat some things and livers and kidneys happen to be top on that list.
Here was the naive me! Everyone said I should just have left the liver in the bowl but I can’t exactly say what was going on in my mind but I thought it would be impolite to leave it in the plate. So I did the unbelievable! I looked around and seeing no one, I brought out my handkerchief slipped the liver into it and put it back in my pocket. Quickly, I announced I was done and rushed off somewhere else. They bid me farewell and I was on my way like a victor. As soon as I stepped out of the gate, I pulled the liver out and threw it away. Thankfully, no one noticed! Or so I think.
Now I’m wondering, if the woman had seen me hiding meat in my handkerchief, what would have been on her mind? Chimoooo!!!
I am the author of Scaling for Success: Empowering African SMEs. I am a Partner at Sahel Capital, a food and agriculture-focused private investment firm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sahel Capital manages the Fund for Agriculture Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN) and the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA).
I co-lead SEFAA, an impact-first fund investing in agribusinesses that provide direct or indirect benefits to smallholder farmers across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead investments and portfolio management for SEFAA and manage FAFIN portfolios, two of which were recently exited. I am a director on the board of one of the portfolio companies and serve in advisory roles for several startups and SMEs.