HIGHLIGHTS OF AN AFRICAN CHILDHOOD; MY FIRST CAR

My childhood moments were and is still one of the most happiest time I had ever had. It wasn't because my childhood was perfect or it was filled with happy moments. On the contrary I had one of my darkest days then.
What made my childhood the happiest time I ever had was the games I played as a child.
A child that loves to play in my tribe is called Omo keke which means a child of play. I know the phrase sounds Yoruba but I'm so sorry to tell you that I'm not Yoruba hehehe.

One of the games I played as a child was this

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I don't really know the name of this game but I know it was one of our favourite amongst us kids especially the boys. We played this game because none of our parents could afford a bike which was just 8 thousand naira then. We would sit and stare at all the ajebo( a child not born into poverty) that were passing by on the streets with their fancy bicycle, back then we were not plagued by any inferiority complex so we felt no need to meet up to their standard. Rather than feel bad and sulk about what we didn't have we would jejely go back to our very own mercedes Benz just laying in our backyard.

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We continued that way until one day my father came home with a rusty looking bike that he had bought for my brother. We were all so excited and happy because that would be the first time any of us would be riding a bike for the first time in our seven years on planet earth.
The bike was rusty and old and quite the opposite of the fancy bikes we usually saw on the street but who cares!! We finally had a bike of our own( whatever was given to one was given to all).

We took turns to ride the bike and it was quite a sight to behold because as much as we were all eager to ride the bike, none of us actually knew how to ride one and to put icing on the cake our feet could not touch the ground when we sat on the bike hahaha

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But regardless we still tried to ride the massive bicycle and we kept getting injured, I still have scars on my knees from that experience.
It wasn't like knowing how to ride a bike would give you an award or gaurantee that you would become rich in life, but yet we still tried to ride it like our life depended on it. We laughed and cried the whole time, it was an incredible experience that I will never forget.
it might not seem significant to you my dear reader but to me this experience was very important and plays a big role in my life today because it taught me that I shouldn't stop trying and that I should never forget to have fun while trying and not just be serious all the time because you will need those happy moments on your bad days.

Some of my friends that were older started getting the hang of it and soon enough they were riding it like a pro ( of course it was the boys that learnt it first, it's like it's in their DNA).

I tried to learn how to ride the bike and by the time I could move smoothly in a straight line without any curves(cause I would fall) the bike finally gave up the ghost hahaha 😂.
I cried my heart out at that point but there was nothing we could do and so me and my friends went back to our mercedes Benz. It was after a few years that we realised that my father had not bought the bike but had taken from my grandfather's house. Turns out the bike had been used by my great grandfather when he was a boy. No wonder the bike got spoilt so quickly.

PS: sorry i couldn't join the other weeks prompt I had some personal issue that needed to be resolved.