Our competitive classmateship transitioned into a collaborative friendships

I think it's an acceptable and desirable ambition for people to try and surround themselves with those who want the best for them. It feels good to have people like that around and this common factor is always one of the thing that serves as the foundation for friendship between people.

It's funny how the same thing applies to kids. They always form these little cliques of friends who they hang out with and, as little as the kids may be, they sure know what they want from that friendship. They know the friend that is fun to hang out with in playgrounds. They know the ones you need when academics are involved. They also know the ones that are good to have around when they want to be mischievous. Hehe.

You see, everything associated with friendship, even amongst kids, is an indication that the last thing we want as humans is to live without having anyone you call a friend. Sadly, there are times when we just can't get enough of our friends. Imagine living in another country while you have lots of friends in your home country. Even when you get an opportunity to be with those friends, you barely have enough time to spend with them.

In extreme cases, people die, whether young or old. You can never tell who will be next to embrace the grim reaper. So friendship also gets lost to death. The pain that comes with that is something I know too well, but I won't make this post about the dead.

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Lemme briefly tell you about my childhood friend, Kenechukwu.

Ha! If anyone told me I would be calling Kene a friend, I would have laughed that off with so much sarcasm. You see, Kene was my classmate in primary school. Our paths crossed when we were in primary 3 and the first year we spent together was filled with a blend of competition.

He's an intelligent lad and his Dad was a mathematics teacher. Maybe it's in the gene... Kene was equally good in maths. The fact that we answer the same name and our academic performance was fairly comparable made us very competitive. After each assignment, test or exam, we always checked to see who outperformed each other. Haha.

It was after two years, when we were already in the penultimate class in our primary school, that we finally got to ease up the competition we had between us. It interestingly happened during a football match where we both got shuffled into the same team. That match ended awfully with us playing the most selfish game of our life, each person trying to be the hero. And, we ended up receiving a good battering from the opposition team.

That didn't give us a feel-good vibe. In an attempt to fix what went wrong, we ended up having a genuine conversation that led to more genuine conversations. That was how we transitioned our competitive classmateship into collaborative friendships. We ended up learning so much from eachother in the final phase of our primary school life, it was so unbelievable.

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Life after primary school

Primary schools in Nigeria are set up to run for 6 years, but I only spent 5 years in school before seeking admission into a secondary school. I got a good enough score to enter Secondary School and that was it. Remember, this was back in 2008. At that moment, only a few households had telephones in Nigeria. A young lad like myself wasn't even thinking of a cell phone. The same applies to Kene.

I started Secondary School in another part of the country and ever since then till this moment, I've not been able to have another encounter with Kenechukwu. I genuinely hope he's doing well wherever he is and in whatever he's doing to make ends meet.

Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop Or Comma
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