#THESTORIESOFMYCHILDHOOD

IN SEARCH OF THE PASSPORT OF MALLAM ILIA: SHARING LIFETIME LESSONS

I had just gained admission to Mary Immaculate Secondary School, Ado-Ekiti. I was 12 years old.

Our English Literature teacher gave us a list of books to buy and my father did well to buy them. But there was this stubborn one that we could not find.

So, after school one day, I set out to go to Okesha, Ado Ekiti, old Ondo State to look for The Passport of Mallam Ilia in the biggest bookshops I knew in town.

On my way, I saw a bookshop that could not be regarded as a big bookshop. In my estimation it was smaller than what I would consider a small bookshop. It was without form and comeliness of a bookshop worth my visit for a book that had proved so elusive that I began to think that our teacher was playing an April Fool prank on us as to its existence.

After checking all the big and recognised bookshops and neither laid my eyes nor hands on this passport of another man, I decided to return home, tired, famished and frustrated.

On my way back home, I came face to face with this bookshop I had once passed and despised. Thinking I had nothing to lose checking, I went in there to fulfill the righteousness of an unenthusiastic curiosity.

Lo and behold, lying in the despised manger of this bookshop was the messiah, The Passport of Mallam Ilia.

The lessons of this encounter has stayed with me for a lifetime more than all I learnt in my entire literature class and yet I do not claim that I have fully understood and allowed myself to be guided by them

What lessons do you think we and our precious children can learn from this story. I look forward to reading from you. It is time to learn together.

Do have an INSPIRED week.

I am Taiwo AKINLAMI