By Muyiwa Adetiba

My friend’s wife, Jumoke Ogunyemi celebrated her 60th birthday on Christmas day. It was an intimate gathering of close friends; most of whom were her husband’s or her secondary school and University mates. The ‘old school’ music that filled the air was also very stirring and apt.

I had my own share of the reminiscences too, back slapping and chatting with friends I had not seen or talked to in years. And when Jumoke got up to extol the virtues of Gori, her husband of 35 years, I smiled: a happy, but knowing smile. You see, I remembered the day Gori told me, barely a week after they met, that he had seen the woman he was going to marry. And I remembered laughing it off. I remembered the courtship and the occasional foursomes we had. I remembered the bachelor’s eve, where my then girlfriend and I had quarreled and separated.

The master of ceremony for the occasion, was their first son, who handled the event admirably. But I also remembered him as a toddler whom I had mischievously introduced to the allure of cognac by giving him a sip — much to the consternation of his parents — over 30 years ago. Years later, when he came home on holiday, I had asked him at a function what he was going to drink. ‘Uncle, I am still sticking to what you introduced me to when I was a kid’. He had replied, tongue in cheek.

So much had happened in the space of time. Jumoke, the birthday ‘girl’ had left paid employment, had studied law, had lived in the UK with the children for a while, leaving her husband to hold fort as ‘a bachelor boy’. Looking at the now adult family on stage — two of the three children are married— one couldn’t but reflect on the many stop-overs of life.

A week later, on New Year’s day,Chief Christopher Abiodun Borha , a friend and secondary school mate, also marked his 60th birthday along with his retirement from the NPA where he was a General Manager. Held at the Lagos City Hall, it was a bigger crowd that reflected his many constituencies.

We the ‘old boys’ had our own caucus at the side of the hall. What a surprising turn-out we had as school mates I hadn’t seen for quite a while, showed up; and we lost ourselves for a while on reminiscences. Even the celebrant joined in at a point when he reminded another classmate of the day this classmate ‘stole’ his girl friend.

I recalled how this girl from Methodist Girl’s High School (MGHS) had invited three of my classmates to a martinee show at Metro Cinema on Ikorodu Road (ten minutes walk from our school) only for her not to show up. The three guys felt foolish and were the butt of jokes for a while in school.

Seeing Omatsola who had flown in from his abode in Jos to celebrate with Borha, reminded me of how we both celebrated our 21st birthdays at a small club in Surulere – his first, and mine later. These old faces brought many things back— the football games at the back of the dorm, the cricket games with empty milk cans, the school pranks and escapades, the difficult seniors and impossible teachers.

I remembered when we used to walk to Palmgrove to catch a bus to town. Or walk from Onikan Stadium after a Principal Cup match to Obalande to catch a bus to Yaba and walk to school from there. Walks that we considered routine, but which the youths of today will never attempt.

Now mostly grey haired and pot bellied, with arthritis knocking a few knees, it was hard to imagine the ‘wild’ life some of these guys once led. It was hard also not to remember those nights when we sat on the school field on free nights (last Friday night of the month) dreaming of how we would rule our world – in medicine, engineering and the arts.

Now most of us are left with unfulfilled dreams and the realisation of what might have been had we chosen a different turn in the road of life. Sitting around me were people with some of the best brains of their generation. Brains that would have been celebrated were they assembled in another country.

Many old boys have argued that Igbobi College, fashioned after the traditions of the best British ‘public schools’, did not prepare us for Nigeria. That its emphasis on nobility and integrity, was for another clime. But I disagree.

That the country has been seized by the uncouth does not make a life of nobility and integrity unsuccessful. That we have chosen to redefine success to mean money, does not change the true meaning of the word. So as the celebrants, and we their friends, reach another stop-over in the journey of life, let us take time to reflect on where we are coming from, to accept the limited successes and failures and resolve to plod on.

Let us not dwell too much on what time has stolen; or what bad judgements and bad relationships have stolen. Despite the failed marriages, failed dreams and failed or failing vital organs, it has been, for many of us, a beautiful life.