7:30 AM.
I’m sitted quietly at this balcony. I do this every morning for no reason in particular.
For the calmness and for undistorted meditation.
I think it sets the tone for a peaceful day.
Suddenly, I hear the sound of music (well, not really a song but an instrumental). The music came from a neighbor’s room. It’s very familiar.
My mother had this terrific radio set back in the days. It was a black, big oval shaped radio. It played cassettes too. Every morning, my mother (we, technically) listened to 6am news —especially the one cast in our native Ijaw language— before going to work and school respectively. During weekends, there was more time for the radio: it was ON while she did her chores, and I tried to complete my homework from school. Whatever we did, the radio was playing. It became a sort of ritual.
This is the genesis of my love for the radio.
Now, to that sound; it was a soundtrack/background music for the Morning Drive programme on Radio Bayelsa 97.1 FM on Saturday mornings. I don’t recall the name of the woman who anchored the programme, nor do I recall the name of the song whose instrumental was used. Many people who grew up in Yenagoa would know that sound. Especially if, like me, they were radio listeners in the early 2000s.
Funnily, Radio Bayelsa 97.1 FM still uses that instrumental as background music for their programmes.
As I hear(d) it today, it evokes memories. Childhood memories. Almost all of them.
Let me share one. It is from the time I was just getting to know about a radio set. You see, I’d been observing the radio for awhile, and wanted to know how it worked. I was fascinated by how I kept hearing voices but couldn’t see those who spoke. And nobody had explained to me at the time.
So, I would go very close to the radio and stare into the speakers in the hope that I’ll see them. Or talk back at the presenters. When that wasn’t working, I tried another pattern. I began to stare at the radio speakers when it wasn’t switched on or the presenters weren’t talking [just] so “I can catch the presenters when they were coming out of the radio”.
One day, out of frustration, as my mother and I were listening to the radio I finally asked:
“Mummy, how this people carry enter this radio?”
“I no dey see when dem dey comot sef. I done look tire,” I quizzed scratching my head with my gaze still fixed on the radio.
She explained to me that they didn’t creep in and out of our radio like I thought. Rather, they went to a building called a station from where they spoke and controlled what we hear(d) at home. And that they did this with the machines and equipments they had.
My mother’s explanation was good. I understood it. But I wasn’t satisfied, still.
The idea of radio became attractive to me. I intentionally started listening to the radio from then —even if I didn’t understand all the English words I heard at the time. My reasons? Firstly, I liked and enjoyed how well radio presenters spoke. Also, I hoped to speak that well, and become a presenter myself. Secondly, I listened to know if by chance I could hear what machines and equipments were used to make radio broadcasting possible.
LOL.
As my mind wanders, the memories come flashing through. I remember the neighborhoods where we lived in Yenagoa: Ovom, where trouble hung like rain in the clouds ready to pour anytime; Amarata, which was a little saner than Ovom to me; Kpansia for being so lovely, it was here I first held/shot a knockout (Banger); and Azikoro as a community I grew with. Azikoro, as I knew it from the early 2010s, was an admixture of almost everything that made a place soothingly beautiful.
I lived in these neighborhoods as a growing boy. With shorts that could pass for ‘bum-shorts’ these days. The good ol’ days.
Meanwhile, I hardly listen to the radio these days. But as I earlier said, this thoughts were birthed by a familiar sound of music. One that has stuck from listening to radio from the days of yore.
Memories are proof that we’ve lived or we are doing so.
And I love to remember them. Really.
