The village hadn't changed much. The streets were still the colour of red earth, the hushed voice of harmattan still waltzed between the wild trees, kids still chased each other barefoot, and laughter still echoed like the fading chimes of memory. I had returned, a graduate, proud yet nostalgic, with the weight of time and dreams upon my shoulders.
I had come back to pay homage to the woman who raised me, my grandma of blessed memory. I came to touch the soil she once walked upon and to let her know I had fulfilled her dream—her sincerest desire was for me to attend the university.
Yes, I had made it!
Everyone said I had made it.
But not everyone had.
I saw him leaning against a crooked mango tree, below the old path we once walked to school. His shirt was washed out of colour; his trousers, the colour of dirt. He looked much older than his years.
“Chuka?” I called, unsure if it truly was him.
He turned around slowly, his gaze scoured my face then recognition dawned on him, and then a shadow of some emotion. Was it joy? Was it shame? Or was it sorrow? Flickered briefly across his face.
“Nne,” he said with that small, weary smile. “You made it.”
I smiled in return, but the pain inside my chest had set in even before I could speak.
Chuka.
Brilliant Chuka, the boy who always took the second position in class, after me. The one who lent me his ruler when mine broke, the one who always had an extra pen in his tattered bag in case someone needed it; the one who would eat roasted maize with me as we walked home from school. The one with torn clothes patched in several places, but whose mind was sharper than lightning, the one who solved mathematics like he was Pythagoras or Archimedes.
We used to joke about who had the finer handwriting — his calligraphic style or my tiny almost illegible scrawls.
"This your writing that is like a chicken's—er— you want to compare it with my own? He would tease me mercilessly.
Most times, we studied together during exams. Chuka was a lover of books.
One day, after our exams, he confided in me about his worst fears;
"You’ll go to the city for school. Me? It will only be possible when pigs fly."
"Of course, you will go to the city for school, you are very brilliant and I'm very sure you won't have problems passing all the exams."
I had laughed, thinking it was one of those village jokes we tossed around. I didn’t know that he knew it.
“How are you doing?” I asked softly.
He shrugged. “I am fine, we are managing.”
His eyes dropped down to my well polished shoes, slowly he raised them to look me over.
He sighed.
"You are really looking every inch a big university graduate."
The weight of a poverty stricken life had bent his spine, tired lines etched deeply into his face, lines that didn’t belong to a man our age.
He gestured toward his compound where a woman surrounded by two kids, was frying garri.
"That’s my wife, those are my kids.” His voice was flat, not without love, but without the wonder dreams are supposed to carry.
“Do you still draw?” I asked, trying to bring up the boy I remembered, the one who doodled perfect sketches in the margins of his notebooks, the boy who would have become a world-class artist or a mathematical prodigy.
He shook his head. “There's no time for that Nne, I work so hard to be able to provide for my family. Farm work. Block work. Construction work. Anything to feed them.”
Silence lingered between us like a thick fog. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I thought of how unfair life could be.
“You were one of the brightest, Chuka,” I said. “You were better than most of us.”
He chuckled dryly. “Bright doesn’t pay school fees, Nne. I couldn't go to secondary school in the city because papa couldn’t even pay the common entrance fees, you know now.”
I remembered. He couldn't afford the exam fees and even though I tried saving up for him, I couldn't meet the target, then I heard whispers about poverty and debt and how Chuka was going off to be a "houseboy", to a man his father owed a great deal of money.
His eyes glistened now, and he looked away quickly, ashamed.
“I envy you,” he said, almost in a whisper. “But I’m proud too. I’m proud you did it. At least one of us did.”
Tears welled in my eyes. I tried to speak, but my voice failed me. Instead, I touched his hand gently. It was rough, calloused, the hands of a young man who had grown too fast, who had carried burdens that buried his brilliance.
As we parted, he gave a small nod and turned to go. His child who had crept behind him to watch me in amazement, stumbled after him.
I stood there for a moment, watching their figures retreat into the compound. A father too young, with eyes too old.
I reached up and wiped a tear from my cheek.
Pigs didn’t fly for Chuka.
They should have.
He deserved wings, but poverty clipped them before he ever got a chance.
All images are AI generated.
I am 
