It’s safe to say I grew up with little, by way of material things. My childhood was rich in other ways though. I had a loving family, and our neighborhood was never lacking in adventures for the curious pre-adolescent. My parents ran a confectionery shop, which meant an endless supply of sweets, buns and cakes. What more could a kid want?

We had no TV for most of my Childhood. I cannot tell you what we spent our evenings doing. My Dad had (and still has) this old school Stereo that barely caught any channels other than the national broadcaster. I was too young to enjoy political propaganda.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon books. In one of the numerous schools I attended as a youngster, this English teacher had managed to collate a few fiction novels which unbeknown to many, could be borrowed, as long as they were returned in good form. I devoured them all.

An insatiable appetite for the written word took over me. I became the boy who would skip the chance to go skid down a muddy hill on their bottom, just so he could soak in a few pages before the break was over. The Hardy boys and Nancy Drew became my new friends, and we had many joyful escapes together.

I remember a large color TV being introduced into the Social Hall near our Church. Every Sunday afternoon, any Child who’s Mother wasn’t a tyrant would be in that hall catching up on the Adventures of Sinbad and reruns of popular Swahili soap Operas. I had no clue what the sexual innuendos in those shows were all about, but I was captivated by the creative storytelling, which could keep you anxious for a week! You had to know whether so and so actually managed to run away together, or if the Son of the house and the house girl would be caught in the act by the owner of the house, and a scandal ensue! The pleasurable dopamine rush was something I had never experienced before, and I ate it up hungrily, fear of my Mother finding out notwithstanding.

All in all I was a model child. I was home before dark, I didn’t talk back to my parents, I was an altar boy, and at the end of every term I brought home an enviable number of academic achievement badges. I was Happy.

Then came the confusion of High school.

We were encouraged to join a club in form 1, and due to my love for the Queen’s English, I joined debate and drama clubs. What they didn’t tell us at induction was what happened beyond verbally battling fellow students on important matters of the day, and acting out poorly written scripts.

I’ll never forget Betty. A dark, bespectacled third year girl with even darker lips who pulled me backstage during a drama rehearsal and proceeded to give me what would be my first ever Kiss. I was dumbfounded, but there was no time to process the shock since the drama teacher was just around the corner critiquing the cast.

The other shocker was the Movies we would watch on Saturdays during entertainment night. Not the official Movies though. No, the bootleg ones that would be put on later, after the Teacher on duty had retired for the night. The ones where pale skinned people would do things I didn’t know how to describe, while making sounds that would cause strange chemical reactions inside me. Looking around, mine was not the only Mouth that was agape.

The innocent Altar boy that walked into that Highschool would emerge four year later, bruised, scarred, wide eyed and well acquainted with a depravity that was no where in the curriculum my Parents signed me up for.

But it was only just the beginning.