They say we doctors, or in my case, student dentists at the University of Nigeria don’t have time for frivolities.
No room for “unnecessary” activities. Just schoolwork, and burying our heads in books.
Sometimes, I forget that my existence isn’t a separate entity from myself.
That my life doesn’t have to be so streamlined.
From memorizing pages, to dissecting bodies with tight chins and tired hands,
To crying silently from the weight of it all.
Some of the cadavers in our anatomy lab bear gunshot wounds, real stories, real deaths.
People just like us.
Only they’re not in crisply ironed lab coats or polished shoes.
They don’t worry about heart compartments or surgical planes of the forearm.
Their stories stopped somewhere.
And we keep pretending we were born and made for this.
But we weren’t. No one is.
So I realized, we don’t always have to act like this life was strung around our necks at birth.
We can breathe.
We can let go, just for a moment.
We can be a little less... mature.
Then came Children’s Day, the 27th of May.
It started with little conversations in school.
Even though we had exams that week, we didn’t let our joy suffer.
We remembered that before all the dreams and deadlines,
We were once children.
My heart swelled when my coursemates asked if we could celebrate Children’s Day.
And not in any grand way.
But simply with a straw in a Capri-Sun like we did in primary school
When our mothers packed our food baskets and slipped a few naira notes into our white stockings.
Capri-Sun, of course, was nowhere to be found in the student area.
Because, really, “who the hell of a university student drinks Capri-Sun?”
So we settled for soft drinks and yogurt.
We talked. We laughed.
And for once, we were not held hostage by the pressure of certainty.
I stepped back for a moment,
To take it all in.
To see how sweet my coursemates looked, unbothered, unburdened.
And it was as though we weren't held to a certain future.
Certainity could be depressing, it could be overly heavy to carry.
We didn't need certainty or need to wonder about what or what not, in that moment we just wanted to be children.
To let our minds explore. To let our minds travel even in that same instant without having to ask all the questions or knowing all the answers.
And in that simple freedom,
We were happy.
And I was so happy to see us happy.
All photos included are original from the author.