A chameleon camouflages into its environment as a means of defence. And remarkably, the substance of its presence smothers into a film of illusion. I am a chameleon.

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It was my first day in elementary school. I remember it vividly like a memory etched to the heel of my skull.

I was awakened by the rooster heralding the break of dawn—my body tumbling out of my bed as excitement sprawled across my face. It was my big day—I had waited for this day with an admixture of anxiety and joy, ready to grace the four walls of an elementary class.

My mother was already awake. She was heating the water for my bath. I was mature enough to bathe myself in my own philosophy—but my mother never approved of this. I hesitated but her will triumphed.

After bathing, Mom picked up my neatly ironed and well-creased school uniform: a green and black chequered shirt, and a black shorts. Eagerly, I wore it, completing the outfit with my white socks and thick black shoes. 

I looked at myself in the mirror. I smiled. There was an imprint of ecstasy on my cheek: a happy face.  But slowly, it blurred and my smile crimped into a sad face. My hands and face turned cold with fear.

How am I going to make friends? Would I fit in? Would my classmates not say I am too tall for my class? 

The only language I could communicate properly in then was the pidgin English, and I worried about how other children with versed manipulation and deft command of the English language would treat me. Would they be willing to talk to me or even understand me?

I was terrified at the shame of this inadequacy. I was mostly terrified about everything, the totality of myself and people’s perception of me—they seeing me as a flawed mishap.

---

It was in the wake of insurgency in the country that had made my father decide that my mother, my two siblings and I would relocate to the South-Western part of the country—precisely Oyo state—as a haven of refuge from the attacks in the North. 

We used to live in Zamfara state where my father worked as a banker in the United Bank of Africa (UBA) PLC and my mother, a textile trader. We were an average family.

By early 2012, the year we moved, leaving my father behind because he could not leave his job and the option of transfer was not allowed, the infamous militant rebel group, Boko Haram, had caused about 900 deaths in the Federation, evoking fear and unleashing their pang of horror into the Northern areas particularly Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.

We moved to Ibadan late January and rented a two-bedroom flat bungalow. 

Personally, it took some getting used to the environment because I missed the company of my father. I missed the hours where we would sit in the night and he would tell me and my siblings his adventures while he was young. 

He would tell us stories of how he was a chronic prankster in school— how he often got punished and sometimes went scot-free. And stories of him with the ladies for he was a “lover boy.” It was always funny the tone in which he told the stories; like a disney character.

I missed when he would come home with packets of  ice cream from the amazing Mr. Biggs and days when it was me and him only, gossiping through the night about how school had been. Now, it feels utterly lonely; I lusted for my father’s presence.

When he called, his voice ringing into my ears like a rivulet of beads, it often comforted me. We would spend hours conversing about basically everything.

However, that did not fill the chasm that had been chiselled into my heart, into my life. There was a void, a big hole within me, that not even a telekinetic device could fill. Often, he taught me not to be afraid of my peers at school or feel shy but once that connection broke, that confident mechanism in me broke too.

Back then when I was in Zamfara, I schooled in ECWA Primary and Nursery school. My friends, J and K, were my closest companions and we would spend our break time jumping around, playing tag races and having fun.

One particular day, we had a dare contest during break time. We had to jump over the school fence without getting caught by the teacher on duty. The winner of the dare would be crowned “the king of the group” for the next week. 

J, who was always very competitive, took the lead and jumped first. He made it safely over the fence without being seen by the teacher. It was K’s turn next, and she was feeling nervous. Her hands were trembling as she climbed up on the fence. But she took a deep breath and took the leap.

As K jumped, she landed with a thud, and the teacher heard her fall. He came running towards the fence and caught her in the act. K started crying, fearing the punishment she would receive. J and I ran over to comfort her, but we knew that we had to let the teacher take her away. We felt so bad for our friend, but we knew that we had to respect the rules of the school. After K was taken away, we all felt a little bit lost without her. The rest of the day felt quiet without her.

After school, we met up at our usual hangout spot to wait for K. We knew she would be feeling upset, so we brought her some of her favourite treats to cheer her up. When she finally arrived, she looked teary-eyed and sad. But as soon as she saw us, she ran over and gave us a big hug. We told her that everything would be okay, and we would always be her friends, no matter what. She smiled and said that she was glad to have friends like us. 

We spent the rest of the day talking and laughing.

We made a pact to always be friends, but it clearly never lasted.

On the day I  had to leave Zamfara, I had to watch my father say goodbye to us knowing we were not going to see that face for a very long time. I had to say goodbye to my friends and to our home.

My  heart was stricken with sorrow. I remembered I wept all through the journey. Things were never going to be the same from here on. I would miss my friends, school, my dad and mostly, the person I was in this environment.

***

I entered my classroom, Primary one A, after being directed by the headmistress. From the door, my heart began panting. I said my greetings to the class teacher and I took my seat second to the last row. It seemed like a spontaneous selection but I knew it was not. It was the best seat to detract any form of attention during class activities. The teacher often questioned the students in the first row or last row, reducing my chances of being questioned. 

At 7:30am, the bell rang for assembly and we all gathered outside. There was a devotion prayer followed by a welcome address given by the Proprietress of the school and, afterwards, the matching in song. It was the song “Oh, The Grand Old Duke of Yolk”. Back then I did not know the lyrics. So, I just stood watching as other pupils’ lips moved. A petite girl in a hijab beside me gazed at me, her eyes surveying me from top to bottom. She turned to her friend on the line, and whispered something in her ear. They both looked at me, and laughed. I wondered why they laughed. Then I heard.

I could hear the other girl saying: “He is too tall to be in Primary One”. It  made me feel awkward. I was shamed for my height, something I did not even have control over. It was pathetic.

“And he is not even fine. His face resembles that of a monkey”, I heard the first girl say. Saddened by her words, a tear rolled down my cheek.

---

After the assembly, our class teacher came in, addressed and orientated us about the new class. She began by asking to know our names. I observed as everyone stood one by one calling  out their name with incredulous fluency, till it got to my turn:

 I stood and before I could even say anything, a boy in the front row burst into laughter.  The teacher stood him up and demanded to know why he had laughed. He gave no response, scratching his forehead. She stood him up till the class ended.

Within me, I knew why he laughed; I was the tallest in the class and, perhaps, to them, I was the ugliest too. I was flawed, I knew this but my peers made it feel like an abomination.

Next, the teacher decided to elect a class captain. She chose  to pick at random. I was agitated but, at the same time, calm; why would she select me? 

Her eyes surveyed the class from row to row before settling on me. Me! “You look serious and gentle, you would be the class captain,” she said. I caught my breath several times, heaving silently in a bid not to faint.

But she picked me anyway. I bluntly rejected it. I could not manage it. All of a sudden, the class burst into laughter. I realised I had spoken in pidgin. “I no fit do am. I dey scared,”  I had said. My tongue trembled. I looked down at my feet, feeling embarrassed. The teacher cautioned them from laughing but they went on. She insisted on me being the class captain whether I liked it or not. It was not an option.

Throughout that day, I did not talk to anyone nor did anyone talk to me. During lunch break, my teacher, whose eyes I had felt observing me, asked why I did not join my classmates playing around outside. I told her I could not, I was too afraid of getting embarrassed again. 

After the break, we began mathematics class. We were taught the addition of two digit numbers. I found it easy and simple but my sitting partner, who was a girl, did not. As the teacher taught us, I observed she was just kissing her teeth in annoyance that she couldn’t comprehend what was being taught. I asked if I could help her after the teacher finished.

 She looked at me with piercing eyes: “What would you know? Common English you can’t construct properly. Please…”

Something writhed and died in me that day. Whatever little crumb of self-esteem I had left decayed.

---

By Primary two, my spoken language had become better and a bit polished. I had pulled all tenacity into my study of the English language to make sure I could speak fluently just like my peers. I drowned myself in my studies and, consequently, I lead the class as the second-best student. I thought this would attract friends to me.  It did not. 

Instead, it repelled them. I was nicknamed bookworm, and the “laughing at” never stopped. It got worse. Whenever I answered a question in class, I would hear some of my peers say “He’s an ITK” meaning I always acted like I knew it all. But that wasn’t true. 

Depressed, I took to reading, spending my time in the library, invested in the world of fantasies and fairytales  I sank into the magic of book: “Gulliver’s Travels”, “Frankenstein”, “Cinderella”, “Peter Pan”, “Bambi”, “Beauty and The Beast” and many more several tales, their stories were etched into my memory. I was so fascinated with these stories, I began to make my own—including daydreaming myself as a character in them. My narrative was somewhat different: I was a prince needing rescue, not the other way around. It sounds pretty but it really was a sad philosophy.

By Primary Three, I was still the boy too shy to have friends or too awkward for people to be friends with. But I had something different. I had my stories with me and they were my friends. My best friend was Prince Charming in the Snow White story. I wished I possessed his charm, his confidence and beauty. More than a wish, I was desperate to be like him. Often, I compiled short stories together, writing tales that were a novel retelling of the fairytales I had read or from scenes around me. 

I didn’t want to show it to my classmates but during breaks, some of them would see me scribbling and venture to investigate what I was up to. They discovered I was writing these stories. More surprisingly, some of them loved it and asked if they could read it. It became a tool I used to forge friendships with many of my classmates. My biggest fans back then turned out to be my very first friends and best friends and prolly my only sincere ones. They were Eniola and Moyosore. 

Every lunch break, we would spend our leisure talking about stories we had read and the ones we had written, for we loved to read and tell stories too. We had this in common. Therefore, I never felt entirely alone. 

Moyosore would argue Peter Pan could never beat Robin Hood in a fight and I would argue otherwise. We would conjecture theories, build stories and fantasize. Eniola never argues, he was too obsessed with and smitten by the beauty of Rapunzel. Sometimes, he forgets she was not real. Eniola was clowny and this often made me smile.Eniola also had a knack for telling jokes that were so silly, they made everyone laugh. Even on the worst days, Eniola could make us feel better with just a few silly words.

My friends did not care how I looked, and for a moment, I had found a place to belong without feeling inferior or awkward. 

But like good things were short-lived, a horrible thing happened when we got to Primary four; Eniola left for another school and Moyosore relocated overseas. I was heartbroken, my first, and I crawled back into my shell like a mollusk. I lost my place in the world all over again.

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By the beginning of Junior Secondary School, things changed. I realised I could not stay crawled up in my shell forever and so I came out. But it was not me, it was a form I modified to the behavioural patterns of my peers. I acted like them so I could be with them. 

I learned their slang and verbalised them. I learnt the popular songs they often talked about and hummed them pretentiously during class to display my familiarity with the pops. 

I talked about girls because they too did. I thought of everything I thought of because they thought of it. Now that I think of it, I talked and related with them as my friends but they were not really my friends. A friend knows you;  none of them knew me because I did not give them a chance. 

I did not reveal my true self. I became a chameleon. For years, I lived this way, camouflaging.

It is amazing how the moon hangs in the sky, its false light glistening through the clouds, night after night, that we sometimes forget its true colour. Sometimes, what we call the moon is no longer the moon because we do not think of it that way any longer.

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About last year, weeks before my final exams in secondary school, I stopped deceiving myself. I read a self help book on being confident in one’s identity and these words struck and spoke to me: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

I realised I have authority over what I choose to believe about myself and what I don’t. Enough of the self-sabotaging. It was tiring. It is tiring—liking something I do not just like because my so-called friends like them and so they can like me. It kills me. It is a sad philosophy. It is not a defence. Forcing myself to fit into where I do not  naturally fit into, my friend and therapist  once told me, is utterly pathetic. You should not have to change yourself to belong anywhere. I should not have to.

Now, I am learning to triumph over the complexities of my identity. I have stopped trying to fit in because my awkwardness is what distinguishes me from the multitude. I am unique because of the totality of all my inadequacies and deformities. My imperfection is my personhood, and if I lose it, I lose myself. So, no more blending to fit into peer groups or sects nor bending to the complex rules of the society. I refuse to be a chameleon.

I am not a chameleon. I am not a chameleon. I am not a chameleon.

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Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet, essayist & Assistant Editor of Fiery Scribe Review from Nigeria. Winner of the Team Booktu Poetry Contest (2024), Cheshire White Ribbon Day Contest(2022), NiMasa Cancer Awareness Poetry contest (2024) & Konya Shamsrumi Poetry Contest(2024), his works are featured/ forthcoming in 20.35, Isele Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Poet Lore, Tab Journal, Poetry Wales, Variant Literature & elsewhere. An Adroit Journal Summer Mentee & SprinNG Writers’ Fellow, his works were selected for inclusion in the Annual Outstanding Young Writers Anthology(Paper Crane, 2023). He tweets @ademindpoems