Blackout Lessons: A Nigerian Student’s Prayer

Blackout Lessons: A Nigerian Student’s Prayer Morning breaks with iron in its mouth,And my name is called by an alarmthat never asks if my bones are ready.I rise anyway,because in this countryThe future does not wait for softness. My bag is a small suitcase of hope,zippered with worry,packed with textbooks that smell like dustand yesterday’s fear.I walk into schoollike a soldier wearing uniformed dreams. The classroom is a crowded hymn.Chalk squeaks like anxious birds.Ceiling fans spin tired stories,sometimes moving air,sometimes only moving time.And the teacher’s voice becomes rainfalling on dry land,while some of us drinkAnd some of us only watch the puddles form. Outside, the sun is too confident.Inside, my mind is a marketplace:equations bargaining with essays,definitions shouting over dates,biology diagrams arguing with my hunger.Everything wants to be remembered.Nothing wants to be forgotten.Least of all me. Then NEPA takes the lightas if it never belonged to us.Darkness enters quietly,And suddenly the room is all breathing.Candles bloom like small orange flowers,And we bend our headsas if studying is a form of worship.Generator noise arrives next,a stubborn drumbeat,reminding us that even hopeneeds fuel. At night, I read with borrowed electricity,My eyes are learning endurance,My spine is negotiating with plastic chairs.The mosquitoes conduct their own lecture,And sleep keeps calling my namefrom the edge of the page.But I keep turning paper,because deadlines do not carethat my body is tired. Some days the stress is loud:tests, quizzes, assignments,parents asking for resultsas if grades are proof of love.Some days it is quiet:the fear of failing,the fear of tryingand still not being enough.It sits in my chest like a stoneI carry politely. Yet in between the pressure,I find strange beauty.A friend sharing one pen like kindness.Laughter in the corridorbreaking tension like bread.That one moment a concept clicksand my mind lights upeven when the bulbs refuse to. School in Nigeria is not just about books.It is resilience with a timetable.It is an ambition in a crowded bus.It is a prayer whispered into notebooks:Let this stress become a bridge,not a burial. And if my hands shake sometimes,It is only because they are holdinga future that feels heavy.Still,I write.Still,I read.Still,I dream in full sentences. Because one day,I want to look back at these nightsand call themThe darkness that trained my light.

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