Examinations are over - thank God - and comrades are now on recess because the wise men (whose identities I doubt we will ever find out) said ll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

So now I am home with the old fogeys, where I deserve to be, breathing in fresh air and eating freshly cooked food and drinking clean water and showering daily (sometimes twice a day) and not having to worry about assignments and CATs and Calculus lectures on Friday afternoons. This is the kind of freedom our forefathers fought for. No?

I have been here barely a week and, all the positive things notwithstanding, there are also a couple of negative things that have proved to make the life of this comrade in the village less cosy than I thought it would be.

Why do bad things only happen to good people, like myself? For starters, my mum hates it when people sleep past 7am. Which is kind of a bummer because, even in campus, I have never woken up before 9am.

I have never, for the life of me, attended 7am lectures. That’s just how God created me and that is how I would like to be accepted in society. But my mum is cut from a different cloth. She will burst into the room at 7.05am and create a fuss over why people (read: me, because my siblings are almost always up) still sleeping that late.

And then she will say how lazy I am and grab my blanket and, every once in a while, slap me around and assign me a non-existent chore to keep me busy like: “Go wash the chicken.” (Like, really?)

There’s also the issue of the TV remote in the house which, more often than not, always leads to World War III. What happens is this; my sisters love two things, Naija films and Mexican soap operas.

And then my brother and I, on the other hand, like vain things like wrestling and music shows and action-packed Hollywood films (preferably ones with Denzel Washington in them.)

The problem is that local channels are almost always showing either AfroSinema or soap operas; which means my sisters are always trying to hog the remote because, apparently, Naija films still come in Parts 1 - 5.

So my brother and I are always left counting our toes, cracking our knuckles and minding other people’s business on social media to avoid getting into fights with them. This means I see people talking about ‘riparian land’ on Twitter but I have no idea what it is because I can’t even watch the 9pm news in this house.

Finally, is the issue of curfew and booze. A brother can’t even have a glass of beer down here or come home past 8pm because that always leads to - again - World War III. And so I have been on forced detox since I got here and I can almost feel my lungs breaking down due to loneliness. People, I need a drink! Need I mention that mum still strictly insists on her, “No girlfriends in my house” rule? The holiday has been great but perhaps comrades are better off back in school. Ptho!