How did our parents send us off to school with no phones, No Nothing?

My Friends And I in University. Left - Onyi, Middle - Me, Right - Joy

These days, everyone who has a child in college checks in every day or every other day.

And I wonder, in the 90s, how did we and our parents survive without all that checking in?

Unlike most of my friends who went to boarding house during secondary school, the very first time I left home was to go to university, and in the East too. University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

It was a good eight hours from Lagos.

I clearly remember that morning. My mum had excitedly shown me my admission letter and told me I had to leave immediately.

Immediately?

I looked at the clothes I had soaked in a basin and was confused. How was I supposed to scoop them out of the water and leave immediately?

Why were they even soaking in the water in the first place, you will ask?

Growing up, I was mindlessly lazy. I would soak my clothes and instead of washing them immediately, leave them there until the next day.

While I stood there scratching my head, my mother quietly went and got me a black nylon bag and ordered me to put all my wet clothes inside it or I would get a proper thrashing.

“Today you will understand what your laziness will cost you,” she told me calmly.

My cousin Chinyere felt so sorry for me that she gave me a short jeans skirt I had been begging her for since forever as my going-away-to-university present.

I packed the few dry clothes I had and stuffed them into a suitcase my mum had bought me earlier for university.

My mum was a mix of ecstatic and sad to see me go.

Together with my dripping clothes, Chinyere and I took the Young Shall Grow bus from Maza Maza to Owerri.

It was such an exciting journey. I couldn't sit still.

Funny enough, I wasn’t even afraid of leaving home. In fact, I was just happy to be free, free to roam with no more wise cracks from my mum.

My cousin Chinyere

We got to Owerri in the evening, and Chinyere handed me over to my aunt Fide.

Later that evening, we found a business centre inside Alvan Ikoku College to call my mum and tell her we had arrived safely.

Early the next day, my aunt took me to UNN and handed me to my guardian who became my second mum, Mrs Iroanya.

Once I got into school, I got busy settling in, finding my classes and registering for my courses. I never got the opportunity to inform my mum that I had arrived at school safely until about three weeks later, when I went to the telephone exchange in town to call her.

Three weeks!

My mother had sent her daughter eight hours away from Lagos and, after hearing that I had reached Owerri, did not hear my voice again for three whole weeks.

No daily check-ins.

No “are you safe?” every evening.

She had no way of knowing whether I was fine or not.

Not because she didn’t care, but because the opportunity to be in touch simply wasn’t there.

And it wasn’t just me. It applied to practically everyone at the time.

If anyone was coming down to school from Lagos and happened to be within our circle of friends, or sometimes just because they attended the same school, our parents would not hesitate to send a message or money through them.

Sometimes even after the semester was over, we didn't come home immeadiately. Just staying back in school fooling around with our friends or even going to another town without giving it a single thought. No fear in our minds.

And somehow, that was enough.

I keep wondering how we did it.

I know things are different now. We have phones readily available to us in a way we didn't then.

We hear about terrible things happening almost as they happen, sometimes while they are still happening.

But I also think these phones have made us more anxious.

Today, if your child is travelling eight hours away and doesn't send “I've arrived” when you expect it, how long before you start calling?

An hour? Thirty minutes?

Maybe our parents worried just as much as we do now. Maybe the difference was simply that they didn't have the means to feed that worry all day.

There was no blue tick to check. No location to track. No phone to call ten times because your child hadn't picked up the first nine.

And somehow, not knowing was simply a part of life.

Perhaps having the ability to know where everyone is all the time has made it harder for us to cope with the moments when we don't know.

Because looking back at how unbothered our parents and even we seemed to be in those days, I don't know if we can ever replicate it again.

I wonder sometimes if all this access has actually made us feel safer.

Or if it has simply made us more afraid.