When I was ten my parents sent me away to boarding school. They sent me away, it seems, because other parents were doing the same thing, and possibly because my mother herself had gone to boarding school and had had a fine experience there. The school to which I was sent was academically competitive, but it was not in any way luxurious or comfortable. The unluxurious nature of the school was in fact an attraction for my parents, who shared the general Nigerian view that “discipline” was good for children. I arrived at the school for the 1985/86 school session during an economic crisis under the Babangida dictatorship. The boarding school, which was spartan at the best of times, became almost ascetic that year. Food was undersupplied. Lunch and dinner were limited to a torturous rotation of three items: eba, rice, or beans, and the portions were always small. When I remember how small those portions were day after day, how unwavering the menu was, when I remember the great gaping hunger that hollowed out my boyhood body during that year, a certain trauma returns to me. I remember forming a wish at that time, I remember this little child who was and wasn’t me forming a wish—the kind of wish one has in extremis—of never wanting to feel that hungry again. It was as though, at that particular moment, the meaning of life was to find a way to never be so hungry again.

Excerpt from Golden Apple of the Sun