Facebook has done it again! It has reunited me with a family I lived with for several years in Katsina, in the 90s! They were a very good Christian Family from Borno State.
The head of the family was Hassan Malgwi from Borno State. He was the Chief Internal Auditor at Federal College of Education, FCE, Katsina and his house was directly opposite mine at Ɓatagarawa Low-cost Housing Estate. At the time, I was an up and coming journalist working at Katsina State Television, KTTV.
All his children were my children's friends and they used to play and were always together, visiting each other's houses without any inhibitions or restrictions. We visited each other and exchanged food during our religious celebrations like Sallah and Christmas. We bought bicycles for our children almost the same time. One of the children in the house was a very brilliant boy called Nuhu Hassan Malgwi, who was among the tops in his class. I used to encourage my two eldest sons, Mubarak and Nasif, who were his friends, by pointing at how brilliant he was - and it worked. It made them sit up and did well in their classes.
The family left Katsina and went back to Maiduguri, their hometown, when Hassan Malgwi got another job with an NGO. And because there was no GSM at the time, we lost touch completely, until recently, through facebook.
With the benefit of hindsight, I now realize that their leaving Katsina was ordained by, call it providence, fate, destiny or whatever... I later found out that at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency, the head of the family, was murdered in cold blood in his house by Boko Haram... 😭😭😭...
One of the children, Maryam Hassan, who we used to call Uwani, found me on facebook when she saw my picture with my first two children, Mubarak Ahmad and Nasif Ahmad. I then found the other two, Veronica Hassan Malgwi and Nuhu Malgwi, on facebook.
My other good neighbors on the same street, included a Yoruba contractor called Alhaji Ibrahim Dutsinma (I wonder where he is now).
I recall a robbery incidence in his house, one day, which we personally witnessed. My wife woke me up in the middle of the night when she heard his wife shouting for help. I was about to go out and shout for help when I heard the sound of gunshots which stopped me dead in my tracks. Fortunately, no one was killed, but they were robbed.
My other good neighbors then included Ahmed Kusada, whose wife took my children as hers, till today. There was Salisu Ƴar'Adua, whose wife was my wife's classmate in secondary school. My friend, Umar Lamma, was another good neighbor, then.
Those were some of the good old days I recall with nostalgia, when everybody loved everybody else.