METANOIA: How Language Of Survival Became My Mother Tongue As A LASUite 

They say silence is a language, but nobody talks about hunger. Nobody tells you that hunger speaks too—loudly, painfully, sometimes poetically. That it can echo in your belly and stammer in your thoughts. That it speaks in rumbling stomachs, skipped dinners, and unsent bank alerts. If there’s any language I’ve grown fluent in, it is the language of survival.

It started not with books, but with brokenness. Not with classes, but with calculations. The kind where 500 naira is both breakfast and fare, and you have to choose which one you need more. Lagos State University gave me admission, but life gave me a test – a test that began long before any semester ever did.

In my dictionary, tuition was redefined as teaching to pay tuition. I taught others to survive myself. I turned knowledge into currency, tutoring students after lectures, doing assignments that weren't mine, and exchanging brainwork for bread. My lessons weren’t limited to the classroom. I learnt that dignity can be worn thin like a faded shirt, and pride can be postponed until after rent is paid.

Every day was a spelling bee of bills. Rent. NEPA. Feeding. Data. Fees. Upkeep. Hope. Repeat. I mastered the grammar of hustling, conjugated resilience in all its tenses, and edited out entitlement from my story. My landlord became my examiner. My clients became my sponsors. And my body? That's my only machine.

There were days my footsteps from PPL to Faculty of Arts were measured in metaphors. My legs wrote essays on endurance. My breath carried commas of contemplation. I walked not because I loved fitness, but because fare was a fantasy. Each trek was a silent stanza, a spoken word of survival with no microphone.

Food became philosophy. Garri became gold. Sugar was a sacred spice. Bread, when available, was broken like sacrament. And when hunger tightened its grip, I chewed faith like it was protein. Hunger taught me minimalism. It taught me to season my thoughts when my plate was empty, to dream big on an empty stomach and speak abundance when my pocket echoed.

Electricity was a myth. I read by torchlight, wrote by moonlight, and ironed with hope. I became a child of shadows, chasing deadlines by candle flicker. Sometimes I asked, not for light, but for lightness—the lifting of burden, the peace of rest. But peace was a privilege, and I was still applying for a permit.

Pain came, dressed in poetry. There were days my stomach wrote haikus without consent. Nights my pillow became a psychologist. Mornings I showed up, looking bright while everything inside me was dim. But I smiled—smiling, the punctuation I used to avoid explaining paragraphs of pain.

Yet, I did not drop out. I dropped excuses. I did not fold. I folded clothes, lesson notes, typed essays, poems, and strength into submission. I carried other people’s futures on my back while dragging my present across potholes.

Somewhere around 300 level, the plot shifted. Clients paid promptly. My hustle gained harmony. Referrals rained. My account stopped echoing. I tasted food without converting it to figures. I bought clothes without bargaining with guilt. My skin smiled. My spirit danced. I began to breathe in full sentences again.

But even now, in 400 level, final semester, I still walk from PPL to class. Not always out of lack, sometimes out of habit. Survival became my mother tongue. A language etched into my footsteps. A rhythm my heart drums. Even when things get better, I still listen to its voice, still feel its syllables on my skin.

Because survival isn’t just an act. It’s an alphabet. A language learnt line by line, scar by scar, sweat by sweat. It’s the reason I can rhyme hope with hunger and still make it sound holy.

If life speaks in tongues, mine is perseverance. If it speaks in accents, mine is gritty. And if survival had a dialect, I’d be its translator.

This is not just a story. This is a scripture. This is a struggle in a sonnet form. This is the Language of Survival. The one life on LASU campus taught me to understand.

Sakariyah, Ridwanullah wrote in from the department of English, Lagos State University.