his name surfaced the moment i saw the question.
“who has been the most impactful person in your life, and how did they influence you?”
i let the words settle, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.
not because i didn’t know what to write—no, the answer was clear. but how do you compress a force of nature into a few paragraphs? how do you fit a man like uncle festus into the tight, rigid confines of an exam interface, blinking expectantly on the screen?
because that’s what he was. a force.
i exhaled, cracked my knuckles, and let the memories spill.
**
it started with archimedes’ principle.
it was my last day of school—at least, what was supposed to be.
i had decided to drop out. not because i couldn’t keep up, but because the entire system felt too slow. rigid. mechanical. the stop-and-start pace of school frustrated me. i wanted depth, speed, intensity.no waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. no teachers dictating what knowledge mattered.
so i left.
studying alone wasn’t a problem. in fact, i thrived in it.
but then, on my way home, i stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks.
a small, nondescript building. a blackboard visible through the window.
inside, a man stood at the board, chalk moving in broad, confident strokes.
three words.
archimedes’ principle.
i stopped.
the students inside weren’t slouched in disinterest, staring at the clock, waiting for freedom. they were alive. arguing, debating, leaning in.
and at the center of it all stood him.
uncle festus.
tall, sharp-eyed, with a presence that filled the room, he wasn’t just explaining a concept—he was unraveling it. physics wasn’t something to be memorized; it was something to be felt.
i stood there for a long time, watching. something inside me clicked.
this was what i had been missing.
i loved learning alone.
but learning with others? racing, competing, pushing each other past our limits?
that was something else entirely.
i turned and walked home, but i already knew—i was coming back.
and i did.
uncle festus didn’t run a school. not in any formal sense.
his “classroom” was his house, his “students” a ragtag group of high school dropouts, restless minds who had abandoned the standard path because it didn’t move fast enough.
and under his roof, we moved fast.
we studied for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day.
math, physics, chemistry, engineering—we weren’t bound by subjects, we devoured everything.textbooks piled on the floor, equations sprawled across walls, our voices bouncing off the ceiling as we argued over problems that most students wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
uncle festus had one rule:
if you can’t keep up, you get left behind.
there was no let’s go over this again for the slow ones at the back. no pandering, no sugarcoating. if you didn’t understand something, it wasn’t his job to slow down. it was your job to catch up.
we had a saying—only the strong survive.
and we meant it.
the competition was brutal.
no one was there to hold your hand. if you wanted to be the best, you had to fight for it.
ejike was my greatest rival.
if he solved a problem before me, i seethed. if he grasped a concept faster, i tore through it until i understood it twice as deeply.
we weren’t learning for exams. we weren’t learning for approval.
we were learning because we had to.
because knowledge, real knowledge, was its own kind of warfare.
sundays were no exception.
i’d wake up, go to church, sit through the sermon, nod at the appropriate moments, then the second we got home—i was gone.
straight to uncle festus’ place.
if i had a life outside of that room, i don’t remember it.
and frankly, i didn’t care.
because in that space, i was alive.
but uncle festus wasn’t just a teacher.
he was a decipherer of minds.
there were days when i would sit, staring at a problem, drowning in frustration, feeling like the numbers and symbols were conspiring against me.
then he’d walk over, glance at my work, and smirk.
“you’re thinking too hard.”
and in minutes, he would unravel the entire thing.
not by giving me the answer.
but by forcing me to see.
it wasn’t magic.
it was clarity.
and clarity is a rare thing in this world.
uncle festus didn’t just teach physics.
he made you feel it.
he turned numbers into narratives, formulas into stories.
he made me realize that the universe wasn’t just something you lived in—it was something you could understand.
and once you understood it, you could bend it to your will.
so when my screen flashed that question—
“who has been the most impactful person in your life, and how did they influence you?”
i didn’t hesitate.
it was uncle festus.
the man who turned learning into an obsession.
who made knowledge feel like a battleground.
who showed me that physics wasn’t just a subject—it was a way to see the world.
and that, more than anything, is why he remains the most important person i’ve ever met.