At the back of my wardrobe there's a bright red football shirt that I haven't worn for about fifteen years, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it. I'm thirty-eight now and I work as a pharmacist in Enugu, in eastern Nigeria.
I got it when I was about twenty-two, the year I played for my university's football team in a national inter-university competition. Each player was given a shirt with their number and name printed on the back. Mine says Chidi and the number seven. Our coach handed them out in the changing room before the first match, and I remember feeling like a professional footballer.
The obvious reason I don't wear it now is that it no longer fits. I've put on a fair bit of weight since my student days, and I'd look rather silly in it. It's also faded quite badly, and the printed letters are cracking. And apart from that, I'm a pharmacist now. I'm not sure my customers would take my advice seriously if I turned up looking like that.
So why keep it? It's basically my memory of that whole period of my life. That season, we reached the semi-final, which was the furthest our university had ever gone, and I scored in the quarter-final. I'd never been very confident as a teenager, and that team gave me a sense of belonging. Most of my closest friends today were in that changing room. Every so often I take it out and show it to my sons, who don't quite believe their father was ever an athlete. Throwing it away would feel like throwing away part of myself.