I grew up in Warri in the late sixties and early seventies when life was calm, cool and collected.
My dad bought his first Raleigh white bicycle in 1967. I was barely three years old but I can remember it vividly till this very day. It was celebration galore.
By 1969 my dad built an upstairs in Amaforishe street in the then new Okumagba Lay Out and our family moved from a tenant in Chief Wilson Odibo’s compound at No. 55 Giniwa Road to a landlord in a massive six flats one storey building.
My dad was a very hard-working business man and fortune smiled on him and he became the sole distributor, supplier and retailer of foodstuffs in the then Midwest State to secondary schools, prisons and oil companies.
My dad started marrying assorted wives ( he liked fat women). He bought landed properties and houses all over the town and drove exotic cars.
My dad’s name was Bernard and he named me Bernard Junior. I was the fourth child and second son but he was particularly fond of me and I never had to compete for his attention in a family of five wives and twenty seven children.
As a favorite child I had the rare opportunity of interface with my dad. My dad was not a perfect man but I testify he was a kind and generous man.
In September 1975 I was admitted to Urhobo College, Effurun and left home for the first time and I was confronted with all kinds of human beings in the hostel; the good, the bad and the ugly.
During vacations I would lament to my father and wail endlessly about the bullying, corporeal punishment, sexual harassment from homosexuals, labor and poor food asking to be a day student or be transferred to Federal Government College, Warri where my other siblings were schooling. The principal a white man P H Davies was my father’s friend and visits my dad’s mansion regularly and they both played golf together and hanged out together at Warri Club but he wouldn’t budge. This is where I learned my first lesson in life. I would constantly wail and rant, “Why me?”
My dad would retort, “Why not you?”
To my dad you must confront your demons with equanimity. My dad was a positive thinker who believed the best even in the worst situation. He would tell me constantly, “Ben, life is a pot of beans and shit happens. Life is unpredictable. Anything can happen at anytime. Ben, pray for the best but prepare for the worst…” this was his constant mantra to me.
My dad grew up in the then remote village of Okpare Olomu and his father was a gate man at UAC in the village but he was always drunk and his mum was a housewife. The family was poor. At the age of eleven his maternal uncle Jakpa who was a cook to a white man in Burutu visited and took him to Burutu. Until that time my dad had no name because a juju priest said he is an ogbanje because the first three kids before him all died mysteriously. He named my dad Bernard. That’s how my dad went to school and got Elementary Six. At the age of twenty my dad travelled by lorry to Kano for greener pastures.
He did odd jobs and studied by the sides and eventually got a degree in commerce from Cambridge university through correspondence studies. He became a manager in UAC and was transferred to Zaria where I was born in 1964. My dad trained his three brothers and a sister and became the breadwinner of his extended family. My family was caught in the pogrom in the North in 1966 and we had to escape in the dead of night and relocated to Warri. Most of our neighbors especially the Igbos were slaughtered like chickens.
Even when my dad was diagnosed at the Eku Baptist Hospital in 1980 of diabetes mellitus he was cheerful and never downcast. He stopped the usage of alcohol and followed a strict diet regimen and managed the disease until his transition in 2003 aged 84.
My dad loved to laugh at life. The biggest challenge my dad suffered was in 1984 when the Buhari – Idiagbon military junta operated a crazy economic policy that saw soldiers invade my father’s warehouses in Market Road, Igbudu Market, Pessu Market and Enerhen junction and auctioned my father’s goods and his company Omorere Stores Limited suffered a recession. Goods were sold at 50% below cost price. That night I went upstairs to my dad’s expansive bedroom with tears in my eyes. He was reading the Daily Times newspaper. As if he knew what was on my mind he immediately stood up and tapped me on the shoulder calmly and said, ” Ben, when the going gets tough the tough gets going. Tough times never last but tough people do”.
The next day my dad summoned a meeting of the board of directors of the company. He was always well dressed but this day he was gaily dressed and looking upbeat. The conference room was filled with people with downcast demeanor. The branch managers, the accountant and the company lawyer were present. ” These times call for solution, not confusion. This setback should spring us to come back. This is not a time for blame games. This is not a time to crumble, fumble, stumble, tremble, bumble, tumble or grumble”. The room erupted with laughter. Somebody reeled out, ” Oga big grammar”.
My dad was never bitter.
Union Bank gave the company overdraft facility of N5m to stock the warehouses again and in months the business reeved back to life. No staff was sacked.
I was besides my dad on his dying bed and despite the trauma of the prostrate cancer he was cheerful and poking jokes at me, “Ben, I have looked forward to dying. Death is the final fun in the game of Life as you zoom into nothingness”, he said to me. “Popsman, you are not going to die. Stop talking about death”, I replied him with trepidation. He burst into laughter, “Ben, death is a good thing. Birth is the entrance and death the exit. Without an exit the entrance leads to a prison.”
“Ben, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It’s the mystery of life. You can’t control the events of life but you can control your reaction. It’s not what happens to you but what happens in you. Respond positively even to negative situations. Laugh at life. Be happy”.
I observed my popsman was now coughing seriously, “Popsman, don’t speak again. Can I bring your cough syrup?”
“No!!”
“But you’re coughing”
“Ben, never forget this: Don’t ever say, ‘Why me?’, instead say, ‘Why not me?'”
©UB
*Reposted