In the Year 1997, Mr. Roland was just a fledgling teacher and he had a bright future. He worked tirelessly the minute he got his first appointment teaching Chemistry at Onipanu Sekondiri at Igbajo, he was very charismatic. His students loved him so much that they even adopted we his children as their younger ones. Everyone called him "Mr. Roland," and it was fun to see his eyes twinkle when we called him that as well.
My sisters and I would sit on the back of father's Motor Bike (commonly called okada) and jolly ride along.
I grew up with memories of him telling his students how they were privileged to be part of the great nation "Nigeria." I would watch my father from under the old Mango tree in the school yard, Tolani and Anike were always busied with their girl games that they hardly saw the things I did. Mr. Roland would energetically walk the corridors, switching classes every too often.
His steps at the beginning of the day were almost as energy-filled as his walk at the closing hours. I noticed the slight drop in his pace but only if you watched closely enough as I did. Everyone else thought he was superhuman.
We got to tag along to his school because we were home schooled. People found it strange; homeschooling. After a while our brilliance got to outshine the snide remarks people made about father not being able to afford school for us.
I would sit feets crossed under me and chin poised on my "winged" palms. I would imagine that one day, Daddy would be the Principal of his school and then we would come to school in his big range rover car. My mind would desperately imagine a year when our wicked landlady would not come to pour spoilt yam and red oil on the verandah; when she would be busy shouting "Tisha! Pay up your rent oooo! Oloriburuku, Otoshi aye atorun!"
One day, our mum left home and never came back. I discovered she and father had been arguing a lot before then. The last argument I heard them have was so loud that we could hear them from outside the room doors. "Roland! You said you will take care of me. You even made me to have children, like as if you had a plan. I cannot live like this anymore ooo!"
"But Tope, we knew this wasn't going to be easy. I also want to get my own house. Do you think I enjoy listening to landlady's crazy rants? Give me some time, let's..."
"No, No Roland! There is no time again. I don't even know what I have been doing for so long. I'm leaving!"
We heard them scuffle a bit behind the doors as it seemed father was by the door and mom made to open the door. She soon yanked the door open, glared at us and dragged her bags out of the door.
Mother had never really been like most mothers I know. She never hugged us, nor did she do things most women did like cooking breakfast and tying shoe laces. She was not working either so father had to take us along to work. Most days he would pay Iya Sade; the food seller to give us plates of rice with sprinkles of oil and fish crumbs on them.
Every year after mom left we kept faith, hoping that we could balance all the school fees, feeding and rent payment. Father would sit me on his lap and say
"Don't worry son, this year I will save some money and we will start building our own house."
There was a day I replied and asked him if we could not go to the bank to borrow some money? I even heard that time from one of the men sitting at the newspaper stand that government was providing mortgage loans through allocations to the Federal Mortgage Bank, I urged father to take a loan and stop trying so hard to save.
He said he would think about it but he had that look in his eyes whenever he wanted to tell me "the world is not as easy as you think my child..."
Later I discovered that getting a loan was the fastest death sentence in Nigeria. Interest rates would break your back. Like a Camel dropped on its hump, you would be so broke that the kings men would never think of putting you together again.
As I grew older, I could feel the looming fear of homelessness. It was bound to happen from my standpoint and I could not handle the way father aged as he struggled to take care of us.
One day I found him on the floor of his room, he had a bible open in his laps and tears streamed down his face.
"Look here Tunji, how can this book say things like this? How can God say things like this if he does not mean them?"
I sat beside him and read the passage he pointed at.
"And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.Galatians 3:29."
"Tunji!! I'm not going to lie to you. This is not part of the bargains I had with God about my life. You are becoming a bright young man. Don't believe everything you read or see. Life is more complex than these things!"
Father retired in 2009, he started to visit the State Secretariat every thursday and on Sunday evenings he would go for the Pensioner's Union Meeting. We had moved houses but there was really no much difference, the landlady was worse for every move we made. It was like as if the women were just waiting to pass us on from one level of devilry to another.
Our current landlady would busy herself cleaning out her burnt pot just under the single room we all shared. Father slept closest to the window, I as the only male child would sleep on the couch close to the door while my sisters shared a Mat in the corner.
Some time in January 2011, I woke up before my sisters, hoping to revise for Jamb, I loved to read early in the mornings. This was one of the things I discovered from being homeschooled.
I struck a match and lit the Kerosene lamp. The shadows fell all around the room but father's spot was empty. I felt he probably was in the living room so I continued reading.
"Broda Tunji, Daddy nko?" Tolani asked while rubbing out the sleep in her eyes, she had always woken up before Anike the elder one of the two.
"Mi o mo, he may be in the parlour," I gestured at the door. We waited that whole day and the next, we could not allow landlady know there was something amiss so we kept indoors and wondered.
At a point I thought father had finally chosen to follow after mother, he must have gotten tired of straddling us along. We were enough burdens to kill a man. I could not tell Anike and Tolani that father may never return.
The days I saw landlady walking past the front door, I almost could not breathe. Now I could feel the fear father must have felt. What if she knocks and asks for rent. What if she says we cannot pay later in the month? All these worries paralyzed me. I almost cursed father for walking away, how would anyone do such a thing? I asked over and over again.
It was the fifth day that he had left and our food supply had started to dwindle. I told Anike to bring all the foodstuff out so we could account for them and ration them out.
The girls were having a late afternoon nap as it rained heavily outside. I heard something like a knock, I turned to the door, my heart racing with hope.
"Tunji!" I was sure I heard my name. I could not have been mistaken.
"Tunji! Wa shilekun!" I ran and stumbled over the girls, flung open the door and ran into a wet hug. We had always gotten all our hugs from father so I didn't mind hugging him even when we walked on the streets, people never understood us.
I didn't mind that he looked like a ruffian, his torn and dripping clothes couldn't stop my bubbling excitement. I ran and wrapped my hands around father. He had grown so lean but I could care less.
He waved off our questions and seemed totally different. Things soon went back to normal. Father seemed to have hit on some jackpot. Within a week, he had struck a business deal with three private schools in the area, he became a teacher and student support counsellor.
Teachers listened to him narrate to them how life would be for them and he helped them create support groups to prepare financial goals that would safeguard their life after retirement. He received invitations to groom students, teachers and principals called his line all day and night.
Soon we moved out of the old apartment and father built a 3-bedroom duplex close to the training center site. We not only pulled out of extreme poverty, in less time than we could imagine, father was ready to build our own training center.
I could not wrap my head around this but father never seemed inclined to tell me where had been those five days when he had disappeared.
He would sometimes spy me staring at him in awe, he would smile and signal with his hand that I should be calm. One day he said "I know you want to know so I will tell you tomorrow when you check your first year results."
I could not contain my excitement. I went to campus for lectures and breezed through the day hoping I had a streak of A's. After seven years of passing jamb and being unable to attend, I had finally enrolled in 2013.
I printed the results out at the department and walked home proud of myself. I had always aced exams because I saw my father sweat to train my sisters and I. Now that he didn't have to sweat, I aced them because I had seen my father turn around a most miserable existence. I got home and handed in the results.
"I had all A's," I said, flinging my bag on his bed. He sat in his room at the mahogany polished reading table. He was in his study clothes, he looked so regal with his sprinkle of grey hair edges and neatly groomed beards.
His eyes twinkled in a familiar manner as I flopped on the huge bed and waited for the story. I turned to face him, my legs spread out behind me on the bed and chin propped on my winged palms.
He started his story from all the parts I knew. How mother left, how we could not even feed well. He was stalling intentionally so I urged him to go to the juicy parts, he smiled.
"Don't be in a hurry, I will still tell your sisters this story when they get back from school. I want it to sink in well.
That day I left home. I first thought about taking my life. Listen, it had nothing to do with you kids because I know you must have thought that.
I love you three like my life but we were going to be kicked out and I had exhausted all options. I hope you understand?"
"Yes I do, more than you know Dad."
He continued the story about him walking out into the cold night, "it was drizzling, and I could not imagine what it would be like to live outside in such wet conditions," he continued.
"I decided to find out ahead, I abandoned my suicidal thoughts. It became clear to me that God had positioned me to pave the way for you guys and I would be failing my number one assignment by taking the cowards route. I decided to try homelessness for a few days, maybe it was not as bad as I thought it would be..."
"Was it?"
"It was. It felt like hell in the rains. Do you know what it feels like to never have dry warm clothes? Always being under the rain, trying so hard to hide away from it?
Days when you would look for any form of cover. Sometimes under parked lorries, open shop balconies, covered drainages. I quickly learned from the other men on the streets.
Once the rains started, we would scamper for cover. Sometimes the rain beats down all around you and it feels like its only raining on you and the whole world around you does not know what rain means.
You are so wet that you have to slip your hands into your wet clothes and pray hard for the rain to just stop. I slept under tables and stalls, ate food discarded by traders and waited eagerly for the Sun to shine."
I watched him talk, his eyes filled with so much pain as he talked about the men he met and the little children who died from pneumonia. He had seen our future and it was not something any human should have to endure, he explained. In that five days, he had spent the last three talking to those men about what they would have done differently if they could avoid losing their homes.
"Those men told me things. Do you know many of them had lost faith even before they got thrown out? Everyone of them had sought for government rescue, they had waited on family and friend. They looked to everyone else but themselves. This is when I discovered that I am my own rescue and there is no search party coming to get us. I had to let go of the pain your mom's departure gave me. I decided that for my own sake and your sakes, I had to believe that the answer was in me to give and not somewhere out there. Tunji, no one out there will stop you from losing your home except you. Fight for yourself, teach your sons and daughters like I am teaching you now."
I sat there dumbfounded, staring at father's wrinkles. His grave tone and words registered with every second that his lips moved. Unbelievable! what a man like my father would do to find answers.