Father's Greatest Gift

Our community is known for one thing because it is surrounded by water and there was only one entrance to the community. Majority of families depended on our God given gift for survival and my father was the head of his group. Because of his job, he barely spent time with us but we didn't bother because each time he returned home, he brought back varieties of fishes. As a kid, I can't list the types of fishes I ate.

I enjoyed catfish more than other fishes then my younger sister loved tilapia.

Our community is blessed and we lived in harmony but there was one problem we faced, we lacked good road, pipe borne water, electricity and basic infrastructures.

The community was inhabited by mainly poor families who depended on fishing for survival and the few wealthy families lived in the urban cities.

Our family wasn't the poorest but as a kid, I knew that my father didn't have money like Chief Eze, Barrister Ugbo, Dr Okongwu, Nze Piaus, Igwe Nchebe, Prof Okey, Engineer Udo, Rev Emma and other men who had cars.

Our father would always tell us that education is the key to success and he wanted us to go to school so that when it's our time, we would be among the families pulling the string.

He was right but there was something I loved more than education.

Our mother sold fish in the market, that is what so many families do, the men will go fishing then the women will sell the fishes. Our father talked about education like he was reciting a poem; Dubem go to school, education is the key to success. This he planted inside my head but I didn't like school, I like to sell in the market with our mother. I don't want to be a fisherman when I grow up, i want to be a seller because of the money.

I am business inclined our mother said.

My sister likes school so let her go and get four walls education while I acquire business skills because selling in the market is also a learning process.

I want to be a big fish seller like Oga Emma. He buys off all the fishes then sell in his fish store and people came from the city to patronise him.

To be like him, i had to start somewhere but that is what our father doesn't understand. You can take a horse to the stream but can't force it to drink water.

Our father said that telling a child the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath but why force me to go to school when my heart is not in school.

He said that a school is a four wall building with tomorrow inside it and that confused me.

This is the only secondary school in our community, it was built sixty eight years before I was born and has never felt the hand of renovators. Everything about the school is bad news except the fact that the teachers tried to deliver their best in terms of teaching. Mr Mmaduka our biology teacher is a true example of a teacher because his head was our text books.

Text books were expensive so from his head he gave us notes.

The reason why I didn't like school was because of the condition of the school environment, how can you understand what is being taught when both sun and rain beat you during class?

Some of the students responded to stimulus very well because they came to school healthy but went back home with cathar and cough; thanks to the dust inside the classroom.

Our father said that a school is a four wall education set up but the school I found myself in doesn't have four walls, it's walls were fallen but he failed to understand that it was two walls education in our school.

For all I know, i will join Oga Emma as an apprentice after school because my desire is to operate the kind of fish business he operated and I know that I will do it. But like they say you plan and God plan.

The net was cast into the river after our senior school examination and guess what?

It will amaze you to know that I made all A's in my senior school examination then went on to score above average in the university entrance examination, our parents were proud of me and I was so happy because it was bye bye to our father's 'four walls and tomorrow leaders inside it'. However, our father sat me down and asked me for one favor. You know he always had his way on us so I couldn't resist his offer.

He wants to sell his only piece of land to send me to the university.

His condition was that if I go to University, he would open the cold room for me with part of the money so that I would combine both together so I needed no Oga Emma to have my own store.

I saw that as a wonderful initiative and accepted it because he pleaded with me to accept his condition so that was how I found myself in the medical school.

Two years later, Isioma my younger sister repeated history in the senior school examination and joined me in the automatic race for freedom as our father called it.

It didn't take me time in the university to see what our father did because proceeds from that cold store helped to pay our fees but that is not the main purpose of this story.

The main purpose of this story is to clearly let you know that our father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee is the truest definition of staying late night in the middle of the river while others were sleeping simply to wake the fishes because he had to pay our school fees.

I wish that you could see what your own father is doing in your life because every drop of his sweat is to protect you.