To father with love

We men feel awkward whenever we have to demonstrate affection for our fathers. It’s always easier with moms. I am lucky to have had such amazing parents. Father was built like a lion but had the heart of a lamb. By contrast, Mother has the beauty of a gazelle with the heart of a lion. Father was the soft, tender and touchy one; Mother, resolute and no-nonsense; never sparing the proverbial rod whenever a child was up to some mischief.

When I was 14 and had started reading Bertrand Russell and other worldly philosophers, I shocked my parents by declaring that I was an atheist and that all religion was a figment of ignorant imaginations. Devoted Evangelicals that they were, they were shocked beyond words. Father said nothing. Mother called me to her bedroom and sat me down. She stared at me for what looked like aeons. Quietly and solemnly, she decreed, “Son of my womb, you shall be a man of “aminci” and nothing else, do you understand me?” The eyes with which she stared at me were indescribable; her words burning into the very marrow of my soul.

It took me years to understand what the Hausa word “aminci” really meant, there being no direct English equivalent. It refers to the quality of character combining virtue, trustworthiness and reliability. The people with such attributes will have to be of the Biblical order of Meshael, Shedrack and Abednego.

My destiny was sealed. Until today, whenever I am tempted to stray from the straight and narrow path, Mother’s words remain a stern rebuke.

My earliest memories were when I was about three. My younger brother, now late, was crawling boisterously all over the place. Mother and Father doted over us with happiness. The Nigeria of the early sixties was an idyllic paradise – before the age of fire and iron, when the land was consumed by locusts of greed and the bloodhounds of war.

Growing up in our tranquil missionary village was a thing of incredible joy. Father taught me large chunks of the Psalms which I could recite by heart. At age four, I was a boy wonder reciting entire Psalms to the applause of church congregations. Annie Beaumont, my white missionary Sunday School teacher, was the kindest and saintliest soul I have ever met. The white missionary children were the only friends I had when I was a child. We climbed mango trees together, chased butterflies and flew toy aeroplanes in an intoxicating rhapsody of joy.

Father worked with the missionaries from his teens as a cook and handyman before being trained as an evangelist and teacher. He rejected all marriage proposals until he met Mother when he was over forty and she barely eighteen. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven.

Father lived the life of a true Christian – pure of heart and incorruptible. Devoid of hatred. Humility personified. He loved all people; living in accordance with the precepts of charity and justice in all his dealings. In politics, he was a follower of Obafemi Awolowo to the bitter end. Even as late as 2011, during the national elections, he insisted on voting for the party whose ideology, in his view, best approximated the beliefs of the late sage.

In my last conversation with Father, he complained that he could no longer endure this “mugun zamani” (evil generation). As community head, several times he had saved the Fulanis who lived in the neighbourhood from extermination by angry local youths fed up with constant nightly attacks from marauders. In the late sixties, when the Igbo were being hounded and killed, entire families took shelter in our humble abode. Father was the first person they fled to when their lives were in mortal peril. The spectacle of frightened children continues to haunt me to this day.

Father touched so many lives during his lifetime – widows, orphans, the sick and infirm. As a schoolboy in the 1970s, we had gone into town with my friends in our uniforms. A chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz car went past us, only to reverse with speed. The “Ogah” wound down his window and beckoned specifically to me to step forward. I was, of course, reluctant. He persisted. As I sauntered towards the vehicle with trepidation, the man asked if I was the son of Mailafia. I answered in the affirmative.

Astonishingly, he said that when he saw my face it was unmistakably Father’s. He handed me a wad of money that exceeded what any schoolboy should have as pocket money. He said Father had helped him in a way that he would never forget for the rest of his life. He never said his name.

I was woken up at dawn on Monday, 8th December to be told Father had gone to meet His Lord and Master. He had been ill and slow of late, but had otherwise been his jolly old self. I was expecting to be home for Christmas and to enjoy with them the festivities of Noël and my birthday which falls on 24th December. Although I love Mother dearly, Father was my Rock of Gibraltar. I thought he would always be there like the ancient hills surrounding Jerusalem.

I was last home in November. Although he had grown weaker, Father had remained his ebullient self; full of jokes, stories and insatiable curiosity. He always wanted to know everything that was going on in the world – in Europe, in Palestine, in the Americas. Although he was not a quantum eater, he had a healthy appetite for an old man; savouring his pounded yam and bitter-leaf soup with chicken and beef to the very end.

Father’s life and example convince me that a life of righteousness is its own reward. It may not bring earthly riches or power, but it is an imperishable heritage. Father was 100 when he left this world. His last wish was that we should rejoice. He will be interred on Saturday, 27th December.

OBADIAH MAILAFIA