RESUMPTION DAY: MY DAD’S PEP TALK

Reopening days are the worst moment for most students especially if you are a boarder. And today is an exact instance.

School is resuming for the term and I bet a good number of students wouldn’t find it funny coming back. Some will cry like I back in the days. Others will toughen it up and internally console themselves. Only a few will be glad to see the school walls again.

And while they are mourning their cruel fate, I am impatiently counting down till I see them on Monday. I miss them and can’t wait to have them back. My heartfelt condolence to those crying but there is no going back. One man’s meat is another man’s kpomo they say.

I could vividly remember moments like this during my school days. Not the crying aspects because I had my fair share of it plus home fever and what have you.  My emphasis here is on the night before departure. I am always the first to leave home especially in January.

After supper, my dad will call us together (five boys). It is not a period for chit chat. While my mum will lay her emphasis on the importance of prayer, keeping God first in our day to day activities, my dad will take his time reminding us of who we are, where we come from – financially and academically. Prior to this, he has thoroughly gone through our results like a CIA chief chewing up classified intel.

I will never forget those moments. Most importantly when he talks to us about maintaining our family name. He will regale us with tales of his days and how they survived with limited resources – the meal tickets, summer jobs etc. Their parents couldn’t afford their school fees. They virtually trained themselves.

Those nights were my soul searching moment. Even the crickets around our compound will forget to chirp. The wind will take its howling business elsewhere. And come the following day, when they call me to their room to collect my school fees and pocket money, I will be at the verge of shedding tears.

I knew what that money meant to them – both were civil servants. I don’t know how much they made collectively but looking at my dad preparing for work and my mum giving me the cash cum some parting words of advice, I will swear with the last drop of my blood never to let them down.

Till date, such has been my pillar of strength.

P.S. I travelled home last year and while rifling through some of my dad’s collection, I came across some of his books – he invested in them a great deal. Goose bumps pockmarked my skin immediately. He wasn’t making up stories for our sake. Tears nearly slipped through my eyelids.

I believed and still believe him.