First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly
The ideal thing to happen would be a great celebration when the parents found out they were expecting a baby. The ecstatic father surrounded by well-wishers would cheer and share drinks at the announcement of that first positive pregnancy test. For many however, this is a time of fleeing and denying fathers and would-be mothers crying while surrounded by unpaid bills.
Ideally, the foundations of a life should be built before the baby even arrives so that the young one hits the ground speeding on the runway ready for take-off.
Prof C Achebe described this well in his novel, Things Fall Apart;
“Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually did. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit.”
A child should be born ‘into something’ and later when the parents die, ‘inherit something’. Everyone is born into something but when that thing is poverty, ignorance, violence and disease, the baby hits the sinking sand crying for salvation as they submerge into the miry clay.
In Things Fall Apart, Unoka, the father of Okonkwo created an enabling environment for poverty. Blessed with a poor work ethic and a love for music and living above his meagre means, he had nothing but debts to show his son. The living room wall had charts of various creditors the family owed. Poor Okonkwo must have looked at the charts and the various creditors who came visiting and wondered how he would ever make it.
Unoka appears to have been a metaphor all along. Nigeria, our Fatherland is a 100% Unoka entity who owes money everywhere and loves to party. Flute in hand, he has children being born into poverty daily. These kids should have been getting ready to inherit the fruits of the labours of our heroes past, but unfortunately these fruits have been stored in deep refrigeration in foreign lands. They may not want to wait in vain like Bob Marley but the waiting continues.
Unoka was happiest when he played his flute and drank palm wine. There is nothing wrong in that. He however, was born in an era where the strength of your hoe and match on the farm determined if you could feed your children. He was not motivated to work hard on his farm so his reserves were low and he resorted to debts to stay alive.
Childhood is where the greatest learning occurs. Learning to walk and developing language skills from nothing is amazing to watch evolving before your eyes if you have ever lived with a baby. Any human being capable of learning to walk and talk can achieve anything else in life when given the right opportunities and placed in the right environment.
Come to think of it, all education, be it formal or informal, is all about learning the right language to use in certain settings. All professions have their technical terms and once understood, one becomes productive to society in that sector. In addition to the factual information gathered, there is also the skill of ‘walking’ through society. Going from place to place, navigating the cultural dos and don’ts, networking is also part of the lifelong ‘waka well’ education.
The kids must be taught to walk and talk in a successful society that existed long before they were born. If they are deprived of an education in a stable society, they become burdened with a wasted youth. An unprepared youth is crippled and inarticulate in the face of a rapidly changing and complex global village. So what does one do if this putrid cap of thorns fits? How do we restructure the old dog to assimilate new tricks?
Rebranding
Some in their 30s feel like they are the lost generation. There are two options; one is to accept fate and see what happens or to be proactive. Like the fictional Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, one could launch out with determination despite the weight of disadvantages heaped on ones shoulders.
Adverse experiences of an elder ‘hard knock life’ might indeed be the launching pad to fuel a rocket for take-off. The fuel of hope is always needed to blast up so seek hope from whatever source you can find it.
Some youths who focus purely on the country as a cause for their misfortune might decide to leave it by any means necessary and would not let the Sahara desert or the Atlantic Ocean come between them and their dream of a better country (na sontin dey kill man after all). Many die as they try to join the economic migrants in search of a better life. Each one must consider the facts before making a move.
It is imperative that everyone would need to pick themselves up and start again. Everyone feels lost sometimes. When one is rebranding or re-inventing oneself later on in life, one can get hope by studying the lives of people who have started again later in life.
The stories of men like Nelson Mandela, Colonel Sanders (KFC), Albert Ray Kroc (MacDonald’s) who achieved great things later in life are shining examples of how initial disappointments can be overcome and new skills learnt.
Even the ones deprived of opportunities live at a location and see something daily. What they have picked up can be used as a launching pad in re-invention of self.
There is however no short cut. The learning of how to speak and walk in different circles continues. What Unoka could not teach or provide, Okonkwo had to teach and make happen for himself.
