by
Obododimma Oha
Some of us think that one learns only from what is in the books or what proceeds from a teacher's mouth. That is wrong. Life is a big classroom itself and we learn from the lives of others most of the time. We are all teachers and all learners. It is with our lives that we teach; it is our lives that we teach. As one would expect in a relationship of a son and a father, there are many lessons. But I am trying, only trying, to articulate some I consider most outstanding, hoping that someone would learn, too.
Perhaps the part of the experience that stands out significantly in my relationship with my father was the numerous accidents he had, most of them very fatal, but he came out of all a survivor. One ghastly road accident that he had in the fifties took the lives of all in the truck but he survived it! After being in a coma for days and being transferred to Government Hospital, Port Harcourt, where a doctor had to be coming weekly at his expense from Igbobi, Lagos, he came to, and ended up limping. It was with that bad limp he struggled and climbed palm-trees, rode bicycles and even motor cycles, and did significant manual labour. Of course, he was also active in the local polilics, too. In fact, he was not deterred by physical handicap.
His life was, in fact, characterised by accidents. In one, he fell from a palm-tree but survived it after passing through excruciating pain in the treatment. In another, he once fell with this blogger while riding a motorbike on a busy highway. Of course, we survived. Several accidents! Shocking. But he survived and later died in ripe old age. Who says that it is not worthwhile to fight on a battlefield of life, trusting one's chi as the real soldier in action?
So, what is the lesson? It is obvious. This earthly life is a battle-field. One should stand one's ground and fight on. No excuse. One cannot retreat into one's mother's womb again. No cowardice. No retreat; no surrender. As the Igbo say: "Ebe ọkụ nyụrụ, a wụsa mgbọwa!" (Wherever the fire goes out, one has to drop the burning faggots). That means also that one should be ready to wrestle fearlessly until dawn with one's chi, asking to be blessed. Kwa onye kwe, chi ya e kwere? Is it not when one agrees that one's chi agrees? One's chi is superior but waiting to be made a tool, too.
The man who had a tragic accident, who walked with obvious difficulty and with a bad limp, one of his legs ending up being shorter than the other, could have started begging for alms. He could have tried to evoke sympathy by displaying his incapacitation, how he was one leg away from Heaven and badly needed to be assisted. Father could have done all that with great success, coming home smiling from ear to ear with big money and thanking God for making one of his legs shorter.
But he chose to suffer more by climbing palm-trees and bicycles and motorcycles with one leg, and even repairing fences and singing away, enjoying his work. Was he not "unwise" in choosing to punish himself?
If the alms-begging father had added a holy book to his persuasive tools, maybe that would have helped further, too. Imagine if he knew some choruses or the rhetoric of preaching or the magic of praying (especially praying in tongues), he would have hit it big. Maybe father was not a good student of begging or did not even think of it, his Igbo culture that discouraged begging a strong yoke. Maybe he was proud and saw himself as being like others or wanting to compete with peers still.
I would have learned the art and science of alms-begging from him. I would have perfected it and would tried to outdo him (a son should be greater than his father!) I would have developed theories and models of it, as my modest contributions to the world of begging. Alms-begging International! Does it not sound elegant? Would it not have attracted trillions of Naira as loans from sympathetic countries out there?
That means that my learning from my father was incomplete: he missed something; therefore, I missed something! Two victims in a culture. One victimhood causally developing from another.
But the serious lesson from him still remains. Not to find an excuse for not trying, for not living one's life to the fullest and being ready to give a good account of it anywhere, as a good soldier at his or her post.
Yes; he taught me to fight on and not be discouraged because I have been injured at the battlefield. A soldier should expect injuries but soldier on still.
Another lesson: illness likes being worshipped, covering oneself up with a bedspread or blanket from head to toe and responding to words of consolation from sympathisers. Illness likes being illness. But father was stubborn and did not worship illness or handicap. So, there was no palm-tree to be climbed with one jeg? No bicycle or motorcycle to climb and ride with one leg? No local politics to feature and fling one's hands in rage?
Father taught me with his life that life is meaningless unless we try to put in something there as our achievement. Father taught me with his crowded working life that I should wake up when others are sleeping to write this essay. Father taught me that writing this essay could change somebody's life and that is one reason I must write it and share it. You can see why I called this man my hero in another essay.
If I did not learn anything from the life that was a book always open to me, then it is a waste of time hoping to learn from other books, from the formal classroom, from research, from social media and listservs like USAAfricaDialogue, from research, and from society generally. It is a colossal waste of precious time!
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