Chapter 15

Adrian's Parents Lost Jobs

Adebayo, Adrian’s father, was a high school certificate holder. He had been working as a clerical officer in a government owned Commercial Bank in Lagos, Nigeria, when he suddenly got a retrenchment letter. Without pensions, arrears or gratuities, Adebayo and other staffs, most especially the juniors, were set packing unexpectedly. After that ugly incident, he had walked from pillar to post to get another job in the large city in vain. Even all the longlegs he had thought he had before that time turned him down.

Ajoke, Adrian’s mother became the only hand feeding herself, husband and their two children, Adrian and Roseline. She was also the one paying their school fees of the children with the petty trading which she was doing by the road sides. At that time, Adrian was in Junior Secondary School Class One, while Roseline his younger sister was in Primary Four. Then, they were 12 and 9 years old, respectively.

One unfaithful morning, Ajoke woke up to go to his small, petty trading shop to make some money for the family upkeep. To her greatest shock, her fellow traders were gathering together on the road side, all looking woe-begotten and worried. Her shop was nowhere to be found! Everywhere was being leveled-up by a large bulldozer! The government wanted to reconstruct the double-lane coal-tarred express road into 4-lanes for free flow of traffic.

Ajoke couldn’t belief her eyes. Though they’d been forewarned severally before the incident, but she and other petty traders had nowhere to go at that moment. Therefore, they decided to wait and make little more money before the eleventh hour; so that when the government comes to commence the construction of the road project, they would quickly park their few wares and kiosk shops and disappear.

But she woke up late that morning and didn’t know the road construction workers would be there so early. In great panic, like a newly crazy woman, Ajoke almost loosen her fade floral wrappers and blouse. She threw herself up and landed on the roadside, wailing and lamenting over her unexpected lost.

Many passersby had tried to console Ajoke in vain. Before Adebayo who was sent for to come and take her away, she’d almost wept her eyes out. However, while Ajoke and other road-side traders were counting their losses, the motorists were rejoicing for the newly doubled road and paid no attention to them. They weren’t moved by Ajoke’s loud weeping and crazy display. They managed to drive on the spared side of the under-constructed road, towards their different destinations.

After few weeks, Ajoke had developed a sudden, near-death illness. Adebayo had to rush her to nearby hospital immediately for treatment. After running series of tests on her, the doctor had diagnosed that she had become hypertensive.

"You mean High Blood Pressure, sir?’’ Adebayo had asked in disbelief as unshed tears glinted his sunken eyes.

"Yes, sir,’’ nodded the doctor.

"That's an expensive sickness, sickness for rich people,'’ Adebayo said in sorrowful, hopeless tone. He believed chronic illnesses like cancer, High Blood Pressure were for rich people who had money to treat them, not for poor people who couldn’t even afford three square meals. The fallacy is a common belief among the not-well-do masses in Africa. "From where are we going to get the money to buy those expensive drugs?’’

Too much thinking about her lost, coupled with malnutrition or probably starvation, was the root cause of the chronic illness. Chronic sicknesses are not curable but can be managed with expensive drugs and frequent treatments. That’s why Adebayo sold almost all their household appliances and furniture at give-away prices to raise money for her medical bills and to buy drugs.

Within a short while, Ajoke’s health condition improved a bit, but the doctor advised her to do away with any stressful job like selling things by the roadsides or market for the time being. He had said stress could worsen or graduates the illness to another higher one like Cardiac Arrest or Paralysis.

Thus, their means of livelihood became so farfetched. Even the children’s school fees had become like an elephant through a needle hole. Their teachers became impatient with them over their heavy debts and sent them away from school. Adrian and Roseline had to start hawking foodstuffs on the busy-bee traffic of Lagos for the family upkeep, risking their lives.

Even the landlord of the cramped one-room apartment which they were staying was threatening to throw them out for heavy house-rent debt. Consequently, they had no other choice but to return back to their village, having thought if the journey doesn’t soothe the traveler, it’s better he returns back home. The exact words of Adebayo himself were thus:

"If a snail finds a splinter in its shell, it changes it.’’

When Adebayo and his family got back to their village, Lagelu, they settled in his late father’s house, a bit-bigger-than-a-hut house. And took solace in farm work. After they had gotten some money from their first season harvest, Adrian and Roseline were enrolled in the inexpensive and academically retarded village secondary school.

Most of the teachers would come to classes only when they felt like. They all had farms which they went to instead of their classes. The students, mostly who were over-aged and active farmers, would take lectures for leisure or moment of pleasure. They would make hell of noises in the classrooms at will, jumping over windows to play outside; even it it was not break time. But despite the students’ lackadaisical attitudes towards education, they would score good grades at the end of every school exams. How did they go about that? Adrian had asked himself severally until he had discovered one.

The unserious students would assist the teachers on their farms or bring foodstuffs for them or run errands in their homes to get undeserved high grades.

Though the village’s school academic was not encouraging, but through self-study Adrian as well as Roseline was doing excellently well, topping his class with well-deserved grades.

Adrian was able to sustain his schooling by doing menial jobs for some farmers on weekends, but that did not dither him from reading and studying very hard. Also, he used to get some pocket money from copying class lesson notes for some of the after-farm students. Most of these students who were already showing signs of manhood on their faces attended school just to have the glimpse of the light of education. To become an intellectual or university graduate was not part of their future goals at all. They were all owing farms which they normally attended instead of lectures. Adrian was also a key player in the school football team and their fastest sprinter, despite being in junior class.

After writing his Junior Secondary School certificate exam in JUNIOR CLASS 3, Adrian scored the highest marks in the school and the second in the state as a whole. The state government awarded him a scholarship to study for his Senior Secondary 0’level Certificate in any college of his choice. Adrian gladly picked the past-gloried Government Boys College, Iddo, being the nearest college to Lagelu.

There were to and fro distance of about 30 kilometers between Lagelu village and Iddo town. Adrian would have preferred to be a day-student so that he would be caring for his sick mother and working to assist his father on the farm, too, but he had chosen to be a boarder. He had no other choice, but to be a boarder. Where would he get the exorbitant transport fares from? Would he be trekking 30 kilometers every day?