Sanctuary of Life

As children, our teachers are fond of asking us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember that as being one of my favourite questions; partly because it didn’t require any counting of stones or fingers to provide an answer that would be marked wrong. And I remember my answer had always been that I would work in a bank. That was the dream. That was always the dream. But that’s the thing about dreams, and children—they’re both unrealistically naïve. There are some people who are lucky enough to realize their dreams; there are those who stay tied to their dreams, achieve them and realize maybe those weren’t their dreams after all; and then there are those who spend every waking moment chasing their dream but fail to achieve them. I belong in the last category. Or maybe I belong in the second. The truth is, today, I work in a bank. But I doubt what I do here is the dream I conjured as a kid—I doubt the young me dreamed about being a cleaner at a bank. Every morning, at exactly 4.a.m, I wake up and take a taxi to the bank. I open the doors, I go to the store room, grab a mop brush, brooms and other cleaning equipment. I work for two hours straight, and then I lock up and leave. It is a difficult job, especially because I work alone. My employers have asked me to bring on board helpers but I let them know that I am not interested. My back aches, in fact, I can’t stoop without wincing, and my palms are brittle from scraping but if that is the price I have to pay to cater for my family, then I am happy to do it. I am a husband, with a wife whose whereabouts have been unknown for two years. But I am a father first and foremost. I have two children, Joe and Afia. I like to think I am blessed; not many people get it right both times. But then again, thirty years of my life and I think the only blessing are those two. I am estranged from my family—no, cut-off, would be the right expression—for crimes I committed as a teenager. Such is the price we must all pay. I love my children very much, as does every father. But when I say I love my children, I mean I love my children. I mean they are my joy; they are my purpose, and for them I would fight through sticks and stones. They are the reason I do the cleaning job; it isn’t much but it helps me to pay their school fees, put food on the table and maintain a roof over our heads. I know it isn’t much, and I know they expect and want more from me, but that is all I can give on the salary I receive. Sometimes I look at them and feel a tightening in my heart; I do not think I have ever loved any two people so much. My children are different, the way night and day are. Joe, my eldest, is a bit of a hothead, a boisterous, jumpy thing, with a hunger that I fear would be his downfall. He wants, he yearns, and he craves. He sees something that doesn’t belong to him, and his face lights up; he looks across to me, speaking a language I understand all too well, and I scold him later—he takes uncannily after his mother. But my daughter, she is my flesh and blood. She is calm, and smart and reasonable. She dreams within her boundaries, and does not want what isn’t hers. She is shy, in a beautiful, heartwarming way, and when she smiles at me, I wish I could give her the world. I was 17 when I got their mother pregnant. Or so she claims. I hate to be that guy but the whole thing is blurry, and sometimes I think I have been conned into a life that is someone else’s. But I love my children, and that’s compensation enough. Anyway, when I got their mother pregnant, I was in junior high school. My parents did not take too kindly to it. They took me to their room, they did what every parent does when their child makes such a monumentally stupid mistake, and then they said she had to abort it. They would give me money but I would take her to the specialist—that was a cross no one would carry. I said okay. But before I could discuss it with the girl, word got out. Everybody in our community caught wind of it: Headmaster’s son impregnates local schoolgirl—that would have been the headline if we’d had a local newspaper. My father came home from a Parents’ and Teachers’ Association meeting no more the headmaster, and with a decision to make: he voted to send me out of his house. It was raining the day I set off into the unknown. I have had many setbacks in my life, since 17, when I shattered the perfect, little life I had. I have worked in a hotel as a cleaner; I have pounded fufu in chop bars; I have served Akpeteshi in drinking spots; I have dressed beds in hotels; and I have made mistakes that set me back. I have stolen, and be stolen from. I have done things I am not proud of in order survive. I have lived on the edge; my whole life has been either fight or flight. But the one thing I never lost sight of was my dream. Dreams can be misleading but they can also bring hope. My dream was my hope, and I needed that. Hope is rare, expensive, in a world such as ours. But I had that at least. I held onto that, as you would a tree stump if you were being driven away by a flood. And I was being driven away by my own flood, but that dream, that was my tree stump. And I held onto it. I tried, I really did, I saved money, I enrolled in school, and completed my junior high school. I continued the same hustle and completed my secondary education; I read Business and Administration and passed adequately. But that was as far as life would allow me to clutch onto that hopeless dream. I was then working at a restaurant, The Ish , it was popularly known. I had finished the day’s work and moving on to the next hustle—a nighttime security work at a hotel—when I spotted her, Akosua. She had two kids with her, my children—it was the unraveling of my life.

TO BE CONTINUED

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