A Tribute to Uche Udenka

He reclines on the sofa; his eyes droop as though he is sleepy. It is late in the evening, the time of torpor before bed. All the rituals have been performed: dinner has been eaten, the news has been watched and the dishes washed. I sit in my chair, to the side of the room, watching him as he pretends to sleep. I think of how many times I’ve seen him lying there, with his eyes shut, alert as an owl, pretending to be asleep.

My father is perhaps the greatest single influence in my life, and at times I come to the shocking realization that if he had been, for example, an uncle, he would remain my greatest source of inspiration. It is not what he is rather who he is that defines his role in my life, a role that is a combined result of his virtues, experiences and principles.

The year is 1970 and he is a sixteen year old Biafran. The war is over; the formal surrender has been signed. It seems surreal, as they sit in their victorian living room, feeding on the soup of failure, understanding that the sufferance of the past 3 years has been in vain. The struggle, disappointment, starvation, malnutrition and sickness is real enough, but the concept that the spring of liberty is dry is more painful than the death of a million loved ones, and harder to come to terms with. The import of success; the need to win was inextricably intertwined with daily life; now the lethargy of ‘purpose-less-ness’ fills the room.

Twenty Nigerian pounds sit on the oak table. Twenty pounds of compensation, with which to begin a new life; to buy food for the family, to cook enough for the villagers to join in. Twenty Nigerian pounds, to pay six children’s fees for school and university, to buy clothes for the New Year, laces to be sewn for church on Sunday. Twenty pounds to maintain a lifestyle in which twenty pounds wouldn’t last an hour. Twenty Nigerian pounds, two pounds for each Biafran.

I like to think that it is from these twenty pounds that the legacy of my family begins, because to me, it is from this point that our resilient nature developed. I wasn’t there when the war ended, so no, I didn’t bear any of the burdens that my father did, but like I have his hair and his mannerisms from birth, so too did I inherit his disease of endurance, the disease of my family, of my tribe, as inevitably as my very birth.

When the going gets tough and I feel like all my efforts are futile, when the back of my dreams have hit a depth of failure from which I cannot climb, I think of those twenty pounds, and how my family did not wilt from the loss of its riches, but grew in strength by the gain of new ones. I think of my father, and how everything that he is today, and all the achievements that he forced himself to make, comes from the gratuity of two single pounds. Essentially, I am the result of those pounds, as my achievements are the rewards of his sacrifice and hard-work, the multiplication of two Nigerian pounds.

Every girl thinks that her father is the greatest in the world, but I don’t. I know that he is the greatest father in the world, as he listens to our mindless chatter, reclining on the sofa, pretending to be asleep.