Friday, April 22, 2011

A Real Father?

Ikemefuma


We are going home?  Home to my mother?  I wonder if she will recognize me. Or I her?  Will she be proud of who I have become and how I have changed? 

My little sister, I suppose she’s not very little anymore.  How she must have grown.  I wonder how my other father treats her.  Is she cherished or does he continue to abuse his family? He was not a man of whom I can be proud.  What does that make me?  Am his son or yours?  What is more important – where I came from or who I have become?

He gave me up to save himself.  Has he changed? Does he regret his decision or will I have to prove my worth to the members of the tribe?

Father what has changed in my home?  Will they welcome me?  I was payment and perhaps they will be angry that I am being returned.  Father why am I being returned?  I am a good man, brave and strong. 
Father, my voyage home is filled with a wide range of mixed emotions – joy, fear, uncertainty, loss.  I will forever be grateful to you for watching over me and making me into a man.  I shall miss my friend and brother Nwoye as well as all my other brothers and sisters. They were my childhood friends.  Will they miss me? I am worried how Nwoye will react to my going.  He is not yet strong like you or I.  

I was frightened, confused, and nervous when I was taken from home as an infant.  However little did I know that I was not leaving home.  I was being brought to my real home, to you, Father.  You’ve taken me in as your own and blessed me with the greatest family I could have known.  I am grateful for my other father’s cowardliness.  Without it, I would never have had a real man as a father.  You have taught me courage, persistence and to respect the cycles of the earth.  You have shown me how to be strong and stand up for our community.  

But why father are you now disposing of me?  Did I not satisfy you as a son? Perhaps I truly am an undesirable and destined to live the remainder of my life as an “agbala”.  Please Father save me from this horrible fate.  I beg you father.  I am not weak.  I will work harder than ever before and become the greatest man in Umuofia.  

For you, Father, only to continue to be with you.  You only need to provide me with the opportunity.  (dies).  Why?  Father!  Why?

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