Hello Twenty

Chapter Two

My family wasn't anything special.

A small, close group of five. Six, if you included my mum's younger sister who had been staying with us since forever. Sometimes, it even felt like she was more of my parents' child than I was. That was what people in church used to say. I was too quiet to be one of them.

My dad and my mum were your typical Nigerian parents. They could be amazing when they want to be, loving, supportive but like normal parents they could also be annoying to a fault, judgemental, insulting, frustrating and any other  word that fits the context.

My dad used to work in a company owned by one of his older family members till he decided to quit saying that God told him to establish his own business. Who was I to doubt the Lord but it didn't seem like he heard well as he already had two registered businesses with little or no contracts.
Basically, he didn't have much going for him in that aspect. His 'companies' were originally created to be some sort of distributorship for major companies or industries in the country but these days he did anything and everything. As long as it could bring in money. I watched over the years as he began to add more and more things to the list of services the company provided.
In the last years, he had drilled boreholes, produced little jotters for souvenirs, cleaned houses, supplied building materials and all sort of menial jobs that I would have never imagined my father doing.

It had been more than five years since the second company was created but he was still the only employee in his business but he had all our names written down as fill instead for the important positions.
He was the CEO naturally, my mum was the general manager, my siblings and I were all directors of the company. It all seemed so ridiculous to me. I wondered what he was trying to achieve with all that. He always complained that none of us took any interest in his business but frankly there was nothing there to be interested in.
My mum always emphasized the need to pray for "our father who didn't have it easy getting contracts for his companies".
Sometimes, I wished she would just say it plainly "Let's pray for your dad who is jobless" maybe it would in one way or the other serve as a means to propel him to actually do something about his situation.

He didn't seem like the super dad I knew while I was still very young. Now, he seemed small, almost insignificant.

He had always been strict. Always wanting things to go his way, ordering us around, making our decisions for us. Usually we would do everything he asked without complaints but not when he seemed to have lost his value in our eyes.
We all still loved our dad. Very much even but love wasn't enough to keep a home together.
The only thing he had going for him was the position he held in the church.
He was a deacon. Everyone liked him. He was that man of God you could go to if you needed any advice or prayers. It was funny to me how he could pray for all those people and still not be able to get answered prayers for himself. He was the church secretary too and the treasurer the year before. It felt like he was trying to occupy himself with church programs and meetings so he wouldn't have to face reality.
We too as his children were inadvertently roped into going to church everyday. God forbid the deacon come to church without his children in tow.

My mum was a bit better off. She was just considered unlucky to be married to a man like my father. They loved each other a lot but to me, it was frustrating. I knew how it felt to suffer and because of that I knew that it would take more than love to make me settle for a man that didn't have his life together.
Nothing could make me do it.
My mum was a nurse. A very good one. She got promoted every single time she was due for one. Everyone knew she was that good and capable. She was supposed to be happy, having the best of both worlds but she couldn't because she was laden with debts.
With my dad's situation and all of her children's school fees, she had to take loans from cooperatives when her salary wasn't enough.
The problem with debts soon arose. When you start taking debts, you almost never stop. Soon she was taking more loans to pay the previous loans and with high interests even. Eventually, she was able to pay it all off.
One morning, during devotion, while my dad was praying, he said "God we need a car, please provide one for us".
I didn't need a prophet to tell me that he wasn't actually talking to the God above, he was talking to the one living in our house and sitting down beside him at that moment, listening to him state his requests.
His God did it. The next day, my mum applied for another loan. It wasn't a small one. A good car didn't come cheap in these parts of the world. She got the loan and the next day after she got the money, she and my dad went to buy a car.