Date Published: 12/03/09

BOOK ADVERTORIAL: GROWING PAINS…The Complete Story By Ebi Akpeti

Synopsis

The Book

Pain is always regarded as an enemy but it can sometimes be God's instrument for growth as the two stories in this book reveal.

* * *

Story One

Emmanuel has reached the end of his rope. The point where faith in any and everything ends. It's his life but how well does he know it?

"When I returned home that evening, I watched my mother closely for the aftermath of the afternoon's drama of seeing my insane father but she said nothing. In fact, it was as if nothing had happened. But then, I woke up at about midnight to a sound I had not heard in years. Thinking she was afforded a level of privacy in darkness, my mother was crying as if her heart was breaking!"

Story Two

Born and raised in a Nigerian brothel, Tonye would do anything to escape poverty. This is the story of a woman with a roller coaster life that never strayed far from the guiding hands of the ONE who knows the way.

"The nine angry girls fell on me like a pack of wild animals. Kicking, scratching, clawing, and biting, they tore my clothes to shreds. I stumbled towards the door and miraculously found myself outside. Half naked, I ran like a thief along the streets of Lagos and they chased me. Fear gave my feet wings and I sprinted on. When I noticed a partially open gateway, I turned my flying feet toward it."

EXCERPT FROM GROWING PAINS BY EBI AKPETI

I got home to find my mother and an uncle of mine waiting for me. Mama's eyes were puffy from tears. I went over to her before she even had a chance to speak, knelt down and begged for her forgiveness. I had no right to judge her. The past was gone. She did the best she could. The fact that I had just found out who my real biological father was didn’t mean that I had grown up fatherless. The man I had called “Father” all my life had done all he could to ensure that I was loved. We were never close but he did all that any father would do for their child.

The next day we started fishing. My Dad (as I now thought of Oyinkro) was a good fisherman. He knew just where to go. Before 10, he would leave me to sell the fish myself. He knew just like I did that nobody was going to buy fish from him. The first day, I made quite a sum of money. I would have made more but I sold the fish at the cheapest price possible. And so a new pattern was thus formed. I spent my days on the waves with the man I had come to love fiercely and went home in the evenings exhausted and happy to be with my mother. To an outsider, it was a very strange situation. My father had been the town ‘lunatic’ for over a decade, and my mother had hid my biological father from me until I had to force it out of her. But somehow these things melted away under the warm glow of the reality that was my life.

I had returned to the village thinking of myself as a failure. I got to the village disillusioned and convinced that fate had it in for me. But in the canoe on those waves, engaged in the most basic human activity and listening to the wise words of my father, I began to slowly develop a totally fresh and different view of life. When I returned home, I found that I could actually relate to my mother as a woman. That’s something few children ever get to do. In fact it’s a major barrier between humans and their offspring. It’s the answer to the silent cry of most parents, “Why can’t I be closer to my child? Why does he push me away? Why does she not understand what I’m trying to do?” It’s because they do not see you as people. Parents are just that - Parents. Just this strange concept that we never quite understand, until one day in the future when we wake up and find ourselves as parents. The hardest part for a parent is to realize that their child would grow to be his or her own person someday. That mythical ‘day’ is already here. Each of us was born already as our own unique person.

The biggest problem children have is seeing past the façade that their parents are all powerful. And once they pierce the veil, to accept all the shortcomings and faults they see, there is usually a task. Why? For their parents to have faults is just…wrong. Parents aren’t supposed to have faults - they’re parents for crying out loud! But they are just people. With urges, needs, quirks and flaws. Just normal everyday complex people…I learned that lesson when all the certainty of how I came into being was stripped from me and I had to adjust to seeing my parents in a new light…it was a valuable lesson…

Two weeks went by and the routine held steady. And then there was a break from the routine. I soon found my father to be a very methodical man. We had a timetable and a long list of procedures to handle any possible variation from our schedule that would ensure that the big picture still remained on schedule. But what happened that Tuesday did not appear anywhere in our list of ‘possible variations’. There is no back up plan for human nature.

We had just caught a massive load and were congratulating each other when suddenly Oyinkro froze. He was so rigid that at first I thought he was having a seizure or something of the sort. And then I turned to follow his gaze. My mother was standing on the shore equally staring at him. For a moment I looked back and forth between both my parents. Then Oyinkro gasped a single word under his breath “Yindiere…” Then he leapt over the side of the boat and was gone. With huge splashes (which were very uncharacteristic of him), he swam like a fish, minimal rippling. (Living for more that 10 years on a riverbank had its benefits), he swam away from the shore and struck out for a shoreline in the opposite direction. I watched him go away in shock. I turned back towards my mother, but she too was already walking away…

When I returned home that evening, I watched her closely for the aftermath of the afternoon’s little riverside drama. She said nothing, made no mention of or allusion to what happened. In fact it was as if nothing happened. But then, I woke up at about midnight to a sound I had not heard in many, many years… Thinking she was afforded a level of privacy in darkness, my mother was crying as if her heart was breaking…

The next day it seemed Oyinkro was trying to use the same “nothing happened and I really don’t know what you are talking about” ploy that my mother had tried the night before. I wasn’t ready to take that so I didn’t even wait for him to settle down before I launched the first salvo.

“What happened yesterday?” I asked.

“When?” he asked almost innocently.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t judge her? And that you were looking forward to seeing her again?” was my reply.

He was silent for a long moment, and then he said quietly, “There are many theories about men and their first loves. I don’t know which is true and which is not but I do agree that there is a special bond between a man and the first woman they fall in love with and the first woman who falls in love with them. The thing is both girls are usually not the same. Men tend to take women who love them for granted. Don’t make that mistake. Because you see, when she finally gets over you, that’s when you realize that what you felt for those other girls was only lust and that she is the woman you love. At that time you pray for a second chance. The lucky ones however are those who don’t get it…”

I completed his thought for him “…Because what happens if that chance comes when you are totally unprepared for it? How do you live with yourself, if you throw away the chance with her again?”

“It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return.” He said “But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel.” He said.

We were both silent and pensive for a moment, and then he asked quietly “What is her name?”

Without hesitation I said, “Sarah”.

He seemed surprised; my own answer completely floored me. “I thought you were going to say Tarere” he said.

“Me too…” I agreed, “But you see, I used to love the girl she was. I don’t know this woman she has become. Maybe with enough time, we can reconnect to that level, but no…it’s Sarah.”

My father nodded once and then began to row toward the shore.

“What are you doing? We’ve not finished!” I protested.

He just kept rowing grimly. “No point wasting valuable seconds wondering what would have happened! You have a message to send. My son, one thing you must never do, never ever say goodbye if you still want to try. Never give up when there is hope to go on. Never my son, never say you have stopped loving when you are not ready to let go!”

He was adamant that I contact Sarah. With him breathing down my neck, I wrote her a letter. I can’t remember exactly what was in that letter. All I know is that he insisted that I finish it at the very bottom of the page. To give myself space to empty my thoughts on the page he said. Then he made me sit and spend another hour and a half telling him everything about her, from our first meeting to the present day.

The next day, he gave me the letter (which I had left at his place) to post. It had been sealed and felt a bit bulky. I promised to send it, but the instant I got out of view, I opened it. He had enclosed an extra sheet of paper and in it had wrapped a large amount of money, mostly in change. It was a sizable amount of money from what we had saved up from our fishing expeditions. At first I was furious, and then I read what he had written on that extra page.

‘Money can never repay what you gave me at the time in my life when I could give you nothing in return. This is not to repay the debt. This is just to say ‘Thank you.”

I have no idea what name to give the feeling that washed over me as I stood there reading that note. Without deducting a single note, I resealed the letter and posted it. After sending it, I wandered around the village for a while. I just wanted to be alone. Some people still avoided me, and on days like that, I was grateful for it. I thought about the military man and how close I had come to the wealth of my dreams. There was no doubt I stood to make an amazing amount of money, but there was a question that had only began to bug me- was the means legal? Had Major Manna’s death robbed me from an opportunity or had it saved me from a position where I would have been tempted to compromise my beliefs and ultimately my soul? It was deals like the one he proposed that were the highest form of the corruption that was and is still destroying our country, Nigeria.

I finally went home just as the shadows had begun to lengthen. As I approached my compound, I saw something that made me slow my steps and then duck into the nearest shelter I could find. My father was standing a mere five feet away from my mother. All she had to do was turn from the kernels she was pounding and they would be eye to eye again. And then as I watched, he turned and walked away, careful not to make a sound.

Coward!

I walked in. She welcomed me happily totally unaware of the drama I had just witnessed. I dreamt that night and I saw the same tableau repeat itself over and over again…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ebi Akpeti

Ebi Akpeti was born in May 4 th 1976. She has a Master’s Degree in finance and is currently rounding up a master’s degree in Media and Communications from the School of Media and Communications, Pan African University in Nigeria.

A 2006 nominee of the Capital Market Reporter of the prestigious Nigerian Media Merit Award NMMA Award, NMMA for her story “Trigger for Fraud”, Ebi is also the author of “The Perfect Church” and a collection of short stories entitled “Castrated.”

She is currently working on a fiction story on the indigenes and militancy in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria entitled “For the Sake of Peremoboere.”

You can contact ebi on 08036615291 or email ebiakpeti@gmail.com