Father's Promise

When I was 5 years old going to 6 my parents take me and my siblings to our village which was about 200 Kilometers from where we were residing. We were there for Christmas and new year celebrations with other members of the extended family.

I need to say that prior the time we were taken to the village, my father used to travel to our village, Iyanuni, alone for end of the year activities with his mother having lost his father at a tender age, I doubt if he even knows his father by eye before he died.

However, since the time he left the village he has been making it a point of duty to visit his mother and celebrate the end of the year with her alongside other siblings of his.

His Mother’s Request

Previously he has been told by his mother that he needs to bring his children home, having been married now, his aged mother whose age then was presumed to be close to 90 years old told him that he needs to bring us home so that she would know us before she dies. He said the woman said, she is getting old and cannot say when she would give up the ghost, but before she gives up the ghost according to my father, she wants to know us and bless us before she died.

Objections Raised

My father said he raised objections to this, considering our state, because I was 4 years going to 5 then and my sister was about 3 years old, with the last born about 8 months old, and my mother was equally heavy with another pregnancy then.

My parents were old before marrying each other, thus they decide to give birth to all the children they wanted to have within the space of 7 years before menopause sets in to my mother.

On another note, why he raised objection was the pitiable conditions of the Nigeria roads then for he has no vehicle and the vehicle that travels to our area then comes once per week and would drop all passengers at the third village to our village because our village is not accessible by vehicle, even barely could a bicycle travel the path then. The distance between the third village where all would be dropped, and my village is about 22 miles (that is about 35.2 kilometers) thus people going to my village would trek the path. These added together makes him raise the objection of carrying us home.

My Mother Persuaded my Father

However, when he gets back to Ilorin, and discussed with his wife, my mother, she after a while told him that they need to do what grandma said, because they are also growing old and would wish that they see their grandchildren when they were alive too.

This is the custom of my land Yoruba land; my people cherish seeing their grandchildren and that is why they force people to marry at tender age even if the husband is jobless the parents would say they would be taken care of the wife and children.

After much deliberation between the husband and wife they agreed to take us to our grandma so that we shall be blessed by her before she leaves the world.

All Fun

It was all fun for me and my siblings when we were being taken home to go and see our grandmother for, we haven’t travelled that far before.

Soon enough we got to our village, our grandma was happy seeing us and after some days she called us and prayed for us.

However, after the festival and we were about to leave our village, infectious disease broke out in the village such that has never been witnessed before according to old people’s saying in the village.

Grandma’s Death

Since the village was somewhat like a forgotten village, no one knew that such infectious disease has broken out in the big towns and the news has been aired on the Radio of how to be protecting oneself from the infection. Because Radio could hardly be come by in the village then, we were in the dark until the infectious disease entered the village like torrents of rains and overwhelmed the inhabitants of the village.

This infectious disease killed many children in the village and some old people were not exempted, it was the infection that also killed my grandmother.

Plan Changed

Her death couldn’t make us leave the village the time we planned to leave as my parents and other siblings of his’ have to run around to do the necessary things to bury the old woman.

This time was not like now that there is morgue that a dead person can be kept till the children have money to bury their parents, even if there was morgue then, the distance would be far, carrying a dead woman through 35.2 kilometers on footpaths before getting to a nearest clinic which I am sure has no facilities like morgue then makes no sense.

Arrival of Medical Personnel

Soon enough the news of the infectious disease in my village get to the major town where there are foreigners, the “whites” (Caucasians) as they were being called by our people manning the health facilities there.

When they got this news, they swiftly come to our village with several “small white-like stones” as the villagers used to call it and they started separating those with the infection from those without the infection. A classroom was carved out for that, because our village has a primary school, with about 5 classrooms.

It was inside this room that they were putting those people, while they also use another room as a place to live and consulting room.

While given them those drugs (white-like stones) and they were recovering, one of them everyday moves around the town with an interpreter to be educating the people on the disease.

Not long afterwards those who were sick started recovering and everything returns to normalcy.

I was Moved

What the villager’s local doctors and herbalists have been trying to do for weeks without solution was taken care of by those people within days. This moved me and I had to ask my father who those people were.

When I asked my father their identity, he told me that they were called Doctors and Nurses, that it is their work to save lives and that is what they have come to do for the people of the town.

When my father told me this, I told him that I will like to become a Doctor one day. He said if I wish to become a doctor that he would support me, in anyway he could if he is yet alive.

When I now grew up in town, I got to know that there are PhD holders and medical doctors. I said to myself it is medical doctor that I want to become like those “white” people who have saved my village from total annihilation, I also wish to save people and bring new innovations into the medical world in any way I could before I leave the world.