I have stared at this photograph of me and Dad (below) for more than five months. The picture was found in Mum’s drawer. After some calculations and contemplations, Mum said I was three years old in the photo. How incredible. I could not place my mind on the fact that I was once three, neither was I able to dig out all that happened to me at that age. How much can I remember from age three? How far back in time can I go? What I could only do was stare, imagine, and ask questions.
I have had several thoughts run through my mind since the photo got to me, and most of them, so far, have bordered on my dad: what were his personal dreams and aspirations at that age? What was his worldview then? What mental picture of the future was he carrying for himself, for his wife, for his children, and even for his country, Nigeria?
At this point I must rely on Mum’s memory. I need stories to fill in the gap, to fill in the ‘negative’ space I am seeing and eagerly wanting to experience. I need to listen to mum; I need to hold on to something from the past. Because the past is sitting right in front of me in a photograph taken ages ago.
Mum is barraged with questions. She herself has to dig up her own time, has to go into closets of her mind, if stories will be told. It is no easy task going down and up memory lanes. I can imagine there are both pleasant and unpalatable bits of the past that would surface. So, I have no expectations. I am just a curious son. A poet and researcher asking to know the past.
Dad was a teacher in Rubochi, a small town in Abuja. His subjects were geography, mathematics, further mathematics, chemistry and physics. He would leave teaching to focus fulltime on geology, which was what he trained for at the University of Jos. He would rise through the ranks in his department to become a director, the promotion and position he saw on paper but did not live to assume. He died a month before his assumption of office as a director at the engineering department of FCDA (Federal Capital Development Authority).
When I think of my father, I always speculate on his career in