I Am Because We Are by Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr

Author:Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2022-01-04T20:44:39+00:00

Thirty-Two

“A well-travelled child exceeds a grey-haired

person in knowledge.”

My younger brother, Anayo, was now a man, married and living in a house with his wife, Sylvia, whom naturally I had helped him find, and children. He had put on some weight since his return to Nigeria, causing his lazy eye to seem even more pronounced.

Over the last years, my job at PTF meant that I could do what I had always desired, which was provide for my family, including my brothers and sisters. In those years, as much as I was a support for him, I had come to lean very heavily on his support.

To call him a brother, especially in a country where every other person is called a brother or sister, is not enough to capture the depth of our relationship. He was a business partner, a confidant, and my most trusted companion. Those years at PTF also greatly strengthened our bond, as we started to work closely together.

Over the years, he proved himself to be a natural with negotiations, and I encouraged him often that he had our father’s knack for business. Over time, Anayo himself would become a contractor working with various state and government agencies.

It was with his help, as well as Chike’s and that of a good family friend, Arthur Eze, that we were able to acquire the funds needed to purchase tickets to the United States for all eight of us.

Chike nevertheless continued to be critical of the investment in a green card. He was particularly focused on how our first daughter, Ijeoma, had just scored the best JAMB result in the country, which is like saying she got the best SAT or any comparable university entry result out of at least a million others. She only had to point at the university of her choice, and she would be enrolled in the highest degree program — that being, of course, medicine.

“Ijeoma didn’t need a green card to access the best universities in this country,” Chike said, “and we cannot be assured of the same plethora of choice in the States.”

Convincing Chike once his mind was made up was like trying to dry up a lake with a hair dryer. We were similar in that way.

Those months taught me to focus on the silver lining, on the opportunity it signalled for the rest of the family.

Our family’s first trip to the United States was the American summer of 1996; tickets had been booked months in advance to correspond with the beginning of the school vacation. More than one of my children had created a countdown calendar. They were absolutely vibrating with excitement.

I was to fly with the children. Chike would join just days later. At the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, the only international airport in the country at the time, we presented our green cards at check-in with smiles and some anxiety that everything would actually work out. It was only once we were settled in on the plane that we could fully trust that we were all indeed flying off to America.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.