The crux of furthering my education and subsequently securing my first degree and dream job hunted my emotions down. Where is the money? Who is in a better position to pay me those exorbitant university academic fees? What about the skyrocketed hostel fees? Even if I were fortunate to have landed a stipend at the university, would that be enough as a good feast in covering my feeding fee? Must Mum bear these brunts again? Come to think of it, is she and Torgbe, my surrogate father not already weary in sustaining the tertiary education of my only two elder brothers who had managed to get themselves there? These queries destructed my thoughts, and left me in thorough oblivion on the eve day in Mum's food and drinking store. "Eddo, what's eating you up? My hands are soiled with corn dough and this banku needs to be set before sunset. Please, rise and serve that customer for me.", Mum acted out her sentiments to me and I bid no deviance and acted asap. That very evening, she had a talk with me and she eventually opted in setting seven Ghana cedis by for me every evening when we both hung duties. I said that was very kind of her because you know what? Not all mothers would give out such wages to their son or daughter for merely helping them in household chores. Like most people would think, that amount was somehow meagre but I for once did consider the genuine heart from which the little something came. The sachet water sellers? The yoghurt man? How much did these people earn at the end of the day? Whether rain or shine, did they not travel long distances but hardly earned a profit even as low as ten Ghana cedis? Gratitude is a must and I assured her I would continue to save that and even purchase my university application form from it which cost two hundred and twenty Ghana cedis in those days.
I knew that Mum and a few others including those I had completed school in the same year with, had thought I had intentions in teaching the lower primary or perhaps the junior high level but I had different plans. Mum shouldering both cooking and selling and even more made me feel so much pain. I had seen and felt the old woman work from dawn to dusk each day not solely to boost her business but just to fend for the little family and support our education. We hardly got time to fully support her in those heavy duties especially when my siblings and I left for school. "Why could she not hire a shopkeeper or a cook to help her?", let someone ask her and she would narrate to them two or more commiserating stories about so many hired individuals who landed her in debt and stole her monies even when she paid and treated them well. Once bitten, twice shy, and Mum had learnt her lessons for good. After all, what is the need in paying pounds but getting monkeys in return? If she ever told you any of those stories, then you had heard no fiction. Some of these ill-fortunes had drastically turned her business down, planted grief in her heart, and had sapped her very strength and exuberance. Having felt those pains myself, I had it solidly in mind in using at least three months of the one year of my stay at home in supporting her and willfully rejuvenating her life. Since her enterprise was not pretty large, I guessed that would pave way for its efficient management and would be fully kept under the nose.
The washing of the cooking utensils, the mopping, the cooking of the banku, akple, kokonte, okra soup, and the likes were fine chores and I told her to leave them to me. She feared not too since she was the very one who introduced me to such when I was barely seven years old and she knew I could prepare those fast foods quite well. All that I asked the living God were strength and the mettle to condone her recalcitrant and insolent customers. Some such after being attended to would deliberately walk away without making the payment. Draw their attention and you would either be vilified, attacked by a fight, or be given flimsy excuses. Some such too would drink to stupor, take a seat for so many hours and either jeer at or insult any customer that walked in.
Unlike me, Mum knew all the classes of her customers as intimately as the back of her palm, and that she equally knew how to deal with each one of them to sustain her business. Inwardly, I was uncomfortable when she introduced alcoholic beverages into the food business and I knew she was in the same shoes as me. But she had put her head into that because she found that a little more lucrative than merely selling foods. I understood this myself and I believed that was intended in saving the family from penury. If there are so many neighbouring towns to take refuge in, why should you live in just one and suffer an ignominy in the face?...and who said that she was hungry and had decided to eat with both hands? A drowning man will clutch at a straw and that was exactly what Mum did. All the same, I had kept a straight head to do business with her and lift it to heights never felt before.
Mondays were free days and I had Tuesdays to Saturdays to attend to the routine chores. Sundays were devoted to attending Torgbe's office since he had one or two permanent secretaries who took to the six other days and having warned me severally never to miss any of those Sundays unless, for some tangible reason(s), I pledged to adhere strictly to that. Like Mum, Torgbe always spoke our native language, Ewe, to us. Not that they would have spoken English anyway, even if they had had higher formal education or had possibly learnt speaking the English language. "Eddo, time is money and I always want to work like the white man who hardly hangs up from work!", he said to me on one Sunday evening when he strode into the office and told me to close. I digested those words of his and wanted to ask him whether the white man never found a day to rest but I let sleepy dogs lie, thinking that would touch his nerves and I knew very well that it would if I did ask him. Well, getting his land surveying and royal estate developing company on its feet was my number one objective and that was all, and if only he allowed me.
Torgbe also owned a block factory, but that came to life only when the other business boomed. This was because as compared to other normal businesses, the owner needed to invest so much into it - the high costs of sand and cement reaching the workplace, the draconian prices of its operating machines and their accessories. High electricity or fuel consumption also needed to be paid for and since it is one of those works that could make one die in harness, workers were hard to get. Enough of this litany of headaches!
You know, I needed to secure a day to attend church too and was glad my local church, Power Liberation Centre (Assemblies of God, Ghana) always had Friday evening services which I often found time to join. Adding gravitas, I sometimes randomly picked two Wednesdays from each month and went for Bible studies organized by the same local church. This was to fortify my fellowship with the living God. For was He, not the same God who provided for me and my family when all hope was lost? What of that Friday night when Mum was on the verge of losing her life when her blood pressure had risen so high? Did the same God not shield her from the cold hands of death that midnight when we could not trace any hospital and drugstore? Who ever thought I could win the Birch Freeman scholarship at the Accra Academy when it became the only alternative to save me from dropping out of secondary school? Upon all these boundless graces, must I forsake His ways and soon forget the road that leads to His temple? Discretion is the better part of valour, so they say and I had to be cautious in all my ways and give what belongs to Caesar.
Nonetheless, it had been exactly a month since I left school, and gracefully, the WASSCE results had been released about a week and a half ago. A few of my colleagues had already checked theirs and some such who had purchased awaiting university forms were anxious in stepping foot at the tertiary level. Mind you, I was quite ambivalent checking mine but when it dawned on me on going to the café on that rainy Monday morning, the A4 sheet that came out had its narratives: two "GOOD", one "VERY GOOD", and five "EXCELLENT" for all the eight subjects sat as a general science student. Mum, Torgbe, my siblings, and more others said their congrats. However, very few others and myself thought I could have done better by clogging straight "EXCELLENT". Well, I thanked God for what I had and decided to move on for a better tomorrow.
Gracefully, Mum's business and those of Torgbe began to coin money. Carina may have gone cash-strapped and was likely to call home for money. She was our last born and came four years after me and she was in SHS 1, third term by then. Matthew and Innocent, the first and second-born respectively were in their respective fourth and second years at the university, KNUST and these too would do the same. These feeding fee issues came up normally on Saturday mornings and the calls most often reached Mum and she knew whenever the story unfolded that way. The reason was either any of these called Torgbe but the latter refused to pick for reasons best known to him or the phone was off or had picked the call but told them to wait for some time. In such cases, Mum had no choice but to gather the few cash she had put aside during the days of active work and transfer them to them using the nearest mobile money store.
It had been roughly two months of my stay at home since I completed secondary school. I had saved a little money from Torgbe's and Mum's meagre earnings. Though that could not afford to buy any of the university application forms, I still built on more hope in reaching the two hundred and twenty Ghana cedis at the end of the three months and was equally content with the earnings from both sides. Torgbe's block factory had begun a week ago and that was no news. Strangely, he did not apprise me but I knew, and I doubted if he knew I was aware.
The first Saturday of the third month of my completion clocked in with the usual household duties. I sat by a coalpot and on it, I was seriously stirring a cauldron of akple with all my might and was perspiring profusely. On one of the gas cylinders, Mum was also busy heating a fresh light soup she had prepared the preceding night. Unexpectedly, I felt someone thick and tall stand firmly at my back and boiled out loudly and strongly: "Eddo! You'll see what will become of you if don't throw away that wooden spatula! Leave here immediately! Henceforth, you'll go to the block factory until you start the university!". Those words struck my eardrums terribly and made my blood boil and I knew whose mouth they flowed from even when I had still not turned back to look at their owner. I was stuck in the same position for about a minute and when I had eventually decided to look behind, there stood Torgbe grimacing and looking sternly into my eyeballs. Mum sensing my graved mood signalled me to simmer down and to kowtow to whatever instruction he gave me. He walked away a few minutes thereafter and I looked outside and knew he didn't bring a car which was unusual of him. When he was completely out of earshot, Mum called me in chambers and told me never to take matters into my hand and that, I should just maintain my composure, obey his commands and look straight ahead. Mum's words were instructional but I could still not phantom the berserk display of such a drama from Torgbe. Have I wronged him? Was he struck in a mood swing and had decided to leverage its anger on me? What would happen if he greeted Mum at least? Would that incident ever happen if I were in class teaching? Even if he wanted me at his factory, was that the best way to approach me? Would it not have been well executed when he said "Hmm Eddo, I know your Mum also needs serious help in these chores but let's take a risk; the factory work had begun and I would like you to join."? These were the questions that flooded my thoughts that night as I lay my head on the mattress.
From the words of Ama Atta Aidoo, a female Ghanaian novelist and the former minister of education, "The world is a strange place and such things happen in it daily". Indeed, the world is one. Whatever the case, I had to hinge Mum's words in memory and act on them accordingly. It meant I principally had to drop most of those duties I helped her with and that equally meant the concrete plans I had nursed in reducing the stress on her had been terminated abruptly and prematurely and she knew she dared not quit those active moves. Had the milk not already been spilled in the sand? I had better eat humble pie. That same night, the only prayer I said was: "Heavenly Father, please give Mum the strength to work and live and enjoy the fruit of her labour. Upgrade Torgbe's heart and fill him with a sense of humility, respect for humanity, and overall love. For me, please help me to be steadfast and patient to endure all odds in life. Amen.". I then shut my eyes with the pictures of the tipper trucks of sand, bags of cement, shovels and spades, operating machines, the environment of the block factory, ... mingling in my thoughts, and finally fell fully asleep forgetting to put out the light bulb this time around.