We lived at Umuchima in the dusty town of Okigwe. It was a quaint little town that had old houses with dust coated roofs and narrow winding roads - the winding roads that lead to Abia State University. The dust came in torrents during the dry season, covering everything in its path. Hence, all the roofs were brown like the spoons we were born with. There was a lot of greenery, dust-coated greenery. The leaves were only truly green during the rainy seasons, when the rains would wash the leaves thoroughly and meticulously the way mother used to bathe me - she would use the big sponge she used in scrubbing Nne and Chidi to scrub me as though she were trying to wash the brown off my skin.
My sister, Nne, and I had to leave this place we were used to. We went to live with Aunty Ijay and her husband in their beautiful flat on Bisala road, Enugu. It was difficult for us at first to adapt to the new surroundings, the new culture, even the new foods we were introduced to. You see, we were not used to foods like fried potatoes and omelettes with custard for breakfast. We grew up eating the simpler things like left-over rice and ofe akwu or okpa and soaked garri. We were not poor. At least, that’s what mother always said to us whenever we asked her why we were so poor: “It is just a transition period, inugo? Things will get better soon,” she would explain.
Father had not always been poor. Scratch that, he had not always been in the “transition period”. According to what Mother told us, he was an “nku” in his time, even while they were courting. In other words, father was one of the richest people around back then. Mother usually told us that our father alongside some friends had stumbled upon some gold in the north where he went to look for greener pastures. They took the gold and sold to some white men and of course, father had the largest share. When mpa ukwu, our grandfather died, father spent a huge amount of the money hosting his guests at the burial. Mother said he even killed a cow. After the burial, there was still enough money to keep father in the higher echelons of society. Father left the village with mother and settled down in Port-Harcourt. He was overly generous. Mother advised him to stash some money away but father would reply; “If I don’t give when God has given me, how would I get blessed again? Biagodi o, do you know that I am an nku ? I have the money!” Eventually, after paying mother`s bride price, the spirit of sense visited father and made camp in his brain but relatives and village people have a special way of milking people dry the same way we used to suck our 10naira ice-cream from the sachet until it became a ghost of a sachet. Father’s relatives were coming to live with them when mother gave birth to Chidi. Then, life became so tough that they had to leave PH city for Enugu. Chidi was the only one who was born with a spoon that still had traces of silver on it. However, the spoon soon got completely rusted such that my parents had to move again but this time to Okigwe because mother was heavily pregnant with Nne.
I remember in seven colours how we used to sell wood to raise money for food. We usually ate in the morning and night when sales were good. At some point, father couldn’t pay Chidi`s school fees. He had to withdraw from the private school to join Nne and I in a public school. I remember how he came back in his white and blue uniform crying to mother about how local the school was and how we were not being taught well. Eventually, he joined some young men to carry cement in building sites to raise money for his fees at the private school because according to him: “I can’t survive in that school o ”. I usually did different things to help out. However, I preferred to just mind the goods in mother`s shop. These were some factors that pushed my parents to send my sister and I away to Enugu. “Things will be better for you two there,” Father said.
Enugu was all I had read about in books and had heard from my parents. The only problem was that it was just as dry as Okigwe, even worse. Nne and I used to trek for long distances to get water whenever the tankers failed to supply water to our neighbourhood and this happened often. The other problem was that aunty Ijay made us stay indoors when we were less busy. We didn’t know if there were other children in the compound. We were starved of playtime. Often times, I would cry so much that I wanted to go back to my parents and aunty Ijay would flog me without a shred of mercy. I was so convinced that she wouldn’t have children of her own because she was so wicked. Her husband was not always around. He was a business man who travelled to Cotonou, Onitsha and other places to do business. Nne was my everything. She would hold me close and console me with stories of how we would have so much money when we grow up. We talked about our brother, Chidi, and how he would be very rich: “ Chidi will buy jet for mother and father and he will build a big house here in Enugu and all of us will live together.”
I learnt a lot about the cruelty of life and about the horrible things lack or possession of money could do to people. Apart from being a witch as I referred to her when talking to my sister, Aunty Ijay was a lonely woman who took advantage of others. Nne and I agreed that she was one of those that made father poor. The man who lived near our school used to greet aunty Ijay every time she drove us to school. She always gave him “something for the kids”. The man was quite young and energetic. He was light-skinned and stout. He had the body of an athlete probably because he was a mason. He visited aunty Ijay on Saturdays and Sundays. They spent a lot of time behind closed doors. We never understood what was going on until we heard that the man`s wife had left him because he was cheating. When he owned up, he said he did it to feed her and their children. I felt bad for the innocent children who were caught in the middle of poverty and poverty-induced infidelity. Their spoons were not only rusted, their plates had lost their luster too.
The stimulus to our success years later must have been the shocking news of mother`s death. Father said she died at home of an illness he did not know because there was no money to take her to the hospital. Chidi, who had gone abroad on scholarship, came back to handle the burial arrangements. I remember the way he sat on the ground crying like a baby immediately he came in. He later stood up and looked at the sky.
‘I must be rich in this life. My family can never suffer because of money. Agba ego nkiti, o zuzube. I will be rich,” he cried.
I didn’t cry like the others. At 15, I was much stronger than my age-mates. My family was afraid that I would self-destruct. They were wrong. Mother`s death made me swear to make money at all cost, to ditch my rusted, brown spoon.
Months passed, seasons came and passed. Cycles were repeated and my siblings and I grew. Chidi got connected abroad and made papers for father and I to go abroad too. Nne stayed backed and started a poverty alleviation non-governmental organization. She started it in the university and got sponsors through the man she later married. Some years down the line, father became ill. Nne was pregnant. I was engaged and Chidi already had two children. We all did our best to make sure father got the best medical attention regardless of the cost. We knew he would not survive but we wanted him to know that we had become little nkus and that we were out of the transitional period. When he eventually died, we spent more money than was expected. Nne and Chidi killed two cows in honour of our parents. We buried father beside mother. After the guests had gone, we sat down in the well-furnished sitting-room in silence. We talked about life and about how far we had come. We were born with rusty, brown spoons but we ditched them for shiny silver spoons because change is the only constant on earth.
