Wednesday, April 1, 2020

My Dad, a Tailor

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash





In this country, a boss should always be bald and have a big belly. My uncle isn’t bald, he hasn’t got a big belly either, and you don’t realize, the first time you see him, that he is the actual boss of a big office downtown. I didn’t believe him at first, until he invited me in after school. All excited, I deemed it to be cubby, just like our living room or that of Keza’s but it was a whole of the world, with moving chairs and everything. Well, let’s pass that but it was grand and beautiful, I tell you. I wanted my dad to get there, maybe he’d see by himself what I always wanted to tell him long before that no tailor can make a big money. So I asked uncle if ever my dad has been here but quickly judged that I shouldn’t have for if my dad had ever set his feet in this building, he would have left his tailoring machine at our veranda the next morning and went out to search for a job, a paying job.
At the beginning of this academic year, our new teach Immaculé requested us to introduce ourselves. We were asked our names, our parents’ names and their jobs, where we live and so on. When my turn arrived, I said everything as it is and…
”But your father is a tailor, why do you say he’s jobless?”
Teacher having known my dad before time, I was convinced at the end of our arguing, when no one gave in, that she ought to defend him. But when you have a job, you are either a boss like our uncle or you have a boss.
“Yes boy, he’s been here on numerous occasions, why?”
“Well, nothing. I just wanted to know.”
My dad has seen this office himself? I was disappointed and a bit angry that he did nothing to get a job afterwards. But anger shrunk when I remembered that we are never hungry and that we always get new clothes on Christmas and, above all, that we go to school. Though until now I don’t understand where he gets money to pay our school fees. Maybe our uncle pays for us and we are never let to know about it.
Disappointment didn’t go anywhere though. How can a grown-up man feed his family without having a proper job? Do people he sews clothes for pay him? I doubt that because whenever he sends me to take their clothes to them, they don’t give me any money. Maybe he does it all as the Good Community Work we are always told at Sunday school.
“A man should always do good deeds for his community to claim his place in Heaven.” Our Sunday school teacher likes to tell us. Maybe that’s what our father is doing. He just wants heaven not us, but we don’t complain. We get all we need.

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