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| 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.
