The Service of an unserved generation

Adimula Biola
Aug 9, 2017 · 7 min read

Decades back, I recall clearly, gender was never an hinderance to work on my father’s farmland from dawn to dusk. In those days, the number of children and wives determined a man’s strength, recognition and popularity in the society. My mother and her seven children, including me, lived with my father in a two-room bungalow with co-tenants in other rooms. Today, I often times wonder how we were so happy living together in such a tight accommodation.

For my father, the day starts at 5.00am, after the very early morning devotion and a cup of tea with few slices of bread. Then, it was time to go to farm, trekking the long 4 miles distance away from town. We would put on our “dunlop” slippers if it was a good day , other times we just happily walk barefoot, following our father to the farm.

Because there were no tractors and caterpillars in those days, we would work like labourers in the farm. Cultivation, planting and harvesting were all manually done, yet, there was a larger harvest. My father had different farms scattered around the same part of the town. We used to have yam crop farm, grain farm, vegetable farms and we plant all sort of crops, grains and vegetables including yam, cocoa yam, water yam- guinea corn maize- pepper, tomatoes, green vegetables, okro, cucumber, among others.

My siblings and I were made to clear the land for cultivation, we made rows into ridges manually with hoes, we planted whatever seed my father wanted in different farms, we hoed the farms to keep them clean of grasses and we are the harvesters when the crops were ripe, we the children would harvest. In his wisdom, my father made the farm very comfortable for us- we ate good food and had mats spread on the floor when we wanted to take a nap.

Since we had no vehicles to move the crops and grains to the town, in harvesting season, we would stack up the agricultural yields, put them on our heads and transport them to town. We went to farm twice a day to carry the goods- early in the morning before going to school and immediately after school hours. We pack huge loads in palm baskets and carry on our heads to the town. Usually, the loads were so heavy that by the time we dropped them at home our necks sunk and our feet numb. To rest, we would sit and lie on the floor before we could gather enough strength to rise up, clean up and even eat. Some days the routine wasn’t quite exciting as aforesaid because rain would fall, beat us and drench us with loads of crops on our heads while we trekked home. Worse still, if its the basket of yams on our heads in the rain, we hitched, scratching our bodies through out the walk.

Our family’s scale of agriculture was for both subsistence and commercial. We planted almost all the types of food we ate, so we hardly bought food. On the commercial scale my father sold in bulk to traders in big trucks to take to the cities to sell. The proceeds were used to maintain the family and to pay our school fees, as all of us were in different schools. As farmer’s children, we never lacked anything we needed, that was the belief; or may be we never knew we needed them because we were not exposed to them and never knew their importance. For example, we had no electricity at home, we used to have “Lanterns” and “amoritanna”. We had no radio, no television, no settee (in fact there was no sitting room). The two rooms we occupied were bedrooms for the entire family, the mini stairs in front of our bungalow house served as our sitting, while the shade of the two big trees was our playing ground!

Nigerian woman carrying a large basket on her head. Source : Getty Images

At age six (6) at home, we fetched water from the deep Well in front of our house for house chores. We washed plates, fed dogs, swept and cleaned the environment. At age eight, we started cooking and washing clothes for our parents. As a young girl, I remember I used to enjoy accompanying my mother to the market to sell farm produce and make money for the family.

As for my father, all that he did was to discipline a child who was disobedience. He never hesitated to use the rod and he was so devoted to paying our tuition and examination fees in time.

As an elementary pupil, you needed to know on your own, when you ought to register for “Common Entrance” examinations and register for it, commit the date to heart and attend all by yourself on the set day. (Common Entrance examinations were those needed to transit from elementary level to high school). Not only that, you need to monitor when the result was out and go and collect it, then pursue your own resumption into the high school you were admitted to. Fortunately, we were all boarders at high school level at different times and that was a huge escape from daily farm routine- at least during school session.

After high school level, since my father was semi-educated (standard 7 elementary school leaver) and my mother was illiterate, they had no information on higher education, so each child was responsible to pursue his or her own progress, and whatever we told them was “right” since they had no knowledge of tertiary institutions.

As for me, like many of my siblings, I struggled personally to secure my “A” level admission and for two years pursued my University admission into Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria to study Law. Zaria was over a hundred miles away from home.

At age 12, during my first term holidays in December, 1979, my father put me in a wooden vehicle from “Egbe”, Kogi State, Nigeria to travel to Lagos (about 120 miles away), the capital city of Nigeria then, with a paper bearing my elder brother’s address in Anthony, Lagos to trace and spend my Christmas holidays. With my load on my head and the paper in my hands, I personally located my brother’s house and I spent my holiday in Lagos, my very first time of visiting the city!

Reflecting back, I realise that most of my friends and classmates whom we grew up together in the late 1960s/early 1970s in Nigeria, went through the same process in their respective families. For some of them, we are still in touch as family friends and I look at our families today and see that as we served our parents, so we are serving our children, who are not serving or rather, cannot serve us, because of the way we brought them up. Ours indeed is a generation born to serve.

I saw that because of our education and good jobs, we enjoy a comfortable life and have decent homes. We have good houses, flashy cars, monies in bank, good clothes, household assets, unique furniture and fittings, Television, good phones, laptops, among others and all these, we make our children enjoy lavishly. From creche we drive them in fine cars to school, we buy expensive school bags, lunch boxes, school sandals, etc for them and this trend continues until they are enrolled in tertiary institutions. We cook for them at home, we hardly allow them to do any house chores, because we can conveniently employ a good house help that does the house chores and sometimes, even cook for the family.

We do not only drive them in our cars to write entrance examinations at elementary and high school, we also hang around the examination premises till they finish writing the exams after several hours, just to drive them back home. We collect school Forms for them, fill the Forms for them, chose the school for them, monitor their admissions online, follow their school results, pursue their Lecturers to ensure they have good marks, and we become subservient to our children in the name of showing parental love.

Many of these children today do not appreciate hard labour- because they never go through any, they lack respect for the elders because they need nobody’s help, their parents can afford anything they want. Lack of work to do at home and lack of parental physical presence and attention as career men and women made the children idle and they follow their peers to join secret cults and live on narcotic drugs and strong wine. Some of the children become wild and join different gangs while others engage in armed robbery. The eagerness to become wealthy overnight as young graduates has overtaken their minds and so they do all sorts of shady works and unholy practices to acquire wealth, endangering the peace of the society.

The negative effects of our generation’s active participation in our children’s lives today is unprecedented, as it is the harbinger of their inactive lives and idleness that projected them into evil expeditions. With all our efforts serving our children, I see that these children cannot even serve themselves well, let alone serve their parents.

This reflection, to me, need speedy intervention at family levels to save our society- the Nigerian society from crumbling.

Adimula Biola

Written by

A Nigerian dedicated to humanitarian services.

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