Drunk

My mother told me my father was very hardworking and successful until he lost everything in a fire accident. When everything changed for him, he tried to work his way back to the top but was stopped by an unfortunate accident that disfigured his right hand and leg.

When he got better, even though the accident's scar was very obvious in the way he walked, he lost his old life and found a new life in drinking palm wine.

Whenever I watch Nigeria movies and see those drunkards who sing funny songs and tell you all the village secrets, I see papa.
Sometimes it makes me cry, other times, it makes me laugh, depending on my mood.

As I grew older, I started becoming aware and ashamed of the situation. So I gave myself the task of looking for papa every morning to avoid neighbors from seeing him.

One morning, I woke up by my usual time of 5am, took my wheelbarrow and torch, and went out to look for him. I knew all his palm wine customers, so I tried all the routes to their place. Because it was the harmattan period, everywhere was cold. When I found papa, he was sleeping inside a gutter full of mud.
I tapped him, “papa, papa, come let's go home”.
He turned to me, looked at me and said, “Ebuka, is it you? Please close the window, am feeling cold”.

If not for the Sunday school lessons in my head, I would have just left him there, I wanted to, but I carried him into the wheelbarrow and pushed him home on the second thought. On getting home, I dropped him and went inside.
My mother had the duty of taking him inside and wash him up.

The following day, papa didn't come back home, I decided to go to his favorite spot of drinking, which was across the village main road.

On getting to the, I saw numerous people gathered, including the police. When I got close, I noticed a terrible accident in that place at night.
After looking around, I left there and continued my search for papa, but went home when I couldn't find him.

That evening, my mother and I were worried, we told the village youth leader what happened. He started calling the youths to start a massive search for him.

Suddenly, a black police van accompanied by a white ambulance, Volvo, drove into our compound. My mother was about to start shouting and crying, when she saw papa sitting inside the car.

We were all confused. The policeman dragged papa out of the car and asked him, “is this your house?” we all helped him to answer yes sir.
After that day, because of fear of that policeman, papa quit drink again and started living a responsible life.

source

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