Previously:
Chapter Two
On her way home, she called her Dad to narrate how the entire process went.
‘Can you believe the postman was questioning your real name? I mean, who is he to question my Dad’s name in the first place?’
And Dede from the other end of the phone asked ‘Nnem, and what did you tell him is my name?’
‘I told him your name naah”.
‘Which is?’ Dede quizzed.
‘Daddy, don’t you know your real name again? Hmmm… I told him that your name is Dede. Or do you want me to tell lies?’ She said with so much assurance.
And Dede burst into loud laughter. Well, Chika has always refuted this account of the event, but that hasn’t stopped Dede from always telling the story each time he deems it necessary, which is… every time.
Just like he has never stopped joking about how he got several promotions in the military because of his deep, masculine voice that often cast some doubt on his real age. He always said that his superiors in the military respected his voice so much that he thinks that was the single most important factor that earned him multiple promotions. Anyway, Dede’s ex-colleagues agree with him, so you can’t argue much.
His real name was Uzoma, a name originating from the Eastern part of Nigeria that means the good path or the good way.
So Dede often sought ways to talk her daughter out of the idea of even becoming a police officer, let alone a military officer. Not because he felt that his beautiful daughter was incapable, but because she was the only child, and he desired to see her have a regular, normal family without the constant thoughts and fear of death on the battlefront.
He had lost his own dad to aortic stenosis – a heart disease – at the young age of 51 which almost got him into depression. The dad had a bicuspid aortic valve, an inherited malformation where instead of three leaflets, the valve on the left side of his heart had two leaflets.
As the doctor would explain to him after his Dad’s death, the presence of that defect, among others, predisposed the dad to develop aortic stenosis – the narrowing of the opening of the aortic valve. That implied that his Dad’s heart gradually became unable to pump sufficient blood from his heart to the other organs of the body. So, he’d often have symptoms like breathlessness, chest pain, fatigue, palpitations, and after a while also the thickening of the ventricle (the heart chamber).
Dede’s father was rushed to the hospital one evening after he fainted, losing consciousness. Upon getting to the emergency department, he was quickly taken to the operating room, but couldn’t make it out alive. The doctor told him that had the symptoms been detected earlier and the malformation treated surgically, maybe he’d have stood a chance. But that was not to be because Dede was rarely at home, Mom was dead and his younger brother was only 10years old at the time.
Dede was just 21 years old at the time of his father’s death; he was on his first mission abroad for about a year.
‘Had I been around, he thought, ‘maybe I’d have constrained him to visit the doctor more often than he did. Dad has always been a hardworking man, but had this one defect, he took little or no care of himself. And after the death of mom, he worked so hard to train us.
After the death of his father, Dede served for a few more years before coming home to settle down. He had paused his marriage to his childhood sweetheart because he didn’t want to be far away from home; he wanted to be very close to his wife and to raise their kids together. So, after leaving the force he took to commercial farming, engaging in livestock farming as well as starting a pineapple orchard.
He eventually married Nnenna, his childhood heartthrob from another state, but whose parents moved to Dede’s state when Nnenna’s father was asked to head the accounts department at the headquarters of one of the textile industry. They grew up loving one another before eventually deciding to spend the rest of their lives together as a couple.
So, coming from this heart-breaking experience of his father’s death, Dede decided to always be close to his home until his children were married – he wanted to be there for them physically, spiritually, and materially.
Chika on the other hand maintained a burning desire to follow in the footprints of her Dad, or at least to become something similar. She was just so passionate about military strategies. She would stay up late studying the history of the great ancient empires and their war strategies – she literally ate every page on the Babylonian, Grecian and Roman empires, their army and exploits.
As she grew up, and as the arguments over her future ambition ballooned, she became increasingly uncomfortable with her Dad’s position and once attempted to leave the house. It took the intervention of her mother and neighbours to pacify her mind.
She eventually reached a middle ground with Dede – she was going to get done with college, and only after then pursue a military career if she was still interested. Her father agreed to this, praying that she meets someone on campus, maybe a male friend, who will talk her out of such “senseless” desire. Those prayers however went partially unanswered seeing where we are today.
