Proud Of Dad

I have grown up eating pure honey directly harvested by my own father. I remember in the olden days when I used to enjoy escorting him in the night to harvest honey in the many hives he had strategically placed on some of our trees located in the many plots of land that we had in those days. My father is a subsistence farmer and also does apiculture.

In the olden days, he made me lick his big fingers when sorting out bees from the honey combs, now i have the big fingers and can't be licked by anyone, what a shame!. One time i remember a bee stung me in between my thighs close to my groin, my other siblings laughed at me while I lamented. Dad backed me up by silencing them.

Sometimes I consider my self a hero but when I look at my dad, he is the true meaning of heroism. A man who never had a good schooling but managed to raise ten children with just his might and intelligence, he told us that he regretted refusing to attend school and opting for hunting which in his youthful days was enjoyed because there were no government restrictions on encroachment of the forests and game parks.

As a young man he told us he engaged in many ventures that neither benefited him nor his family, which included smoking, drinking and womanizing all of which didn't pay off. Instead most of his age mates succumbed to the horrible HIV as it was in its beginning stage. The government had not implemented free treatment for patients of the horrible disease that swallowed most of the young men in those days. Fortunately, he realized early that he was wasting the most valuable part of his life and therefore converted to the Seventh Day Adventists(SDA) church where he gave up all the weird lifestyles and has lived a good and responsible life since then. He decided to marry my mom.

In those days, their marriage style wasn't so legal as of this day, it was just a matter of grabbing one of the treasured belongings of a girl and escaping with it to your house as a bait. For my mother's case, her bait was her newly born baby girl from her boyfriend and she had just come back home. Dad didn't wast this opportunity and hence surveyed and got to know her for three good days, on the forth day, he requested to hold the small baby girl and in the process disappeared with it. The young woman had no option but to follow and reclaim her child and that is where the other nine of us came into existence. He treated the young woman well with her baby which was his now stepdaughter, took her as his own until she she grew not the recognize her true family up to date.

Being the first born son of a hero like my dad, I received all the love compared to the rest of the girls that came before me. I came after three daughters of which two are my dad's and the elder step sister. A son in the African setting is what makes a man a proud father and husband, therefore I believe i made a significant impact in my family upon arrival to this tiresome world.

But then I was not going to ride on soft ground for long as six other children followed me in succession one after the other,three boys and girls which to my impression made my father double or triple his efforts in work. He is a hero to me because never in my childhood days did we go hungry. He worked tirelessly getting us involved where necessary and as well tried educating us up to some reasonable level of education according to the standards of our community even without a salary, just his head and wit.

As we grew up, the wealth in the household kept reducing because of many sources taking out of his pockets the little earned money for example food, clothing, school fees and medical care. He still fought hard and is still struggling up to date in trying to raise our young siblings but old age is encroaching on his health. There's a saying that "something must kill a aman" and i see he has sworn on it.

I can never say all my dad did for us but we have been proud children for as long as we remember and today when I ate his sweet honey, i remembered the old days and silently asked God to bless this man that has been a pillar of strength for me and my other siblings so that I can one time make him a proud father again.

To be continued........