By Funke Egbemode
The Yoruba have this saying:
Oke oku l’oku nre
Baba omo l’o l’omo
Loose translation: A child will always look for his father because the father owns the child.
Did you nod or sigh? If you are a Yoruba man, you will nod but if you are not a modern man, you will sigh. A mother, old or young will sigh for different reasons. As a Yoruba mother, I am sighing and shaking my head. Yes, you can do both, because that old saying is old and is fast losing its grip on today’s reality.
Both the mother and the father own the child. They made love and made a baby. How the baby becomes the father’s exclusive child is a matter of tradition. It is not a DNA matter. A child can look every inch like his or her father and still belong to her mother. Indeed, exclusively to his or her mother.
Let’s back up a bit and I will be talking about the Yoruba culture that I understand. You see that saying I started with? It is one that sees the importance of fathers and fatherhood in the Yoruba society. Once a man has impregnated a woman, he’s conferred with the natural title of a father. If the woman leaves him or he leaves her, he’s still a father. Even if the mother goes to remarry, the child is supposed and expected to return to his or her father, eventually. Especially at celebration points in life, like when he’s graduating from learning a trade, from school or getting married.
The man planted the seed that grew the child and he deserves the honour of his title. I totally agree. His position and title should never be in contest. Let me pause to pray and praise the real men and honourable fathers who through the ages have carried the title ‘father’ with dignity and responsibility. Men who did not think an ejaculation is a feat. Men who planted their seeds, watered them and protected their seedlings until they became giant iroko trees. They toiled then, in the days of our forefathers. They worked their fingers to the bone and they are doing back-breaking stressful jobs today to cater for their children.
There are men in their 60s still holding down jobs because their children are yet to graduate. They retire and then look for another employment so that their children can complete their masters degrees. They ignore their health issues and continue to work until they ‘accompany’ their children to the points where they can stand on their own feet without fear’.
For these men, I pray that your remaining years will be filled with great rewards of your labour, which you will enjoy in joy and good health. The Almighty God will heal you of all old age troubles, so you can dance your dance.
Again, that Yoruba saying I started this piece with has lured some men into thinking that even when they are irresponsible absent fathers, their children will always be their children. These irresponsibly shameless breed, they shake and ceremoniously drop their seeds in unsuspecting women. Then they take off as soon as they are told that the proceeds of their orgasms have become little human beings. They hate dividends of their orgasms Those ones, once they hear there is going to be harvest time, they come up with all kinds of nauseating lines.
“I slept with you only once.”
“Am I the only one you are sleeping with?”
“I’m not ready to be a father.”
“You know what your mates do when they get pregnant. Or don’t you?”
“You missed your period, how”?
You just wonder if some men ejaculate their brains along with their semen when they ‘come’. Annoying retorts and foolish questions.
The sperm donors sometimes get away with their atrocious attitudes. They leave the bewildered pregnant woman to fend for herself, her baby, as an ‘after-one’. They call them Baby-Mamas these days. Then 25 years down the road, the girl or boy graduates or is called to Bar with only their mother beside them and the lousy sperm donor starts protesting.
Oke Oku loku nre
Baba omo l’o l’omo
For where? Things change. The decades of toiling alone do not leave a woman abandoned the same.
What about fathers who go into polygamy without the wherewithal to fund it? What about the ones who tell their wives they cannot kill themselves with school fees. “My father did not send me to school, let them also fend for themselves.”
Have you met those fathers? They are not many but they do exist. I have had to counsel and encourage wives, mothers who end up with the misfortune of marrying them. Men who believe that they do not owe their children good education because their own fathers did not send them to school.
And then, there are the fine-boy-no-pimples village champions and city-boys who just concentrate on the good life while they leave the upbringing of their children to their mothers. They drive nice cars and wear designers outfits but compare their children’s school fees with the ones they paid in the 70s, 80s and 90s. They have a bag full of excuses on why they are not discharging their responsibilities.
This is the year of our Lord 2024. Things are no longer what they used to be. The sober, self-pitying and sad after-one women of old have given way to strong, assertive, financially-independent, no-nonsense Baby Mamas who make their own rules. Today’s children are called GenZs. They can see, feel and decide. They see what their mothers go through to put them through school, put food on the table. They are dry-eyed kids.
“I saw the indignities my mother suffered just to pay rent and school fees. Our father married a second wife and moved in with her. I do not begrudge him his need for more than one woman. What I still can’t understand and forgive is why he’s sending the second wife’s children to school, private schools while my mother has to do everything for us. Why are we being punished for their marriage that failed?”
That’s what a young lady told me. She’s 19. Women are deep. Young or old. We are created like that. Do you think she’s going to forget the day the landlord called her mother “useless” in front of her? Do you think children who heard their mothers cry themselves to sleep for years will forget? Do men think a wedding invitation card or the excitement of graduating First Class in Architecture will make their children forget their mother’s pains? No, things no longer work that way.
GenZ children do not give a f-ck about Yoruba proverbs when their fathers leave them in search of big backsides or rich sugar mummies. It’s the same way those who are abandoned by their mothers ignore them later in life.
Dear Brother, stay in the lives of your children even if you no longer love or live with their mother. Spend holidays, weekends with them. Have fathers-and-child vacation with them. Never forget their birthdays or PTA meetings. Pay the regular bills: that is school fees and house keeping. Call them as often as you can. Go to their soccer games, swimming lessons. Talk to their teachers. Invite them over to your office. Let them learn your business. Teach them something their mothers can’t teach them. Set up a WhatsApp group for you and them.
Talk make-up with your daughter. Talk Man-U, Arsenal and Liverpool with your boys. Do not let them replace you, because they can. And they will. Do not think that the fact that they carry your DNA is all it takes to give you bragging rights of a father. No sir. A sperm donor is different from a father. Men who make their wives cry at dawn will shed their share of painful tears at dusk.
