Unspoken Truths: Two sides to a coin

Side One: The Uncle

My daughter met this strange guy at the poolside of my hotel. The guy was looking very unkept and journey weary. Because I brought up my daughters very well, she approached the man and asked him how she could be of help. The man introduced himself and told my daughter he was looking for the CEO of the hotel. My daughter told him she was the daughter of the CEO.  This young man then introduced himself as my nephew, the son of my sister who got married to a stranger and had gone off with the stranger for many years. Thereafter, he and my daughter became fast friends.

By the time I came to the office that day, my daughter had given him some food and a change of clothes. When I eventually met him, I saw all the likeness of my sister in him. We got talking and he said his mother sent him over to me to deliver a message. I collected the letter he held in his hands, and I read it.

My sister said he was one of her two sons. She said the other son had already gotten married to three wives and she didn’t approve of any of them. She said she had kept this one from making such an error, but he was still a bit naive and needed to earn some experience in business. She asked me to take him on as an apprentice and train him in my business.

I interviewed him right there and then. I discovered he was very smart on his feet and shrewd with money. I could also see that my daughter had developed a crush on him

He was a pleasant young man. He was eager to learn and very industrious unlike my own spoilt and entitled sons. I felt I could kill two birds with one stone. Train him and at the same time leverage that opportunity to expand my business. I had always dreamt of starting another hotel in the nation’s capital, but I didn’t have a capable hand that could handle the project.

So, I got on it. I started training him the right way. He started as a waiter and began to work his way through the hotel’s cadre. In order to be a good hotelier, one must understand every aspect of the business, from waiting to what goes on in procurement, the kitchen, the bar, and the rooms. He was quick to study. In about ten months, he had earned enough wages to rent a room of his own in town and he was very dedicated to the task at hand

My daughter kept talking to him and at one point, I realized it was a matter of time before the two of them got under the sheet. The problem with this was simple and a bit complicated at the same time. I have another daughter who has a bit of a defect regarding her eyes. It made her a bit unattractive to men.

She does not put herself out there anyway, it was because of the same issue that she preferred to stick to her room and the kitchen rather than go get herself a husband. The younger sister was a beauty.

I had some tough decisions to make: My decisions had to do with business and the marital destiny of my daughters. People saw this young man as my son and for that reason they respected him. He also conducted himself with dignity and he had grown to be very proficient in our business. He came to me the next morning and told me he had been offered a job as the manager of a rival hotel downtown. I was disappointed but at the same time I realized that people were beginning to see what I saw in him. I sat him down and offered him a professional contract.

I told him my daughter wanted to marry him, and I would be willing to give her to him as a wife, but he must be willing to pay me her bride price. He asked me how much the bride price was, and I told him. He said he would have to work for seven years in order to raise the bride price based on the salary his intended employer was offering him

I told him I would allow him to have my daughter in exchange for those seven years of labor. I told him he would still be working and keeping his salary if he stayed with me and he could have his bride immediately rather than wait for seven years to marry the love of his wife

He agreed and we shook on it. Well, the day of the wedding came, and it was all going smoothly until my older daughter began to weep inconsolably because her younger sister was going to get married before her. I decided to do what any loving father would do.

I added some sleeping pills to my younger daughter’s tea, and this knocked her out cold. I then told the older daughter to put on the wedding gown and move to the room of my nephew. I sat with my nephew, and we drank all night. I left the rest to nature after helping him to his room with his head still full of booze.

The next morning, the expected confusion and uproar came knocking. He had slept with the wrong daughter; the right daughter was weeping, and their mother was miffed. I knew what was coming, I was not born yesterday. A man must do what a man must do!

I explained to my nephew that it was a mix up, I didn’t want to disappoint him by not keeping my end of the deal. The family, however, had decided that it would be bad for the younger sister to get married before the older one

He said the bride he got was not the one he paid for, but he had slept with her and no other man would want her as she was, so he gets to keep her for that full bride price.

Now we can talk about marrying the love of his life, if he still wanted to but he would have to agree to seven more years of labor in exchange for the bride price. Again, I told him he could have the wife immediately and he agreed.

That was the deal we made, and we must honor our deals as men of honor. He excelled in the hotel business, and he was a good husband to my daughters. His coming was the answer to all my prayers of many years. In him, I found a diligent son-in-law and a man of strange business acumen.

He moved my business from a start-up into a regional powerhouse in fourteen years. After completing his bride price contract, I offered him another one as the Regional Business Manager of my eight hotels and resort centers. He never failed to make a profit, even when he had to work with almost no financial backing from me.

He was a man with the Midas touch. One day, I woke up and got a report that he had abandoned my business and taken off with my children and grandchildren. You can imagine my frustration, my anger, and my wrath!

What an ingrate! I took him in when he had nothing. He came to me with only the clothes on his back. He came to me with a letter from my sister asking me to take him under my wings I did everything my sister asked me to do.

I took him as a son! I trained him and married off my own daughters to him and this is how he chose to repay me?

I was livid! My God!

Imagine the insolence, imagine the insult, who does he think he is? Why couldn’t he leave the same way he came? If there is a cloth on his back today, I bought it. If he had a penny to his name, it came out of my pocket, and he dared to do this? I called the Inspector General of Police and asked them to declare he wanted. He did not know the lengths I was willing to go to when I was treated like nobody. Within minutes, the police were all over the nation, looking for him. I will teach him a lesson he will never forget, I will make sure he rots in jail

Story Two: The Nephew

It is true that all I had on me the day I met him was the clothes on my back. He told me he does not do handouts, so I must earn my keep, and I agreed. I began to earn my keep from that first day when he gave me a job as a waiter. I was working and learning the ropes at the same time. I worked from 4 am till midnight every day

I washed plates, packed bottles, cleaned tables, I served drinks, arranged tables and made beds. I was determined to prosper, and I had no option but to put my back into everything I learned in order to prosper. I became a master of the hotel management business within my first year with him. I was offered a job in another hotel as a manager.

At this time, I was living in a room that was so small, I could hardly stretch my legs on the bed. The only consolation I had was the love I shared with my baby, his daughter.

My baby was the light. She was the sunshine and she was the rain. I think of her sometimes and hunger disappears completely from my mind. She is beautiful, gentle, gazelle, and minx witted. My one and only joy. The happiness that made years of pain so fleeting it seemed as if they didn’t exist at all. It was because of her I wanted to take the new job

I need to rent a bigger space, make more money, and prepare myself to ask for her hand in marriage from her father. When I told her father, he said he had a solution that could work for both of us. He said he would prefer that I work with him for the same wage I was earning as a waiter and marry her. He said he would throw in a boys’ quarters within the compound as part of the new deal so that I and my wife could have our own apartment. He said she has a job and that she should take care of her needs. I could then work for him and repay the cost of the bride price.

I agreed. Then he changed the deal while I was drunk. He gave me his older sister after piling me with booze. That was when I realized the man was a snake. How can a father treat his own daughters like that?

What sort of a man does that to his own children and son-in-law? He said it was my fault

I lacked self-control.

I should have checked who was in my room before jumping on the lady and sleeping with her. I mean, the lady was an adult who was not drunk and could have easily told me to stop touching her or to say that she was not the bride. She was giving me all the right sounds and encouragement as I embarked on earning my seven years of hard labor contract. That family was a very dishonest one.

The sister claimed she was asleep and didn’t know when I slept with her. Her father said I should have checked and double-checked. The joy of My Life said she slept off throughout the day of her own wedding and the last thing she remembered was being given a cup of tea by her father. It was a house of commotion.

There was only one thing to learn and that was “I cannot trust this man ever again”

He said he was willing to overlook my indiscretion if I would be willing to work another seven years to marry his younger daughter. I had no option. It was not what I planned but you learn to take what life throws at you. I made the deal and tried to put my house in order as much as I could. Now I found myself married to two wives, on the salary of a waiter and living in a boy’s quarters. It was a tough life.

Fourteen years went by, and I got another contract to work hard and pay off the cost of the hotel where I was working. My father-in-law said he would transfer ownership of the hotel to me, but I have to pay off the cost with another seven years of labor. I had gotten six years out of those seven when I was told that he had used the same hotel to stand as surety for a loan with the bank.

He had been deceiving me all along. So, I packed my bags, told my children and wives to pack their bags and I used all the money i had managed to save to procure passports and a visa to Canada for my family.

Enough was enough! I was tired of being used by this man who had no regard for how I and my family would survive in this hard economic clime. I had tried my best to cope with the abuse I had suffered but enough was enough. I was done.

Story Three: Destiny

The police eventually caught up with his nephew. He asked his nephew why he took off with the whole family without saying goodbye. His nephew said he had to do so because his parents were old, and he had not seen them in over twenty years. He wanted his wives and his children to meet them while they were still alive. He said he had to leave as soon as he got the urge, and this made him forget to leave a message.

His Uncle understood him. He understood his uncle too. There were lots of things that could have been said that the two of them could not say to each other. In human relationships, we call these “Unspoken Truths”

We find these truths most prevalent in familial relationships and sometimes in friendships. You remind yourself that saying some things would just ruin an already battered relationship, so you keep quiet and allow sleeping dogs to lie.

PS: This is the story of Laban and Jacob

It is also the story of many of us who escaped from being used to plowing other people's farms like mules for the sake of survival. While the farm over prospers off our backs

The farm owner is never happy that the golden goose found a way to escape. The golden goose is never happy that the farm owner stole as many of its eggs as he could before it got wise. The farm owner claims he took good care of the golden goose. The golden goose claims the eggs that the farmer stole were enough to pay for all the food it ate and more. Yet when the farmer and the golden goose meet, they smile, shake hands, and pretend they don't have truths hanging in between them but are unspoken for the sake of the relationship

-GSW-

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