My Life and Some of its Ironies.

It was early March, 1995. I had gone to visit a friend who, like me, was among the hundreds of staffers laid-off by our former employers. It was his wife that opened the door. After exchanging some pleasantries, the woman called me aside and started to whisper,

"Weren't you among the people laid-off?" she asked.

As I nodded in response, the woman stared at me all over and wondered, "But how come the effect doesn't show on you..."

"The effect of the job loss?" I asked.

"Yes..." she said. "You're always looking very calm and cool like a cucumber..."

I smiled and informed her that it was not easy coping without a job but the grace of God had been sustaining me.

"Really?" she moved closer to whisper all the more. "Ah...my husband is taking this matter too badly. Can you please talk to him?"

Once again, I nodded, promising to talk to the man as soon as I got into the house.

The following day, another former colleague visited me and as I observed his emotional turmoil, I gave him some words of advise. A week later, the same man came to thank me for changing his outlook toward the job loss. And as I waved off the man's gratitude, he went on to ask for a favor. I thought he wanted money. But he said as a fellow member of the Baptist denomination, he would like me to come address members of the Men Missionary Union (M.M.U) of his church. I protested immediately, saying I was neither a pastor nor deacon to be talking to people in a church. But he kept pleading that so many members of the church had lost their jobs and if I could just talk to them as I did to him...blah...blah...blah. The following week, I was at the church auditorium to say precisely what I said to my friend. And that was it! I was surprised by the huge response of the men afterward. A few days later, I got a special, highly emotional "Thank you" note from the church's pastor for "saving" a large section of his congregation from misery and depression. All the fuss over just a mere pep talk! Anyway, I shrugged it off as just another exaggeration some people would demonstrate over a little thing.

A couple of weeks after the loss of my job, I was surprised to get a special invitation from the Board of Directors of a community bank. I was offered the job of Manager and Chief Operating Officer. Upon my resumption for duty, one thing that struck me was the personality of my secretary. Patience was stunningly beautiful! Describing her here could take a whole page. Almost everyday, several customers would insist on seeing me for one petty stuff or the other until I realized the real reason. They all actually wanted to feed their eyes on the beauty of my secretary. And after just one visit, a couple of my friends resorted to coming almost every other day "just to say hello" to me until I got to know their actual reason. Patience was not just all beauty. She also was well-educated with a Higher National Diploma (HND) in secretarial studies. Out of curiosity, I went through her personnel file. There, it was stated that she was previously working with a highly reputable commercial bank. I now called her into my office to ask why she left such a big bank to come work in a community bank. If her beauty stunned me, her personal story knocked me down emotionally.

She started by acknowledging the frequent commotion her beauty generated everywhere including the bank. To her, it was not a new thing except that her beauty had been a curse, not a blessing. According to her, at the age of 28, she would have been long married but for her beauty. Men would never let her rest with love advances. From married young men to those men who are old enough to be her grandfather. Everyone of them was dangling huge amounts of money and gifts. But in return, she knew that they all were interested in only one thing. Her relationship with each of the few young bachelors who showed interest in her could not last due to the terrible sense of insecurity exhibited by them. One man went to the extent of telling her that he would not live long if he married her because he would suffer from constant high blood pressure any time she was out of his sight. The most interesting thing I noticed in Patience was that she was very highly principled. She would politely thank each married man, including my friends and the silly old sugar daddies for their interest but would say no. Indeed, she had to resign from her previous job at the big bank because every top shot, from General Managers to the CEO, wanted to date her.

"So oga (boss)..." she concluded. "Do you now see my predicament because of this useless beauty? Young eligible bachelors are too insecure to marry me while the married men and especially the dirty old sugar daddies only wanted to satisfy their sexual curiosity."

Hearing her story was a new experience for me in all of my life. I heaved a deep sigh and finally asked if she believed in God. She said yes. Then, I started to talk to her, giving suggestions and words of caution here and there on what to do about her situation. In a nutshell, I let her identify one singular fact; that having the right man in her life was and would never be a problem but letting the man feel secure and comforted by her inner qualities in addition to the outer beauty was the major task she had to accomplish. To this end, I made some all-encompassing suggestions to her on the urgent need for a strong focus on new social/moral orientations and attitude. To cut a long story short, it took just a couple of weeks for both of us to see the overwhelming result of the "little" project.     

And then came the ironies:

First: Patience started seeing me in a different light and treating me with some "holy" deference as if I had suddenly become one of the "Nigerian funky pastors" or some demi-god. There was also her fiance (a lawyer who I teased by calling him a first-class eligible bachelor) who began to address me as "daddy" despite my correcting him several times that I was only a few years older than him. And even her parents wrote to thank me for the "great miracle" I performed in the life of their daughter.

Second: My secretary approached me one Monday morning to ask which church I was attending. And when told, the poor lady felt disappointed and loudly exclaimed "...so, you're going to one of those old churches instead of a Bible-believing church?" My response to her rhetoric would fill another 2 pages here. But she never made that statement again.

Third: I later got a much better job at Shell Petroleum in Warri (that's another story entirely) and had to leave the community bank. Obviously, Patience had given some "testimony" to some staff. During the send-off ceremony, the Chief Cashier called me aside to say she would like to come see me for some "spiritual" assistance in solving a "serious" personal problem. As the woman rambled on and on, I looked around for my secretary who, on meeting my gaze, quickly turned away to dash into the nearest restroom.