Oso and Mimi ran a textbook marriage for 12 years. The beauty of the marriage enveloped the environment to the extent the Governor of a wedding feast alluded to it one day. To a new couple he said: “I suggest the two of you should discuss with Mr. & Mrs. Dabir before you leave for your trip to the Bahamas.” The audience clapped although many of them were aware Oso and Mimi, the godparents to the newlyweds, booked a suite for the couple at the local Golf Course Resort for their honeymoon.
Oso studied in Britain and earned a degree in Economics from the famed London School of Economics. On his return to Nigeria he joined a famous consultancy firm established by a Mr. Young-Harry. His wife Mimi held a degree in Home Economics but preferred to operate in the turbulent and uncertain world of private business.
Oso secured a reputation for creativity based on the way he functioned in the organisation. Although his boss regarded him as a de facto intrapreneur who required freedom to expand, Oso insisted on due process and consistency which some people saw as the antithesis of creativity. He used to drive out of the gate of his residence by 7.25am every day and return home by 6 pm to the second if traffic caused no distortion. While he welcomed new ideas he insisted on due process from the idea stage through development to test-run and revision before final application.
The way he handled his job turned out to be the way he handled his family life. Everything worked on principles and procedures like daybreak and nightfall. Both were certain but because daybreak and nightfall took root without absolute specifications he allowed himself a few seconds to the left or to the right with low tolerance for deviations in excess of minutes.
The couple agreed on three children and nature blessed them with two girls and a boy. The children attended “The Highflier,” regarded as the best private school in the neighbourhood. They received excellent education at home and at school and were involved in a healthy competition. At the end of each term whoever posted the best result would receive gifts from the other two. Such gifts were bought with savings from their daily allowance for snacks.
Family life went well until the onset of the disease, which went by the fancy name COVID-19. It arrived unnoticed but like a spark in a bundle of dry mats it consumed more than it deserved. If mega systems collapsed like a building put up by children while at play marriages such as Oso’s should have expected to be assailed with minimum difficulty. Some marriages floundered but most survived otherwise the world would have sung her valedictory.
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As the situation graduated from bad to worse Oso took time to think things out. But based on his analysis the road downhill commenced before the pandemic. He practiced the old-fashioned concept of marriage which saw a man as the sole breadwinner in the household. He made no attempt to find out what his wife earned and what she did with her earnings all the more so he earned enough and made sufficient provision for flawless operation of the family.
Mimi ran a modest private business in the beauty sector, diversified enough to keep all her employees busy the minute the door of the shop opened. During the lockdown she liaised with a friend who owned a pharmacy and with an identity card from the pharmacy she moved around as a healthcare provider.
With the lockdown many women and in particular the ones in the Government Reservation Area found one minor way to manage boredom. This came through service providers with home delivery possibilities. It provided an opportunity for the women to chat and let off steam. The women were blessed with surplus cash to give away which Mimi found handy given the additional duty of care for her parents and siblings.
The world around Oso saw red the day he went to the office when the government announced the temporary reopening of Port Harcourt. The city, the capital of Nigeria’s Rivers State, experienced an approach to management of COVID-19, which no other community witnessed. Certain locations were on complete lockdown while others were allowed to operate though with strict adherence to rules such as use of face masks and social distancing.
In the office, Oso met a sullen boss who sat behind his huge desk. The man looked as if he confirmed Jupiter careered out of its orbit and headed for Planet Earth with the later ill-equipped to handle the certain crush by a planet eleven times its size. Although the man turned off the air conditioner to conserve energy, the room felt cold for a May day.
The man, Mr. Young-Harry looked up but avoided Oso’s face. Everyone within the orbit of the company knew Oso as the favourite staff of the proprietor. The able deputy walked in to render briefs and projections to Mr. Young-Harry who whispered something. Oso pushed his head forward to hear what his boss said. Mr. Young-Harry pointed to the next office, which Oso took to mean he should see the Secretary. He went and met the Secretary to the Chief Executive, a wonderful woman who knew the company as the back of her palm and handled every duty with deftness.
The Secretary looked away as she handed a letter to Oso. With a sunken spirit. Oso opened and read the title along with the first two sentences. The company declared him redundant with a promise to pay him something when things improved. He went back to meet his boss who sat hunched in the big executive seat as if he wanted to disappear into it.
“Boss, I am your deputy. Should I be the first to go?” Because the man said nothing, Oso continued. “And should I leave when we have hit rock bottom? It would be better if we weathered this together.”
Rather than offer a response Mr. Young-harry bent his head and convulsed in tears. For a man known to be self-assured and confident, to watch him shed tears tried everything in Oso. He ran out of the office and walked into the sunshine to get warmth and clean air.
Oso walked along the street filled with masquerades courtesy of the pandemic. Thirty minutes later, he went back to check on his boss, knocked on the door, and slipped in. The man remained huddled on the seat, looked up with watery eyes, sighed, and spoke.
“Oso, you have been in this business with me for 13 years. For old businesses when it becomes unavoidable to cut fat, consultancy has the first taste of the knife’s edge. For businesses in the pipeline consultancy stands at the periphery in hard times. Some posts in social media caution people on expenditures given the hazy nature of the future. Whoever has cash should apply coagulated rubber on the palm to hold it and avoid peoples’ eyes for the moment.
“Oso, in the past two weeks, I have spoken with five of our top clients. All of them foresee bottlenecks with receivables and accounts payables. As if they discussed, they said the same thing: ‘Your service has been put on hold.’ I cannot let you come here when salary payment will be unsure and no one should see accumulation of unpaid salary as a wise business decision at a time uncertainty sits over roofs like dark clouds.”
“But,” Oso attempted to interrupt, but Mr. Young-Harry raised his right hand.
He continued: “My brother, you and I must thank Coronavirus for the unplanned lesson it has drilled into us. I regarded my business as a perennial stream with no possibility of an end. In my world I thought our company provided an indispensable service despite competition in the subsector.
I am aware you gave no thought to a second income just as I. As I leave today, three staff will be left – one day and one-night security personnel as well as the Secretary. The Secretary will be on duty whenever a government directive allows her just in case one of our clients passes by and wants to drop a cheque for one of our receivables.” He laughed because he knew no one would stop by given the mood of the time.
When Oso left the office, he allowed himself to go blank other than on developments on the road, which he drove on. But his presence of mind dwindled as the yards increased along with the fogginess of his mind. He saw cars and human beings as specs which filled space but he continued to negotiate the bends and manoeuvres among cars, human beings, goats, and cattle.
When someone screamed he came to his real self on time before his car knocked down a child close to the kerb. He left the road, parked, and went out to apologise to the child as well as calm him. An elder came to him and said, “My son, I doubt if you have held a steering wheel for the past 21 days. Like manipulation of a typewriter when you stay away for long, you forget some keys. The phrase ‘Stay Alive’ covers everything from Coronavirus to hunger management to accident-free movements.” Oso nodded and went back to the car, sat, and took several deep breaths. He wondered what would have happened if he did knock down the child given the status of his new economy.
On arrival home his children, as usual, rushed out of the house to meet him. He failed to suppress the gloom to the extent his first daughter observed and enquired, but Oso said nothing. What would he say? The boy and the second girl tagged along but made no attempt to ask for snacks as they were wont. The sensitive children read the situation and reacted by way of concentration on his face.
Inside the house he went to his bedroom and stood for a moment before Mimi entered. She searched his face and tugged at his shirt while he looked away, sighed, brought out the letter from his pocket, and gave it to her. She scanned through and gave it back to him with a sigh.
“I consider it fake news,” Mimi said in a voice which betrayed anger. Because Oso made no response, she continued: “Or can we call it a scam?” Oso sustained the silence and made her ask further: “What do you intend to do?”
“You or we?”
“You of course. This family has one breadwinner.”
“We may need to change roles.”
“Who becomes the breadwinner?”
“You.”
“What will you be?”
“Bread eater.”
“There are instances when jokes become offensive.”
“Sweetheart, we have reality in front of us. I cannot say I have been sacked.”
“Which means you will go to work tomorrow?”
“Uncertain.”
“May I remind you of the theory of excluded middle?”
“None can say the entries for the words redundancy and sack are synonyms in the English dictionary. And I did nothing wrong.”
“Anyway, let us hope you have enough savings to keep us at our usual level to the point something comes up. Our children cannot accept less.”
“Children are adaptable, adults much less.”
Mimi exploded, raved, and pranced as if she would tear her dejected husband apart. The children rushed into the bedroom and stood agape to watch in shock what they used to see on television screens but on this occasion in real time. More outbursts followed and like nature’s storm decreased in intensity with time. Mimi turned to look at the shocked faces of her children, mellowed, rushed into the guest room, and locked herself in. One by one the children filed out and walked head down to their room. After a while the children slept as a result of shock and exhaustion.
The next one week sped by as if it were one day. Nothing significant happened but the days sped by. Mimi moved about with a long face and avoided the eyes of her worried children. She slept in the guest room and stayed away from her husband in the daytime where possible.
The strength of the week lay in the opportunity for self-review which loneliness offered. Oso came to some conclusions after a week of intense discourse with self. First, diversification should be placed as priority for every business at commencement. Every business plan must have a focus but an in-built aspect should be a strong source of second income from a non-related business as the more preferable option. A close sister to hair cut for men should be a hairdressing salon for women but display cabinets for perfumes may generate sufficient income to meet minor expenses of a crucial nature. The company he served for thirteen years, Max Projects Inc., placed all eggs in the consultancy basket.
Second, what applies to a business should apply to the workers in the business. Someone can run a micro business by the side which has no conflict with employment. Oso created neither time nor appetite for anything which tampered with his creativity and devotion to his job.
Third, a wise worker should at any point in time provide enough to meet recurrent personal and home expenses for at least one year during which period something can come up for consideration. Oso at no point determined his floor expenditure but relied on salary which he knew would come unless day forgot to follow night.
As usual, issues come to mind when a crisis sets in and the case of Oso’s wife comes up. Mimi worsened things with her refusal to show understanding and her outright refusal to take on any responsibility in the family.
Desperate for a shoulder to cry on, Oso called his mother-in-law and told her the story. Without an interaction with her daughter, mother-in-law reminded Oso of the sacred duty of men as the head of families and sole breadwinners. Whatever wives took to the table were starters or desserts while the main dish remained the exclusive responsibility of the man of the house. With such instant response from the person he thought would be a neutral arbiter Oso knew things would get worse.
By sheer and unfortunate coincidence Oso bought a new car for Mimi earlier. The car arrived one month before news of developments in the Wuhan City of China filtered in. He took the decision six months earlier because the car she used had on three occasions left Mimi and the children stranded at uncomfortable locations. He emptied his bank account to buy a new car which would present few challenges for at least two years.
When total lockdown hit the airwaves most people realised China and Port Harcourt stood 11,904 kilometers apart, but in 13 hours and seven minutes by Airbus A380 someone who left Beijing to Lagos would be on ground and one hour later would be in Port Harcourt. As expected, many of such persons arrived in high spirits while inside them no one knew what they brought in beyond cargo.
By the second week out of work, Oso reviewed his account balances and determined the family would run for another two weeks without external inflow. The calculations changed when a new directive by the Governor of the state imposed another lockdown for 21 days. Tension mounted as hope of return to normal life dwindled.
In the interim Mimi continued to make money from her beauty business. She told her husband she tied her income to fixed expenses outside the family and Oso’s sixth sense advised him to avoid unpleasant questions to a woman wound up like a time bomb. At a point she told him she wanted to move out with her children into a new apartment she identified while she moved around to handle the beauty needs of rich women. But when she told Oso of the proposed rent he opted to move out and head for his hometown. The rent he reasoned should be used to feed the children for as long as it would go.
The next day Oso packed a few personal items into a carryall and rolled it from the bedroom to the parking lot. The children mounted an honours guard of sorts but he avoided their eyes and slotted the carryall into the car. Although in the 12 years of marriage Mimi at no point used her earnings to buy a pencil or underwear for the children he convinced himself she would change her attitude with the absence of an alternative. This gave him succour as he drove out of the gate and headed for the East-West Road to the town of Ahoada thanks to relaxation on movements on his planned route by the Governor of the state.
Things work out well for God’s children, Oso mused as he recalled scripture. How would he have managed during a full lockdown with a wife who made little effort to hide her resentment at the economic incapacitation of the head of the family? Who knew in advance what he would have eaten if the lockdown forced him to stay with his wife further?