There was nothing to say to that.  My father had always been a slow driver who disliked driving. My brothers who could have driven him were coming back on Christmas day.  It was a pity that I was not yet making enough money to get him a driver and was unlikely to do so for some time to come, I thought. 

We got home about thirty minutes later.  My mother honked the horn several times before a little boy, no more than eleven or twelve opened the gate.   A new houseboy, I thought.  Why was he not spending Christmas with his family, I wondered?

“Good afternoon ma,” he greeted my mother.

“What took you so long?” my mother queried.   “I have warned you severally that if you do not want to live with us, you can go back to your parents,” she said angrily.  

He had not taken that much time, and there was really little reason for her to be so angry, but I knew better than to say that.   It would only get the boy into bigger trouble.   The boy just quietly went to the boot to get the bags.  

“Where Onyeka’s Daddy?” she asked the boy.  Onyeka was my first brother.  

“He is in the sitting room with somebody,” he replied.

“Somebody who has no name?  Have I not told you to ask whoever comes here his name?” she asked. 

I was debating whether to intervene when she turned to me and said, “Leave those bags.  Come and greet your father.”

I held on to the bag I was carrying and just started going into the house.   My father, who had likely heard the car coming in, came out of the sitting room.  He smiled broadly when he saw me.

“Nne, nno,” he said smiling warmly, his arms held out for a hug. 

I embraced him.  I was really glad to see him.   His potbelly seemed slightly bigger than when I had seen him last, but otherwise he looked his healthy self with his baldhead shining brightly.

It was good to be home. 

                                                ********

“Why is the baby crying? Nkechi?” my sister, Nneka, shouted. 

The children were downstairs and Nneka’s baby was attempting to scream the house down.  My sister had come in on the twenty-seventh, two days after my brothers, who had come in on Christmas day.  With her two-year-old daughter and the four-month old baby, it was a full, noisy and warm house.  A Christmas house.  She also brought two helpers, two girls who must have been in their teens.   They both seemed quiet and withdrawn, and I wondered if they wished they were spending Christmas in their homes, with their own families. 

“She is sleepy,” Ugonna replied, carrying the baby to the foot of the stairs as I went to see what was going on.

“You know she likes to be walked before she can sleep, and I am sure you were sitting down on your lazy behind watching television,” my sister shouted.

“Why don’t you take the baby?  She might be hungry,” I said.  

“No, she is not, I fed her not too long ago,” she replied.  “Carry her and walk around the house,” she ordered Ugonna. 

When she left, my sister complained, “She is very stupid and she steals.” 

“I told you to put a lock on your fridge,” my mother, who had just come into the room, told her.  “I told you what happened when I came for omugwo.  All the meat and stockfish I put in the soup disappeared from the pot.” 

“I am tired of her.  It is just that finding good help is so difficult these days,” my sister said, going into the sitting room where we had all been sitting before we heard the baby cry.

I was a little surprised at the way my sister had quite simply become a mama mmadu, completely matronly, in her ways.  She sounded like somebody from my mother’s generation.    She seemed to have little or no sympathy for the girls she took on as help.  And she seemed lazier than ever, expecting to be waited on hand and foot and, shouting at every little mistake.   Was that what having children did to you, I mused.

“You know,” I said mildly, “perhaps, you should be grateful for the help of those two girls.  Ugonna, in particular, is very good with the baby.  In fact, I am kind of sorry for them that they can’t spend Christmas with their families.”

“You are forgetting that I pay for the services they render,” my sister replied.  “I pay both of them 10,000 naira each month.  That is a lot of money, and with that money they can take care of their people at home.”

“But you must admit that they would prefer to spend Christmas at home with their families,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure,” my brother Amaechi who had just walked into the room said. “There might not be enough food for them to eat in their parents’ house.”

“Food is not all that is important.  Sharing with your family, being free as you could never be in another person’s home is also important,” I replied. 

“Really? Try going hungry for one day and then you can tell me that spending Christmas in your own home hungry is more important than spending Christmas in a place where you can eat.” 

“I know being hungry is difficult, that is why we should all think of ways to help poor people, including family, which does not involve exploitation,” I said.

“Who is exploiting whom?” my brother asked.  “We grew up having help in this house.  They did most of the chores.  I don’t remember you complaining then.”

“I know we did, but that does not make it okay.  I felt sorry for them most of the time,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?” my mother, who had said nothing up to this point, asked.  She clearly felt it was a personal attack on her treatment of help.  “We do not maltreat any help.  You should know that.  You grew up here.  Do you know how much money I spend on Obinna’s school fees?” Obinna was the boy who lived with my parents.  “Do you know how much money I gave his parents for Christmas?  Without my help, do you think his parents would have been able to feed their seven other children?”

“Don’t mind Ngozi,” my sister put in.  “Ever since she came back from Canada, she has become the champion of the poor and downtrodden,” she said sarcastically.  She was referring to my work with street children in Lagos.

“Perhaps, there is nothing wrong with that.  Perhaps we need to think less of ourselves, and more of other people, perhaps we need to think not just what the government is doing wrong, but we can do as individuals to better the society and help people around us,” I responded heatedly.

“Is that why you came back from Canada when you had an opportunity to remain there and make a better life for yourself?” 

“Don’t you think that we need our professionals back in the country to help mend things, to propel us forward in this millennium?” I asked.

“Or to stop brain drain?” he asked sarcastically.  “You want to change the world singlehandedly.  At your age, don’t you think you should be more realistic?”

“Don’t mind Ngozi,” Nnaemeka, my immediate elder brother chipped in.  “She is living in a different world.  Other people go abroad and they send home used cars to their family.  Or send back even mobile phones for their family to sell and make money like Ikenna Akuenyi is doing in Germany,” he said referring to a guy we had all grown up with. “They arrange for their family members to come over and better their own lives.  But, what did she do?  She just looked around in oyibo land and came back with idealistic ideas.”

His vehemence took me by surprise.  But I really should not have been surprised.  I knew my siblings had not been too happy about my decision to come back to Nigeria when I finished my master’s program in Canada.  They could not understand how I could give up the opportunity to live abroad, an opportunity people prayed for, queuing up at embassies for visas and giving testimonies in church about.  Worse still, I had come back and instead of looking for a “good” job, I was working in a non-governmental organization, where I was not making very much money, all in a bid to “make a difference.”