My Best Friend Wrecked My Brother's Home
Mali's Story Part IV: Imagine a stranger coming to your house and taking over your bedroom. What would you do?
Part IV
“Light up the darkness.” — Bob Marley.
Who is Jeff?
Jeff is my half-brother and the first child of my father's twenty-two children.
My mom told me that Jeff's name was Jibril which her mother gave her at birth, but he changed it to Jeff when he became a Christian. She explained that Jeff's mother told her that her first child came into the world while she labored on the farm alone, and an angel helped her deliver the baby. She named her Jibril, meaning an angel.
The dilemma of a first son
Jeff was not like the men I knew around me. He was an angel like his mother.
Jeff was born and bred in the same environment as his father and other men. But he wasn't like them. I remember my brother coming home from Ilorin city and visiting his family in Osun, Kwara State. Everyone looked up to him as a savior, and he took the responsibility of the oldest child seriously.
He was brilliant and went to college on a scholarship. He made things better for everyone and was the opposite of his father and the men I knew in those days.
Jeff was a structural engineer with a state job and a lucrative side business. He worked hard and put most of his younger siblings through college and trade school. Today, none of his half-siblings talk to him except his two sisters from the same mother.
Jeff and his wife, Diana
Diana was a beauty, and she spoke many languages. Her presence made peace with most people who encountered her. She traveled wide, lived in many states and a few countries with her missionary parents, and showed love to many people except her live-in maid, Tobi.
