As a growing lad, there was an elder member of my family we fondly called Uncle Tom. He was ebullient, loquacious and endlessly entertaining – a raconteur of sorts, and around him there were simply no dull moments.
Somehow, Uncle Tom regarded the rest of us as indolent drones while presenting himself as the very embodiment of achievement and perpetual success – though there was precious little evidence to support his claims. Yet, in our youthful innocence, we admired and even envied him. Uncle Tom always led his class in every examination at school and, according to him, he sat many examinations. He shamed everyone even on the athletic field and had, by his own account, the capacity to put the legendary Innocent Egbunike to shame – if they had graced the same tracks. His brawn and prowess were tremendous, Uncle Tom would recall with nostalgic gusto.
Uncle Tom’s days knew a lot of wrestling and ample opportunity for vibrant displays of physical might, and according to him, everyone chickened out at the mere sight of him in the wrestling arena – earning him the well-deserved moniker “Nna Agu,” father of the leopard, in my neck of the woods. He would recount his many acts of courage and gallantry and urge us to verify his claims with people living in very distant places, or those known to have died long before we were born.
Yet there was always a constant, lingering doubt: neither Uncle Tom’s physical appearance nor his material well-being suggested that his claims could be true. But as his captive audience, we were at his mercy, and he got away with these fables – though not for too long.
Another uncle had sojourned abroad in search of the proverbial golden fleece but was forced by circumstances to return home when the fleece proved elusive. He had a very intimate knowledge of Uncle Tom’s youthful days, and we soon learnt that Uncle Tom was a mere big mouth – that he had, in fact, failed almost every examination until he was forced to withdraw from Grammar School. Uncle Tom was a weakling who carefully avoided sports of any kind and would take to his heels if accosted by a boy his own age. The only time Uncle Tom was ever known to display any courage was in a fight with a girl, and quite often, he came away with the black eye. His heroic past, it turned out, had existed almost entirely in his imagination.
The memory of diminutive Uncle Tom, now of blessed memory, came to my mind a few days ago when I watched, yet again, a public figure hold forth on achievements no one could quite verify, delivered with the same theatrical confidence, the same appeal to distant witnesses, the same absence of anyone willing to check the record. It reminded me that the loudest narrators of their own greatness are not always its most authentic custodians.
Reality has an inconvenient habit of catching up with mythology, and history is rarely as generous as memory. In the end, character is measured not by the stories we tell about ourselves, but by the testimonials of others.
It struck me how little has changed since those childhood encounters – only the stage has grown larger, and the stakes with it. We were, back then, only an audience of children. Today, an entire nation sits as Uncle Tom’s captive listeners, and the fables, dressed up as achievements, shape the decisions that govern our lives.
**Ken Ihedioha writes from Lagos
