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“Can’t you behave like the first born!” Abiola Jr, grew up hearing those piercing words, which made him always feel like running away from home. As far as he could remember ever since he had dropped on earth, there was always someone around nagging him, eager to remind him of his duties decided for him, before he was even conceived. Being the first born son of Paramount Chief Abiola IV, Junior was expected to succeed him in a lineage that dated back over three centuries and become leader of his over two million Bola peoples.

Even as a little boy, Junior, would be dressed up in traditional attire, the agbada, and taken to some of the meetings and functions Chief Abiola presided over. He grew up seeing his father at a distance, seated on a throne, surrounded by courtiers, and ever wearing a permanent stern face, like an Egyptian sphinx. In his young mind he didn’t want to end up like this distant man constantly at work.

“You will one day be seated in that chair your father is in with everyone waiting on you,” his mother once whispered to Junior, as he slumbered through another long meeting, his eyelids dropping heavy with sleep. “So, stay awake and watch everything!”

He hated it all. It seemed no one was letting him live and enjoy his childhood. Largely because of this constant admonishment  he took to being the most mischievous child in the family.

In Chief Abiola’s compound of three wives and a dozen children, Junior was always the last to attend to his chores. At a local school, he stood out as a pain to the teachers, who were hesitant to punish him because of his royal status. But they would report him to the Chief, who would roar back, “You are embarrassing me and yet you are the first born!”

Pushed, but determined to have his way, Junior took to more cranks.  At every single opportunity he seemed to court trouble. Once he led his age mates to raid a garden of a neighbor and pick fruits without asking, against village norms. When reports got to the Chief, Junior was summoned and harangued. “You are not behaving like a first born, why!”

Junior lowered his head, hating everything about his birth.

Tired of receiving embarrassing cases of his errant son causing constant trouble,  fearing one day he might have to pick him from a police station, the Chief decided to send Junior to Justice Soyinka, a brother of his who was based in Abuja. “Maybe under a different environment you will grow up and start behaving like a firstborn.”

If Chief Abiola had expected a sterner hand to raise his wayward child it was the very opposite. Justice Soyinka was a busy man who after enrolling his nephew into a boarding international high school, simply cautioned him to stay away from trouble. But unlike all those people with whom Junior had grown up, Justice Soyinka did not reiterate to him his firstborn status. “You have to study well because it will be good for you in the future!” Then he left.

Freed from constant admonitions of a workaholic father, Junior hooked up with a group at school that spent more time patronizing bars than libraries. He barely passed his ‘O’ levels.  Soon after starting his ‘A’ levels, came the devastating news from Bola state. “You father has just passed on of a heart attack and you must leave at once for the funeral,” Justice Soyinka picked him from school.

After news of the death had sunk in, Junior realized that his father’s sudden death meant he had to succeed him as Paramount Chief as per age old custom. But he didn’t feel like he was ready at all. Junior had a girlfriend and was more interested in living his carefree life in the city. “I hope they don’t end up thrusting me into my father’s shoes when I don’t want!”  He thought to himself.

But just as he had feared, once the funeral was done, and he was planning to head back to the city and to his girlfriend, junior was summoned by the council of elders to the Capital hall.  Nervous, he walked to the palace hall, urged on by his mother. They found the Capital hall filled with all elders and  his siblings in agbada who bowed once they saw him step forward through the wide gates. They all immediately fell prostrate on the floor. Gingerly, Junior walked past, and was eventually led up to the empty throne. Then everyone got up and stood straight. The Prime Minister of the state, moved forward. He motioned Junior to take his seat on the throne.

He hesitated.

“You are now Paramount Chief of the Bola peoples!” the Prime Minister said. “Long live the Chief!” came a deafening chorus from the crowd. Junior sat nervously and started listening to speech after speech praising him.

Tired from the day’s meeting, once the ceremonies were , Junior called up his mother and told her he was not ready to become the Paramount Chief. “Besides, I need to go back to Abuja and resume my school work.”  He was thinking of his girlfriend whom he missed. At night without warning he disappeared.

Back at school, Junior picked up from where he had left of his old life of endless boozing and running around with his girlfriend. But when holidays came and he returned to Justice Soyinka’s house, he couldn’t be allowed to settle in. “You are going back to the Bola state to take up your duties as Paramount Chief,” Justice Soyinka told him in a matter of fact voice.

“But I don’t want to,” exclaimed Junior. “I just want to stay here and live my life.”

“Sorry,” the Justice said, motioning Junior to follow him to the car. “You do not have much choice in this. Just as you did not decide on your birth so is being Chief. This is your destiny. You can’t run away from your destiny.”

Driving back to the state with his uncle steady at the wheels, Junior sat in deep thought, hating every moment that he was being pushed into a position given to him at birth. However, by the time he got to the state capital he had accepted his fate. “I will just do my best!”

Once it was clear in his mind and he agreed to being crowned Chief Abiola V, Junior assumed his duties with remarkable zeal. From once the rebel child he was now the strictest Chief. He would spend the day in long meetings, much like his father, listening to intricate cases and receiving delegations from near and far. When his old village agemates would visit him and ask him to go out with him he would keep them waiting. Much later, he would send a chit that they should come back another time, when he might have time.

Junior’s old friends now resigned to seeing him at state functions where he sat alone on a raised throne wearing a stately face. If they waved at him, he would motion with a finger, his face a sphinx, as was once of his father.

Some years later Justice Soyinka happened to visit Bola state and called upon his nephew. The moment he saw the young Chief he noticed something wrong. The once light hearted boy who used to live in his house full of life was no more. In spite of his youth, Junior’s face was all harrowed with lines of worry. His hair was fast greying. He noticed the boy was now walking with a hunch.

“Do you ever find any time to rest,” the uncle asked his nephew.

“But how can I!” replied the Chief. “My day is filled with all these cases to decide and delegations to receive. Everyone wants a piece of me and I have all this work to accomplish to protect our state.”

“You used to go out a lot with your friends,” the uncle pressed on. “Do you ever find time to play with your old friends?”

“But how can I! replied the Chief. “There is no time to play. What will I talk with them anyway? I am now Chief Abiola. They have no idea of the hot chair I am seated on.”

“Son,” the Justice after a long pause, drew his breath. “If you don’t start relaxing and having time for yourself, find a way to relax with your old friends, and laugh, do things you enjoy, not just because you have to, within a couple of years you will drop dead like your father. It is good that you finally accepted your destiny. But for your gentle sakes place, just as you resisted everything before, now remember the State is not you, for you have also a life to live.”

Everyone who heard that Mutambuze had quit his job, as a Partner in a Wall Street Investment bank to go and settle back home in bushy Africa as an orchard farmer, thought he had lost his mind. The job he was giving up was not like your run of the mill assignment.

After graduating at the top of his MBA class, the Dean of his US Midwestern Business school, impressed by his grades, had advised him to apply for a job at a famous investment bank. Mutambuze had done some case studies analyzing some of this bank’s ventures, but had no prior contact.  Nevertheless, not eager to go back to Africa, and end up job hunting for scarce jobs, he complied.

Being recruited at Lion’s Investment Bank (LIB) was notoriously competitive. It snapped the best and brightest kids from top B- Schools handing them six figure dollar salaries. Invited for an interview, Mutambuze noticed he was the only black. The rest were white and Asian kids, who came from Ivy League Colleges and carried themselves with supreme confidence, if not cockiness.  So he was most delighted, if not shocked, to be called the day after his interview. “We are offering you a job at LIB!”

Having joined, when he received his first paycheck, Mutambuze almost went crazy. He had to go over it, wild eyed, to make sure it was him. If he was back in Africa it would take him probably five years to earn this kind of money. His life instantly changed. He secured a Penthouse apartment overlooking a Lake. There was almost no toy beyond his reach now to acquire; he quickly spoilt himself to a sports car. This was some life, even in his wildest dreams, he had never dreamed of.

Mutambuze discovered earning this kind of money at LIB was by no means a walk in the park. Young investment analysts like him worked 24/7, going over huge files where they analyzed various firms balance sheets before recommending acquisitions. So often they had to fly out to visit these firms. Living in planes and at airports in the US, as he was always shuttling between cities, hardly having chance to enjoy his neat apartment, became the norm.

LIB had a masculine and competitive culture close to open bullying. Assignments had to be delivered yesterday without fail. Staff were constantly harassed to deliver results or be dropped. “You are lucky to get a job at LIB!” any would be reminded, if there was a hint of a complaint.

For Mutambuze, having grown up under harsh conditions, surviving on coarse posho corn meal and weevil-laced beans in the boarding schools he had gone to, this was no issue. Indeed, he excelled and after five years was rewarded as a Partner. This came after he had gone through three days and nights without sleep to write a report that earned the firm a major acquisition in China. A partnership at a top investment bank came with even more benefits.

Around that time he married a beautiful black girl from West Indies, called Anne. The two were attracted to each other being both immigrants and working in the financial industry. Soon the married couple bought a multimillion dollar house in a leafy suburb, circled with the best schools, wide roads and malls, and looked forward to a happy bright future. After struggling for years they had a son and settled into a life of a wealthy suburban couple that vacationed in Hawaii.

Then one day their lives changed abruptly.

Mutambuze was busy at work when he got a call that his mother back in Africa had suddenly passed away.  Mutambuze knew he had to attend the burial as he had missed his father’s funeral while attending graduate school. Having called up Anne he boarded a plane and after 21 hours of flying across the world, he arrived just in time before burial. He had expected to leave immediately after due to pending office assignments. But just after burial he started receiving delegation after delegation of elders seeking his counsel and decision over some outstanding family matter.

As heir to his father, a former chief and head of clan, many of the locals recognized and looked up to Mutambuze as a cultural leader. They had been waiting for him ever since. Besides attending to them, Mutambuze, got to understand that the land his father had left to the family, was now being encroached on as he and his siblings had long migrated to the US. The matters were quite complicated that he called LIB asking for a week’s extension. The bank denied his request.

It is on his flight back to work when Mutambuze made the decision to quit. “Why can’t I stay and develop our land with a mango farm and start a juice making factory!” He wondered, reflecting on all the companies he was restructuring around the world before selling them. “Cant I take this knowledge back home!”

When he got together with Anne, he told her, “I want to go back to Africa and start life as a farmer!”

“Have you lost your mind!” she sneered at his proposal. “We are happy here with a child and have a dog. If you are going, just know I am not following you.”

Later, after debating the pros and cons, it was agreed that while Anne stayed behind, Mutambuze would go and give the project a two year time limit. “If nothing comes of it I will return,” he promised. “I will ask the bank for a two year unpaid leave of absence.”

The bank didn’t promise to keep his job, though it mentioned he would always be considered, if he ever wished to return. Mutambuze wound up his duties and then flew back to Africa to start large scaling farming.

In his former career as an Investment Analyst, Mutambuze could easily figure out how to turn around a firm from loss to profit making. But going into large scale farming here at home was nothing like he had ever expected. It seemed he was hitting road blocks everywhere he turned. The machinery he imported could not arrive on time and when it did the taxes where through the roof. Simple implements like seedlings and fertilizers were almost impossible to procure. The workers he hired were slothful and quick to cheat on him.

Initially Mutambuze settled in the city, whose life he was more accustomed to. But as no work was making progress, he moved to the rural farm, throwing away his suits for overalls. He now lived in a small hut and spent the day out in the sun.

Two years down the road he had not even started planting trees. He called up Anne to ask for more time. Her response was fast. “I am leaving you!”

Mutambuze considered giving up the project and going back to the US, to return to his old life. But then, as he reflected, in spite of all, he was enjoying what he was doing. Life was far more rewarding; he was providing a valuable service as a farmer to his community and was consulted on for many things, including cultural issues as a clan head.

“Anne, it’s okay but I am staying here!” The couple agreed to a divorce, with Anne going with his son and their multi-million dollar house.

Much as he had lost his job and all his investment, Mutambuze trudged on. Slowly, things started coming together, though he was always up to a new unexpected challenge. The mango trees he planted were often subject to pests and once they ripened he had to deal with thieves.

Once it was time to harvest Mutambuze noted he had never wanted to be a seller of raw materials, like a peasant. Using his old connections he got investors to start a mango juice factory in his district with ultra-modern machinery. Being a cultural leader he convinced his people to supplement on his farm produce as out growers.

When his juice factory released its first product no one was as excited. Mutambuze developed a marketing plan which he executed, turning his juice product into one of the best-selling on the market. Eventually he started selling regionally and to the Middle East.

All this time he remained in regular contact with Anne, who with time, remarried. Mutambuze also started a new family. When his son was about to graduate, they invited him for graduation. At the ceremony hearing his son’s name read, he had a moment to reflect and look back on his life.

By returning to Africa it had cost him immensely in terms of his professional career and wealth enhancement, given all the opportunities he had left behind. He had lost his marriage and time witnessing his son grow.  Whatever success in life he knew of had come at a huge price.

But Mutambuze was happy. He felt a very fulfilled man, having gone out and done something close and dear to his heart. He had built in his country something enduring that created jobs for many while also saving family land. Life had presented him two roads to choose from. He took the one filled with all dangers and less glamour. “Even if I was given another chance I wouldn’t choose differently,” he nodded, as he saw his son walk down with his degree.