BY JIDE AJANI

To those who knew her at close quarters, the visage of ALAERE AUGUSTINA TIMI-ALAIBE keeps hitting them in the face as if she is standing next to them – including this writer.  Her facial expression, always alluring, can be very infectious. But all that disappeared five years ago when she passed on.  Today, a special thanksgiving service holds in honour of this late gem.

As you read this, if you are one of those honoured enough to be close to her, please close your eyes; then replay the images of any encounter you had with her while she was alive.  What do you feel? A great sense of loss! Yes!  But you would also feel that gratitude for a life well spent – she would have been 50 years old this August.

For a woman whose life found immense meaning in making a meaning for, and to the life of others, Alaere’s existence was defined by the virtue of two words and a phrase – Please, Sorry and Thank you.

Indeed, she once wondered aloud while having a chat with this writer privately, on how the world would be a better place for all “if everyone could appreciate the virtues of Please, Sorry and Thank you”.

Expounding on that, she had said “The words are magical and they do wonders. Please, that is, to plead for something rather than taking it by force; sorry, to apologise and seek reconciliation with those one may have offended; and thank you, to show appreciation for favours received. If the virtues of these are really appreciated, inculcated and engaged by all across board, the world would be a better place.
And that is what we are teaching our folks back home in Bayelsa and the Niger Delta region.”

During the celebration of life 365 days after her death, some of the thoughts here were expressed.  But they are thoughts that cannot be wished away.

She engaged a better, productive and progressive paradigm of re-engineering as a tool of uplifting her people in the spheres of welfare and education.

*Alaere

This need was met through her NGO, Family Re-orientation, Education and Empowerment, FREE.  Through FREE, she established a co-operative for the rural women farmers.  Five years after her death, that co-operative still operates and the women still have access to credit.

Then there is the first public library in Bayelsa State.  There is also a hospital that functions for the rural folks as a first point of contact with medical aid in the event of an eventuality.

Indeed, it was an American economist, Charles Kindleberger, who said there is nothing that creates depression in the mind of man other than to see a fellow being becoming more prosperous. That fits the typical
Nigerian environment where being a big man is a status symbol as indeed it is anywhere in the world. The peculiarity of the Nigerian situation is that most of the rich would rather keep that club exclusive.  But for Alaere, there was always something indescribably and overwhelmingly benign, generous and kind-hearted about her.

Having risen to the echelon of comparative intellectual and material wealth in her society, Alaere was a woman who ensured that others tapped from that wealth. And she was not given to the obviously showy, decidedly ostentatious, and needlessly bossy approach of the high and mighty in dispensing favours – no doubt, shaped by the congeniality of the happy home she shared with her husband, Timi.

In a society where the norm of talking ill of the dead is assailed without remorse, a family is lucky to have sweet things said about a departed member. For, in all things mortal, there is a tincture of ambivalence in the affairs of men.

It is that ambivalence which makes a mortal engage in a prevarication that is at once noticeable, at best unnerving but at worst despicable.
For a not so very long stay on earth, her life packed a punch.

Perhaps, this gem would be smiling away now. Looking down on us from above, Alaere, resting in the bosom of the Almighty, had a life many a wealthy would love to live – she was always comfortable in the midst of the common people.

In life, her pace was racy. She was brisk, businesslike.  Fools? She suffered none. And she believed that no one should suffer fools at all, hence freedom to all. From the female fish seller in Opokuma, to the mother of 11 in Trofani village, Alaere’s FREE has made things happen for the poor and down-trodden.

In her own words: “The case of Miss Ebimere Toru, 49 year-old mother of 11 is quite instructive and interesting. When she joined our programme, she could barely express herself, and could barely understand what we were doing in the adult education programme.

“She dropped out of school in 1967 as a result of the Nigerian Civil War and she joined our Adult Education Centre in Trofani village in Bayelsa State to fulfill a yearning. Today, in spite of her work as a cleaner at the Trofani Secondary School and busy schedule as mother and business woman, she has done so well that FREE has registered her to sit for the Nigerian Junior Secondary School examinations”.  There were many stories like that.

Now, that is service.

Yet, in all these, Alaere never made bones about what she set out to do. All she was more concerned about was the welfare of a people abandoned.

That mission statement of FREE says it all: “To Reorient, educate and empower the family, with the aim of bringing back real values of hardALAERE ALAIBE

The virtues of Please, Sorry and Thank you work, honesty, morality and enterprise through education, counseling and skills’ acquisition programmes with special attention to the women-folk”.

Only a few can give freely, move freely, work freely, stand freely and be free of the inhibiting nuances which at once would create the ill-feeling which the success or progress of a fellow human being invokes.  Alaere derived her joy from the joy of others; and this was manifestly infectious. For others who in their own corner of Nigeria and the world sop to the needs of the poor, this is a salute to service. Alaere remained one with the poor, satisfying that godly desire to do good to all men and women.

Which is why five years later, this is a life worth celebrating in thanksgiving.
Celebrate we should! Celebrate we would.

And in a fitting tribute to their mother, Ebitimi, Ebiye, Ebitari and Ebikenie, had written four years ago:

“Blessed are the dead who dies in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.’ (Rev 14:13).
Mummys’ works follow her forever and ever.”