Both Sides of the Same Coin

By Damian C. Dike

John and Lucas are Siamese twin brothers from an African mother and a European father. Lucas is missing but is adopted by a wealthy European family, and he becomes a prominent judge. John lives with his parents in a black neighborhood; he becomes a community leader and leads his subjects in confrontation with his brother and the allies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496982018

Damian C. Dike

Damian C. Dike was a student of Sacred Heart Seminary School, Port-Harcourt. He studied mechanical engineering in Federal Polytechnic Nekede, Owerri, and he is presently studying law in Rivers State University of Science and Technology.

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© 2014 Damian C. Dike. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse   09/04/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8200-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8201-8 (e)

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my sister and Mother, Mrs. Lauretta Ohiaeriaku, in Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, Eleme, in Rivers State.

Acknowledgment

A heartfelt appreciation goes to Rev. Fr. Lirio Berwanger and Rev. Fr. Mario Geremia (Scalabrines), who are the parish priests of Nossa Senhora da Paz Catholic Church in Sao Paulo, presidents, coordinators, guidance and councilors of the migrant home.

My gratitude goes to Alexandra Aparecio, who was the Director of Refugees United South America, and to all the members and staff of her organization in Sao Paulo, for their open-mindedness and support in the course of my writing this book.

I also acknowledge the effort of Mr. Fabio Gama, the Nucleus project Director of the municipal council for human right in Sao Paulo, and his colleague Laura for giving me the opportunity to make my first documentary that won two prices in Sao Paulo Municipal in 2010, which included the price for the most viewed documentary.

I am highly indebted to my amiable and ebullient friend, Mr. Dirceu Cutti, for his unflinching support and numerous contributions in the course of this work. In fact his openness, encouragement and constructive criticism are unquantifiable; he helped me in the dictations and presentation of preserved researched materials for the completion of this work.

My thanks go to people like Lucas Rached and Bruno Paschoal, the former, a Movie Director and producer of Home video movie in Brazil, while the later is a graduated of Law from the University of Sao Paulo.

Another heartfelt appreciation goes to my in-law Chief, Dr. Bonn Ohiaeriaku and his wife Lolo, Mrs. Lauretta C. Ohiaeriaku, for their tremendous support.

My appreciation goes to my school friends from Sacred Heart Seminary School, who are priests of Port-Harcourt Diocese, Evangelists, Engineers and people in various works of life that are members of Sacred Heart Seminary and SHS91.

I am grateful to Carla Aparecida, the Assistant Social of at the Migrant House, for her dedication and unbiased decisions in the course carrying out her duties.

Finally, for those that I could not mention here, I am highly indebted to you all. As nobody is a compendium of knowledge, I owe responsibility for any error or omission that may be observed in this work.

After the Eucharistic celebration on a Friday afternoon in nineteen seventy four, at Nossa Senhora da Paz Catholic Church in Glicerio Street, Sao Paulo, a man of about twenty seven years old sat on the stairs of the church crying, and his wife and son tried to console him as he told his story to the crowd around him. The man said he was ready to abandon his wife and son as he showed the people around him the train ticket that was in his hand, saying that he went to buy it to escape from his family problems. He said as he was about to board a train, he discovered that his sick son’s medicine was in his small bag, so he went back quietly to leave the medicine for the boy. And when he arrived to drop the medicine, he heard the priest say, There is time for everything, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to weep and a time to laugh, and a time to run away from your problem, and I tell you that now is a time to present all these to the lord to confront them for you, priest said.

The man wanted to flee leaving his wife and son because he was tired and disappointed of so many journeys and suffering without a decent work, but when he heard the words of the Reverend Father, he believed it was a warning from God for him not to abandon his family, and in the presence of everyone present; he ripped the ticket in pieces and hugged his wife Joana and his son Joao. The man said his name was Leonardo Lumbero Junior, that his father was Leonardo Lumbero senior, who got missing from his Italian parents Domenico and Lucia Lumbero when he was eight years old. He told the crowd that his father ended up in a coffee farm in the south of Minas Gerais where he worked for a Portuguese farmer and his wife, but his father received almost nothing as salary.

The man said that his father didn’t bother much about his salary because the rich farmer’s daughter was in love with him and gave him food and money in secret, until he got the farmer’s daughter pregnant. And the rich farmer decided to punish the poor slave worker for humiliating his family, and so Leonardo Lumbero Senior died as a result of the injuries he sustained during his punishments. And his mother who was the daughter of the rich Portuguese farmer looked after him very well, but when the Portuguese got his daughter married to another rich farmer and they started having their own kids, his stepfather forbade him from coming to his house. And Things got worse for him because he had to go back to his grandfather’s farm, and the old man didn’t like him. He did the hard work in the farm because his grandmother lay sick on the bed and his uncles humiliated him a lot, and so when he turned eighteen, he fled from the farm. Attracted by a good pay, he fled to the south with some of his friends from his grandfather’s farm.

He boarded a truck with more than thirty colleagues from the farms around and they rode to another farm in the south of Minas Gerais, but they were deceived there because his work was to pull a cart and he was whipped to do the work in the present day of nineteenth century, but he managed to escape with another group after three years of hard labor. They fled one midnight when everyone was asleep, but he couldn’t remember the date because in the farm where he worked, no one knew the day or the date of the month. At midnight, the eight of them woke up and went through the woods with the help of an old slave from the northeast of the country who had worked in that farm for almost twenty years. Leonardo Junior with his companions went through a thick forest with only palms one above the other, they couldn’t ascend fire for cooking or rest and mosquitoes and gnats feasted on them. It took them almost thirty days to get out of the bush, and at that time the police was capturing people who were coming from the direction they came.

The police led the captured people to the police station for interrogation and possible detention because People who came from that direction were Jaguncos, thugs or poor citizens who robbed the rich. Leonardo Junior and his group clashed with the police and all of them were taken to the police station. They told the police their story before they were taken to the station, but it was to no avail. There was a successful farmer from that city who had a large coffee farm that was at the point of harvest. The successful farmer saw the group when they arrived and tried to explain themselves to the police but were arrested and taken to the police station, so the successful farmer went to the police station and told the police that everyone in the group with Leonardo Junior was his employee who worked in his coffee plantations, and that the police shouldn’t detain them. And oddly enough as it seemed because the lie was so visible even for the blind to see, but as it was the wealthy man’s world, and the rich didn’t tell lies even when they did. The police released them all on one condition, which was that they must return directly to the man’s coffee farm where they worked. The group had no better option, so the eight friends followed the farmer to his farm, and as God would have it, he turned out to be a good man who paid honestly, but because good things rarely last forever, after two years of planting and harvesting in his farm, his land didn’t produce good coffee anymore and he sent everybody away.

Leonardo Junior stayed in Jaboticabal in nineteen sixty one, at that time it was a damned experience to cut sugar cane and he didn’t earn much from it, but he worked for three years before he went into the civil construction field. The salary wasn’t much at that time, he had started with Cr $ 0.90 per hour (Cruzero), working as an assistant for assembling lifts in buildings in Sao Paulo city, which was a very risky and dangerous service at that time. He had never gone up a building before, so he had little difficulty in adapting to the service as he was always careful not to fall from that height. And so in nineteen sixty nine, Leonardo Junior was fired from his job, and frustrated with life; he went to live in Vila Bela in the east of Sao Paulo state where he paid cheaper rent. And one day, he walked down the streets trying to find a bridge to jump, a truck without brakes to trample him, or a very busy railway line to pass the night. And then, he came by a specious house with walls around it, and was captivated by the music that came from within the house and it was The anthem of Bahia, composed and sang by two famous black and white artists from the country. And out of curiosity, he mingled with the crowd at the entrance of the big gate and found himself inside the big compound, where he met his wife who stood by his side as he told his story.

The man that was crying in front of the church said his wife’s name was Joana Andrade Lumbero. And that her grandmother who she was named after, was married to the famous Major Pedro Andrade. That major Pedro and his wife’s grandmother had a son together whom they named Mauricio, but that she fled from Pedro with her only son and with a black male slave from his farm.

Mauricio grew up and lived in the municipality of Caxeta in Minas Gerais which was in the north-east of the country. The farmlands where Mauricio lived were good but it wasn’t comfortable staying there, because to go up the valley to the city was eighteen kilometers and he had to walk. He worked in farms in Caxeta and earned little money but it was enough to get him married, and he had three children to take care. Mauricio left is family behind and moved to Sao Paulo in nineteen fifty, in search of better work and he was accompanied by his half brother the son of his mother, Joana with the black man who ran away with her. At that time, it was very difficult for families because they moved around a lot in search of better living conditions and in this sense, there were so many cases of abandonment of families, men leaving their assumed wives to follow their paths and women dropping their supposed husbands and going away with another man who could give them better living conditions. Mauricio met a beautiful Mameluco called Andrea who was about thirty years of age and she came from an average home. He decided to live with the woman, and they had a daughter in nineteen fifty two, and they named her Joana after Mauricio’s grandmother. But Mauricio became very sick years later, and he died on his sick bed after so many months of illness.

In nineteen sixty seven, Mauricio’s wife, Andrea and her daughter Joana moved to Paraná in the south of the country, they left in the Company of Mauricio’s half brother to live in the city of Porecatu, where they cut sugarcane for one year. Then, they moved on to another farm where they had the privilege to plant rice, beans, corn, vegetables, raised chicken and fattened pig for their own use as they farmed and harvested crops for the owners of the farms. And at the time of harvesting, they gathered coffee for the farmers and earned money for every sack they collected, until in nineteen seventy, when news went round that a worker was entitled to some rights. That if the employee worked in a farm for a year, the employer can’t send the employee away without paying him off. Then, the farmers stopped giving services anymore to the workers, not even a land to cultivate crops for their own essential needs. And Andrea and her daughter Joana almost got starved to death, and she got married again to a black man who had some savings, and they moved with the man to the state of Sao Paulo leaving Mauricio’s half brother and his wife behind in the state of Parana.

After wandering the streets of Vila Bela in Sao Paulo state, Leonardo junior wangled his way with the crowd into the big house, and he saw a colleague that worked with him in the sugarcane farm whom he hasn’t seen for so many years. The friend was drinking beer with some others that Leonardo Junior didn’t recognize and they were all very happy to meet him again. And one of the men invited Leonardo Junior to the back of the house where the wedding reception of his cousin, who was the daughter of a rich farmer was going on. In the reception hall, the population was mixed; the rich and the poor as well were there. And then, Leonardo Junior put all his attention on the girl who was happily wedded, and suddenly, a black girl who was helping the newly married girl caught his attention. The black girl sat on a chair in a corner away from all the agitations of the crowd, and she wore a simple colorful dress with a low sandal because she was tall. Leonardo Junior concluded that the black girl could be between sixteen or seventeen years of age, and from his judgment, she was the most beautiful girl in the hall.

Joana soon noticed Leonardo Junior staring at her from where she sat because he didn’t stare away for a moment because he wanted her to notice him. She saw him try to get up from his seat several times, but he resisted and remained in his position. Then, Leonardo Junior rose from his seat and walked to the side of the hall away from the crowd, and he left his glass of beer on the table next to his and walked towards her. She saw him coming towards her without taking his eyes off her but suddenly he went limp and collapsed on the floor. Joana saw him fall to the ground with a thud and she immediately ran to help him, and she was later accompanied by some other people who came to revive him. Leonardo Junior awoke up later in a bed in one of the bedrooms in the big house, and standing by his bedside was a medical doctor that was at the wedding reception. They gave him some food and medicine, and they took him home in a car that belonged to one of the guests in the party. And when they got to Leonardo Junior’s place, they were astonished to find out that he had no food in his simple but neat one room apartment, and his friend Edivaldo that cut sugarcane with him decided to tell the group a little of how Leonardo Junior had helped so many people including him, even when he had almost nothing for himself.

Two weeks later, some group of girls and young men at the wedding reception, including Joana and Leonardo’s friends from the sugarcane farm went to visit him, and they took along with them raw and cooked food because he was diagnosed of a heart disease and was advised him not to do any hard work. The group that took Leonardo from the wedding place to his house two weeks ago, discovered that he went to the wedding place on his way to commit suicide because he starved and had no work.

Leonardo Junior was glad when he saw the black girl with the group that came to visit him, and he took opportunity to talk to her. He requested to speak to Joana privately in his room and the other girls excused themselves and filed out at the veranda, she smiled at him and Leonardo Junior cheered up and sat up on his bed. He judiciously used the few seconds that he had while she was still standing near his door ready to join her colleagues at any instant, to tell her how much he loved her and that his heart stiffens every moment he thought about her. He told Joana that he was left with only two options in life, which were to marry her or to die if he didn’t.

Six months passed and Joana was lying on the bed with Leonardo Junior, and she was wrapped with the sheet on his bed. And Leonardo Junior was without a shirt and he sat up beside her on the bed. He fondled Joana’s neck that was wet with perspiration because his room was little and hot. She opened her eyes and looked up at his face, she raised her head from the pillow and put it on his laps and closed her eyes again. The two became inseparable companions and henceforth, it wasn’t rare not to see the two having lunch together in his house. Joana’s mother noticed some changes in her daughter’s attitude and she began to persuade her to bring her boyfriend home for lunch so they would know him, but she always found one excuse after another to dodge the topic. And after so many disturbances from her mother, one day Joana took Leonardo Junior home for lunch and she made sure they went on a day that her step father wouldn’t be at home.

After the visit, it was evident that Joana’s mother didn’t approve of her daughter’s relationship with Leonardo Junior because she didn’t have good memories of white men in her family linage, and neither did her husband whose grandfather lost the entire five fingers of his left hand for causing disloyalty among the black slaves in the farms where he worked as a slave. Leonardo Junior noticed that Joana’s mother didn’t approve anything of him because the signs of the disapproval were all over her face. So after he left, he didn’t dare try to negotiate going back to Joana’s place again, and Joana’s mother began to manipulate her daughter to stop seeing him because he would make her suffer, she told her daughter. But life was so cruel to parents that the things they prohibit their kids to do are the things that the kids derive pleasure from doing. Her family began to speak to her and tried to persuade her to drop Leonardo Junior, but it was too late because they didn’t know that she was three months pregnant for him. And few months later, when her family discovered that Joana was pregnant and tried to persuade her from seeing Leonardo Junior again, she fled from home, saying that her child wouldn’t be without a father. Joana got pregnant because at that time there was little or no awareness on safe sex and family planning by the poor.

Joana told Leonardo Junior about her pregnancy that her parents didn’t want to see them together.

Leonardo gave her his words that he would support her and the child in whatever way, and he told her that they could run away and start a new life somewhere else since her parents didn’t want to see them together.

And the two began to be seen at nights sitting in the parks; sometimes embracing and comforting one another and making plans for the future, and when her parents queried her one day for staying out late, she took some clothes and left home. Andrea, the mother of Joana became worried because her daughter ran away from home, even though she had some other children. Joana’s father had died and her stepfather wasn’t worried at all about his stepdaughter, so her mother gathered information from people around and went out in search of her daughter. She asked the people living around the neighborhood for information that might lead her to a young couple, a black girl who was pregnant and her white boyfriend. She told the people that the couple just moved into the locality, but nobody seemed to help her with the necessary information she needed. And Andrea didn’t desist because she felt that she was getting closer to finding her daughter each time she asked the people question about her daughter’s whereabouts. On arriving at a shack in a very dirty neighborhood with cheap houses, she stopped to inquire about the couple from a man who had his back towards her and was boiling water on a clay oven. And when the young man turned around to respond to her, she discovered that he was her son in-law, and she held him tightly and cried.

Inside a one room apartment, her daughter was lying on a bed with fever, and Leonardo Junior was boiling some herbs in a pot to medicate her, but her health improved a little when she saw her mother come to visit them and make peace with her husband. Andrea entered the room made of ply woods and saw her daughter lying on the bed that occupied almost the entire space in the room and mother and daughter embraced each other crying.

Leonardo Junior and Joana lived the love of their lives, even though they had little or no money, but Leonardo junior soon got a job in a bus transport company in Sao Paulo municipal, and his job demanded that he got up at dawn every day to prepare for work, and he came back very tired late at night. Sometimes Joana would work as a cleaner in people’s homes with her friend Laura whose husband was a fisherman, to augment the family’s income. In some bright nights with stars, Leonardo made time to sit in front of his house with his wife, and they told stories to each other and to their child who was about to be born. And when it was almost time for her baby to be born, Joana stopped working with Laura as a cleaner, but Leonardo Junior couldn’t come back early from work each day, or ask for permission from his team of boss to stay at home with her until she had her baby. Sometimes Joana would visit Laura in her house, or Laura would go to her place on the days that she would be at home so Joana could be in the company of someone who had experience in childbirth. On the days of good catch, Joao, Laura’s husband would bring home enough fish for Laura after he had given the larger portion to the fish sellers, and Laura always shared them with her friend Joana whom she took care of like a daughter.

Joao and Laura was a black couple who had grown up children, and they had lost a daughter who had a love story almost like that of Joana and they believed she died because they didn’t bother to pay attention to her and her poor white boyfriend. Laura’s daughter was called Agatha, and she fled from her parent’s house with her young, white boyfriend when her parents failed to give support to her and her lazy boyfriend. The lazy white boy had wanted to live at their expense because he believed that he was doing Agatha a favor probably, by giving the poor black girl a colored a child. And Agatha wouldn’t let go of the white boy for anything, and so she ran away with him and they started sleeping in different hide outs they called home, until they got to the state of Rio de Janeiro in the south-east, where they met some couples in the same situation as they, and these new couples introduced them into the world of crime and drugs and Agatha’s boyfriend was killed in a gun battle with the police during a robbery operation. And the last time Laura saw her daughter who died two months after the death of her boyfriend, she was very pale, sick and in a cheap medical center. She had allergies and scratched her body all over, and in her state, Laura Knew that her daughter wouldn’t survive the illness, except if a miracle happened soon because Agatha couldn’t open her eyes, nor could she recognize her mother by her voice.

One night, Joao brought home lots of fish; Laura put some in a bag and asked her husband to accompany her to Joana’s place that night. Laura went to give Joana some fish, vegetables and cassava tubers because it had being five days since she last saw Joana. And arriving Joana place, Laura heard a cry of a woman in pain coming from inside of the house and she dropped her bags and ran into the house with her husband hurrying behind her, but she soon dismissed Joao to wait for her outside. Inside the room, she saw Joana in labor on the floor and her husband hasn’t come back from work. Laura put one of the pillows under Joana’s head and concentrated in helping her to have her first child, and she successfully gave birth to a male child, but the labor still continued afterward. And Laura asked her husband to go and call an elderly lady in the neighborhood who claimed to be operating a local maternity center in her house, but when the woman arrived fifty minutes later, the second male child was already lying on the bed beside his brother. The twin boys were born on the sixth of November nineteen seventy, at approximately six thirty and ten past seven in the evening and they were taken to the civil registry in the neighborhood for documentation of their birth. When Leonardo Junior got back from work, he saw people talking happily around his house. And entering his room, he saw the two newly born babies in their first clothes lying on the bed by their mother’s side, Joana smiled at him and he went to the bed to give her a kiss. Leonardo then remembered that when he got down from the bus at the bus stop that some people were pointing fingers at him, while others complemented him as he walked down the bushy part to his house. Laura and her husband Joao told Leonardo Junior the story of how they met his wife alone in pains before his children were born, he was filled with joy and love for them that he named the kids Joao and Lucas after the couple.

The following days were very difficult for Leonardo Junior and his wife Joana after their kids were born. There wasn’t anybody to help them take care of the two kids, and Leonardo’s job took up all his time despite the fact that he wasn’t well remunerated to compensate for the long hours he put at work. Leonardo Junior requested for one week leave from his place of work so he could be with his wife and kids, and he knew that it could cost him a lot financially and he could probably lose his job at the end if he overstayed his leave, so he took the opportunity to search for other jobs with better wages. Leonardo Junior visited his mother in-law to inform her that her daughter had given birth to twin baby boys and that Joana and the kids were fine. Andrea quickly tidied up the things she was doing and left with his son in-law to see her daughter and grandsons. Joana’s step father wasn’t at home when Leonardo Junior came with his good news, so he