The raging war on the streets were not of bomb blast and roaring guns and cannons. They were the rumbling stomach of hungry children, tired mothers and battered fathers. Several years after the civil wall, the country was at point zero, and starvation applied for permanent residency. Schooling became a dream only few could have.

Some families could afford a good school for their children. Little pups with curious eyes would shamble to school, in glamorous attires everyday, while few others watched, unconsciously caught in simmering helplessness. 

Jidenna and Chiejina were part of that little circle. They hung around schools at safe distance just to catch glimpses of neat uniforms and shiny shoes like the insides of a scrubbed old pot used on a charcoal stove.

The wait was long. 

Jidenna had to hawk and save with stubborn tenacity just to enroll himself in school. The day arrived, but he stayed by his father's side instead.

" If you had money to send one of us to school, whom will it be?" He quizzed his father, Udenze.

" I barely have enough for food...." The heavily bearded worn out old stag responded.

" But if you did, whom will it be?" Jidenna persisted.

" It would be Chiejina. I am sorry, Nna m," he said, trying to cheer the eleven year old by calling him "my father" but it did little to calm the storm in the boys chest.

For sometime, Jidenna kept to himself. Why wouldn't he be the one? He was well behaved and hardworking. Why would his father choose his younger brother instead of him?

It took a week before he got his answers. Within that week, the void inside his heart had stretched to accommodate a subtle resentment for his brother.

At evening , on his way back from another struggle on the barren streets. Jidenna met Chiejina in the backyard working on a maths assignment. It belonged to one of their neighborhood children.

He watched until his younger brother was done before he took him into their mother's kitchen.

That evening, Jidenna asked Chiejina the one question he wished someone, especially his father, could ask him.

“ What would you like to be in the future?”

His brother's reply came with a soothing touch on his heart. It was like a fountain flowing over a thirsty ground. For the first time since Jidenna spoke with his father, he was truly happy. Chiejina had spoken of building or flying an aeroplane, a dream Jidenna hoped for.

He boiled water for his father and helped Chiejina to a hurried bath. It was not until Udenze saw the open piggy bank that he realized the depth of the still water.

The registration was done. He accompanied his father home, smiling from ear to ear. 

Udenze couldn't bear to ask why. His conscience constantly pricked him, but his curiosity got the best of him. He resorted to the channel the boy was likely to open up to — his wife.

Ugochi passed a piece of fish to Jidenna, along with that question. He smiled.

" Chiejina will build or fly an aeroplane." He whispered to her in the ìgbo dialect. "If my friends ever insult me in the future, I can boldly tell them I raised a pilot," he said with twinkling eyes. 

That day came. A proud Jidenna told the men around him. " There is my achievement." He pointed to the sky where an aeroplane could be seen, as small as a Swallow.

“I am not a pilot as I once dreamt, but I raised one. Either way, the dream came through because I fought for it.”

It was enough for him. However, Jidenna never knew that building or flying an aeroplane was a dream Chiejina had borrowed from his ambition. Jidenna had planted the roots too deep within Chiejina, who longed to have his older brother's faith and courage. Long before his sacrifice, he was his brother's role model, and the figure in his dreams.