At Heirs’ Place, Oludare Medunoye seems to be everyone’s favourite guy. When he isn’t solving tech problems with a smile on his face, he is writing the warmest compliments on birthday cards or generally being a good guy, helping new recruits settle properly into the hectic schedule of the Elumelu army.
He gets so busy that like Facilities Manager Victor Momoh, you almost never see him with his jacket on.
One of the first people in the building to get to work before the mandatory 8am, he is also one of the last to leave after 6pm, waiting for Lagos traffic to subside before he begins his routine commute downtown to his wife, Titi and daughter, the delightful one-year old Lani. But even at that time, he doesn’t look as fatigued as the rest of us mere mortals and continues to do his work.
What is the secret? How does he combine fatherhood and work?
“To start with, having a child is a full time job, so your question is more like how do I combine “work” and “work””, he explains. The two jobs are very much intertwined. The good book says any man who cannot work to provide for his family is worse than an infidel and that we have a responsibility of bringing up godly offsprings.”
So he goes the extra mile. “I work late most days, which consequently means I rarely see her before I leave for work and then she’s asleep when I return from work. So what I try to do is after a week or two of working late, I try to make up for it the following week by hurrying home once its 6pm. I also try to talk to her over the phone everyday.”
“I love and miss seeing how she screams “daaaaa”(I don’t know if that’s daddy or Dare) and runs towards me with big smile and arms wide open when come back from work.”
A couple of weekends when he’s had to visit the office, he brought his baby along. “I have only brought my daughter to work on 2 occasions and she was still about 6 months then”, he laughs. “My wife works as well and occasionally, on weekends so it was only right that I be a true dad.”
“I was happy. Chale, I no bore”, he says in Ghanaian pidgin, the lingo that has been stored in a part of his lexicon since his return from the tiny West African country where he studied Computer Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). It was while he was there that he met his wife, Titi.
“Times have changed, marriage is no longer a hunter-home keeper relationship for most folks given the economy and desired standard of living. On this occasion, my wife had to do groceries, stop by at work and some other stuff I don’t remember. So she simply dropped me at work with Lani, went about her itinerary and came back to get us. Beside, I cannot leave all for my wife to do. I still need her to keep looking hot & attractive.”
Fortunately for everyone, Lani was a calm baby and her routine was fairly simple – sleep, eat, change diaper, play a little and stare into space. On other weekends when he doesn’t come to the office, he is bathing little Lani or feeding and playing with her.
In his words, “I rock her to sleep, back her and take her out occasionally sometimes without my wife.”
“As my great boss (Austine Abolusoro) once said, “there is not enough time for anything but enough time for what is important. I think life is short. I am grateful for the privilege of being a father and I just want to enjoy every bit of it.
And even though he is great at his job and puts in quite the shift, it is ultimately to his immediate family and his God, that Dare shows his devotion the most, transmitting his work style to private matters.
Daaaaaaa….. This is truly inspiring!
Wow! I wonder how come I never saw this before. Very inspiring indeed.