By Damiete Braide
Festac Town, Lagos, has always pulsed with life. A place where memories cling to the walls of old bungalows and laughter echoed through narrow streets.
In one such home, lives Pa Rock Arcoven, an 83-year-old man whose heart bares the weight of a story too important to be forgotten. It is a tale rooted in family, love and longing.
At the center of it are two young boys who have never met their father’s people, whose very existence now feels like a fading whisper in the wind.
“I’ve lived long,” Rock would say, his voice slow but firm. “But some things must not be buried with me.”
Years ago, a young boy named Tedd Arcoven, Rock’s nephew, had come to live with him after losing his parents. Tedd was no ordinary child. He was quiet, attentive and deeply loyal. He settled into life in Lagos and attended Festac Grammar School.
When it was time, he returned to their hometown, Okpella, Etsako East Local Government, Edo State, Nigeria to complete his secondary education. But like a moth to light, Lagos called him back, and he found his way again to Rock’s home.
There, he grew into a man. He landed a job as a driver for a wealthy oil executive in Ikoyi. The job came with a modest residence in the boys’ quarters of his boss’s home. It was during this time that fate delivered a twist, Tedd met Yolanda, a woman of Maltese descent who worked at the Maltese Embassy or Consulate in Lagos.
Pa Rock didn’t know it then. What he knew was simpler, more familiar: Tedd was married to Helen, a hardworking Nigerian woman employed at a federal ministry. Together, Tedd and Helen had six children, including two sets of twins. They visited Rock every New Year’s Day without fail, flooding his home with warmth, laughter, and the noise of children racing through rooms. Tedd was the glue of that gathering, his presence a constant until it wasn’t.
Year after year, his absence became harder to ignore. Helen continued the tradition with the children, offering smiles that often masked pain. Eventually, the truth trickled out. Tedd had fathered twin boys with Yolanda.
To Rock, it felt like a thunderclap. The man he had raised and trusted had lived a double life, one wrapped in silence, one the family had never touched.
In 2022, Tedd reached out to Rock with a rare phone call. His voice was laced with nervous excitement. “Uncle,” he said, “the twins… they’re having their naming ceremony. I’ll send you the address.”
The ceremony was to be held in Surulere, Lagos. Rock waited for that message. It never came.
Time moved on, but not kindly. Helen called in distress one day, Tedd had been admitted to Lagos University Teaching Hospital. She stayed by his side. Rock advised her to transfer him to a specialist hospital in Edo State.
Eventually, Tedd was discharged, and his twin daughters traveled to visit him in the village. They returned with hopeful words: “He’s recovering, Uncle,” they told Pa Arcoven.
A bitter quarrel soon erupted between Tedd and Helen. In anger, she told him to go back to Yolanda, to the life he had once carved in Ikoyi.
But Tedd didn’t return there. Instead, he sought shelter with his younger brother in Ikorodu.
There, his health rapidly declined. He planned to head to Edo State for treatment again, but collapsed before the journey could begin.
He was rushed to Ikorodu General Hospital. Hours later, he slipped into a coma.
It was his younger brother who found him, too late. Tedd passed away in that hospital, his last breath escaping in silence.
After his death, the hospital handed over his phone and ID card to one of his daughters. But one item was never recovered, his personal diary.
In that diary, Rock believed, were clues: Yolanda’s full name, perhaps a phone number, or even a home address. Without it, Yolanda and the boys vanished into uncertainty.
Tedd was buried in Ikorodu. Afterward, Rock approached Tedd’s sister. She had managed to collect a few photos of Yolanda and the boys. That was all they had, blurry images of children with their father’s eyes and their mother’s skin. The resemblance was unmistakable.
Desperate to trace the children, Rock turned to a cousin in the United States. The cousin found an old address for the Maltese Embassy and tried to track Yolanda through diplomatic directories. He sent emails, letters. They received no reply. The embassy had either closed or relocated.
With each failed attempt, the weight on Rock’s chest grew heavier. Time, once a loyal companion, now mocked him.
He feared he would die before the story found closure. He feared that those little boys, now about five years old, would grow up never knowing their roots.
Pa Arcoven said in despair: “I don’t want these children to believe their father left them without a family. He had siblings. He had a mother and father, now gone. He had me. He had a village.”
If Yolanda reads this, Rock asks her to reach out, not for conflict, but for connection. There is no anger in his plea, only a deep yearning to complete the circle: “If she’s still in Nigeria, or even if she’s far away, I hope she’ll one day tell the boys about their father. About his strength, his flaws, his large Nigerian family.”
To the twin boys, he said: “If this story ever reaches you, know that you are not forgotten. Your father’s people remember. We wait, with open arms and hearts. You belong with us too.
Because this is more than a tale of loss, it is one of legacy, love, and the bridges that must be built across silence and distance.”