Each time I followed my father to morning mass, there were always people who stayed back after to clean the church. It was a part of my father's daily routine to attend mass before heading off to work.

I would hold his big, stronger hands while stopping at intervals to strap my sandals with poor Velcro that kept coming off. My father never stayed back because he had to go to work.

I used to think these people worked for the church and were paid salaries until my father told me it was what they did freely for God everyday. He had added that working for God came with many blessings and riches.

As naive as I was, it still didn't make sense to me that I'd wake up every morning as a sane person to clean a place I didn't use alone. To me, most of these people looked poorer than those who left to their various destinations after mass.

When I had mentioned it to my father, he had hushed me saying, "You have to work for God from your heart, because your reward isn't ordinary, it is in heaven."

Even though I was just ten, I was aware the only way to heaven was through death. What use was a reward you would only get in death?

I chose to believe in things that were more tangible, like how Ekene, my seat partner's mother, would promise to buy him a bicycle if he came first in class. They had more money than us and I never saw them sweeping the church compound.

Each time his position came up in class, he would get a gift better than the previous one. My mother would frown anytime she heard me talk about it.

"Why reward a child for something that is already beneficial to him?" She would say. "Reading your books will give you good grades, good grades will take you places. That is better than anything I can give you."

I watched Ekene's grades become better with each prize he aimed for and soon he was one of the top students in class. There was nothing you could tell me at that point. His mother's approach was better than mine and I promised myself to teach my children that way.

My father had trained two of our cousins in the University. He always told us to look up to them. They would come back home during the holidays with big books and fine accents only people who had gone through tertiary level of education could wield.

We all believed they were going to make our family proud and even if my father did not say it often, they were part of his investment. He was putting in efforts so that they could become great in the future and also help other people especially us, his children.

One day my dad received a call and his mood changed so much, he was bitter. The next day, one of my cousins came to our house with some people, a fine auntie and a couple who I later found out were her parents.

Chibuzo, my cousin had impregnated the girl, his coursemate and they had both been suspended from school indefinitely.

Chibuzo and the girl buried their heads in shame as her parents left her with us.

My father couldn't control his anger, "So this is how you will repay me? This is what I get for making sure you get the best education? Now you have ruined your life and the life of this poor girl."

I saw firsthand what our teachers preached to us in school everyday. I made it a priority to stay away from any form of relationship with any girl. Becoming a young father wasn't a fine reward for all my parents were doing for me.

From my father's experience, I realized sometimes, it didn't pay to be a good person. Some months later, my second cousin dropped out of school himself because he couldn't bear to remain there with the amount of carryovers he had accumulated.

"Did you hear that Brother Timothy's wife just travelled abroad with the children?" My mother had said to my father one evening.

If I could remember clearly, Brother Timothy was one of our neighbors who walked with my father and I to morning mass everyday. He was one of the people that stayed back after church, but I knew he was well-to-do.

The next time we saw him, he kept on saying that his testimony was a result of the work he did for God.

"Whatever you do, do it from your heart. Even with the story of these your boys now," he said to my father while referring to my cousins, "just because of how you took care of their expenses, somebody else will do the same for your children. Life is not black and white, you can get a bad reward for doing good, but in the long run, as far as you sow a good seed, you will reap something good."

I realized his words weren't mere words when I got a scholarship for my senior secondary school education. I wasn't the student with the highest grade yet my name had somehow fallen into a category for the scholarship awards in my school.

All the effort I had put into getting good grades from class one, were what gave me the scholarship. I was just a student who wanted to make good grades and graduate, but being a scholarship student drove me to want more.

There were more opportunities to gain with hardwork. Some things in life take more time to come to fruition and I as grew up, I believed that was how most rewards worked.

Like how my father had moved us to the house he had been building slowly for years. When things got really hard and he couldn't afford to renew our rent, we had somewhere to give us a roof over our heads.

He would use himself as an example to my siblings and I.

"The rewards of certain actions could come faster than others, but the best rewards come from those things that take a lot from us. It may take a lot of time and resources. We may not even see it ahead of us, but they are there and the things we do to get there also build us and that is a reward in itself"

It reminded me of Brother Timothy and all those people who stayed back after church. Even if I could not see it or fully understand it, the rewards of their actions and efforts were what kept them going.