₦airaland Forum

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"I came from an ordinary everyday family- my parents were artisans. Sending my siblings and me to school was a huge struggle for both. I recollect going to school with torn shirts and shorts because my parents could only afford one set at a time. I lost count of the number of times that I was sent home from school because the payment of my school fees was delayed. College was not different. My parents did their best but everything they came up with was suboptimal. I was lucky to have won a scholarship that helped me conclude my tertiary education. Unfortunately, I graduated with a third class. I was combining classes with selling stockfish- which served as a source of funding for our education- at the market for my mother. You don't need a soothsayer to see why my performance was that poor."

You could see the hurt in Jerry's eyes as he said, "Graduating with a third class was a big disappointment, for me and everyone. I knew I didn't put in my best. But what did I expect from a situation where I tried putting two hands in the mouth at the same time. Nevertheless, I started submitting an application for jobs as soon as I was ready to do so. It was a very troubling situation for me. I was waiting for that surreal moment that I would be empowered to give back to my parents- I needed to wipe away their tears even if it's just a drop of it. Unfortunately, every publicized vacancy shuts the door for third-class honors even before they announce their availability. I recall walking into the branch of a bank to submit my Curriculum Vitae(CV). The manager of the branch looked at the CV and tossed it back across the table. He said, 'we don't employ dullards. Please, check the next door'. I got home that day and cried my eyes out."

He went on with his story. "I would go on and try a couple of other options. But my academic performance was a leperous situation that everyone avoided. There was a day that I submitted my CV to one of the multinationals in the beverage industry. The secretary went through the document, stared at me through the rim, and then said, 'you better sell this to those hawking on the streets and find someplace to start afresh by enrolling as an apprentice'. Every single person that promised to help me with a job once I get out of school saw my result as an escape route to renege on that commitment."

His mood was better this time. "On this memorable Saturday afternoon, a man came to the market to purchase some stockfish. We negotiated for a while before I was able to close the deal. He made the payment and left behind his business card while leaving. He requested that I call him later. About a month later I was about washing my clothes when I felt something in the pocket of one of the pairs of trousers. I pulled it out and the business card flashed in my face. I called the phone number on the card and was booked for an appointment with the strange customer. I left for his office the next day and met the secretary who told me to wait at the reception. When I was finally called into his office, he inquired why I was selling stockfish in the market. I told him my story. He listened keenly. When I was done with my story, he hesitated for a moment as if he was searching for the right words. He finally said to me,

'My mother has a shop close to your mothers'. She has told me so many good things about you. She actually advised me to employ you. She said that you have so much potential that I shouldn't allow you to be passed to another employer. I run a private oil servicing firm. We just opened an office in one of the African countries. If you are ready, I would want you to work with us at the new station'"

REFLECTION
Don't let rejections demean your worth. It doesn't add up for me when I see people who allow another person's opinion to evaluate their self-worth. It is not everybody that will appreciate our value. And the solution lies in holding on until we find that place or person who really appreciates us for who we are. Even in relationships, a rejection should not be a death sentence. Once you pull yourself together and continue to tick all the right boxes, someone that values you would come knocking someday. Jeremiah got that employment and he has been working with the firm for 7 years. He was awarded the 'Best African Staff Award of Excellence" in his second year of joining the company.

Don't give up. People that value you will be sent your way one day. Then all the rejections wouldn't matter anymore.

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"We met at a wedding. He was very charming and his dressing was impeccable. At first, I caught him staring at me which made me uncomfortable. But somehow and quite strange too, I became interested in what he was doing. He moved over to the seat beside me during the presentation of gifts to the hosts- the newly married couple. His voice accentuated by a rasp was even more mesmerizing. My heart fluttered the moment he spoke. It was the moment that ushered in the vagaries of the next few years. Kevin was based in Malaysia. This, I got to know on our first date a few days after our meeting at the wedding. He was going to return the following week but he extended it for another two weeks so that he could spend more time with me."
I have been waiting to hear this story from Angela. And she is telling it today as if it was just yesterday.

"Our emotional attachment grew by the day. I would wake up every day looking forward to being with him. My mind was blown away completely- I started behaving in ways alien to me. One thing I did so well was to hold myself- in order not to submit to his sexual desires. Three days before his journey back to Malaysia, I went to his place for a sleepover. Around 12 am, he woke me up and dragged me to the sitting room. He went down on one knee and flashed a beautiful ring before me and then whispered in that raspy voice that blew my heart away on day one, 'Would you marry me, my sunshine?' I pulled him up, hugged him but my lips could not part to utter that desired response- I was trembling instead. I kissed him rather and managed to mumble a 'yes'. We made love that morning. That moment, my heart was taken captive by Kelvin."

"He returned to Malaysia three days after. I awaited his call but that didn't happen. One day turned to one week and one week to one month, but that call never came. I was so confused. But when the silence kept stretching, I had to bite the bullet and called his only sister who had shown a dislike for me right from day one. That would have yielded some results because I got a call from Kevin the next day. He was so sweet and had to come up with this pathetic story which I believed. Incidentally, our relationship became patchy thereafter. He would stay for three months without calling. When I did call, he wouldn't pick. His family was cold whenever I talked to them about him. Then, about one year after I met Kevin, I was going through posts on Facebook and stumbled on a familiar image. It was Kevin's page but it was registered with a different name. This shocked me because he told me that he was not a fan of the App. I started flipping through the pages and stumbled on a wedding invite. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Kelvin was going to wed the following Saturday- but not with me. I found out from comments on a particular post that he had been in Nigeria for a couple of days preparing for the wedding."

"That my heart was shattered would be an understatement. The future that I had hoped for went into life support without warning. I couldn't eat, sleep nor step out of the house. I would be in my bed crying all day. It was amazing that I didn't think about suicide as an end to my misery. One day a friend came by to see me. She had suffered heartbreak too but had healed completely. She talked some real sense into me and concluded by telling me that Kelvin did not deserve me. I got to hear later that Kevin did the same thing to three other women. My condition wasn't easy because I loved him and gave him my heart, but I started feeling better little by little. With time I made some emotional adjustment and got stronger. Five months later, I would meet Douglas in a friend's house. I was more careful this time but I didn't need to be because Douglas was an angel. We had our wedding within six months of our crossing paths. Presently, we reside in Canada with our three children; two boys and a girl"

Angela concluded, "Not that I care because I moved on but I later learnt that Kelvin was arrested with drugs at the airport in Malaysia. He was executed after facing trials. I do miss him at times because he was the first that I loved that way."

REFLECTION
It is normal to feel reduced to nothing because a man walked out of your life. But remember that while you wet your pillow at night and smear your mascara in the day, he would find comfort in another woman's arm. You are bound to become so distracted by trying to impress him to take you back. This would blind your human compass from locating or noticing those who really deserve you. You would end up in a wrong course- so unfamiliar -that you are washed up the wrong shore.

-ALL FOR A MAN WHO DOES NOT DESERVE YOU

But you need to STOP the tears from blinding you from the opportunities ahead of you. And there are many out there. It took a heartbreak from Kevin for Angela to realize that she deserved much more.

I say to everyone whose heart had been broken to remain focused and keep believing on better days ahead. Our hearts get broken every day- by those failed promises from the politicians, friends, loved ones, the church, the government, our families, to mention a few. But life would always present us with better opportunities. Though you have to be in the right state of mind to take them.

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It was a Saturday afternoon. I went to the salon to have a haircut but met the place filled up. I decided to drive to another salon downtown and bumped into Fred. Fred got talking. "About 10 years ago, I had a fight with a friend in school. It was a dirty college brawl. I received a heavy blow on the head- it was with a log of wood snatched from the roadside by my opponent. I blanked out but was resuscitated a few minutes later. I got home that day but never mentioned it to anyone- my parents inclusive. I was embarrassed to talk about a fight that I lost. However, a few years later, I became convulsive and started acting funny. Nobody in my family could place a finger on what was wrong with me. My case kept degenerating by the day until I began to suffer from severe medical impairment."

Fred went on but with a frown on his face. "At this point, I had lost my way. I didn't know what was happening. It was reported that I started soliloquizing. Within a short period, I started hallucinating too- I was seeing things unimagined by those around me. It was at this stage that I became paranoid. There was an assumed danger all around me. Everyone was set on edge because I became a nuisance. I reportedly set our house on fire thinking I was smoking out a bush rat from the bush- you can imagine taking my father's house for a bush. I almost burnt my parents alive. It got to a point that I started hurting people; I hurt myself too. It was when I went half-naked and took a journey around town that my people reached a unanimous decision and reined me in. The only available option was to bound me in chains- I became tethered to the wall like a crazy dog"

I could see there were two places in the queue before us. This gave Williams more time. "Everyone had given up on me. I was told that people were just waiting for my final days to happen but on the contrary, I was getting stronger (not healthier) by the day. There was this inadvertent meeting of my mum and an old friend at a friend's place. They started their women talk and my condition got mentioned. My mother's friend asked her if I had been taken to a psychiatric hospital. But my mum never heard of such before. You can't blame her; she lived all her life in the village, a very remote rural town. This was how my redemption happened. I was taken to a psychiatric hospital and within months, I started responding to treatment. With time I healed completely. I had worked around like a mad man for close to 1 year prior to visiting the psychiatric hospital. Anyway, healing happened and gave me back my life."

In closing, he said, "After my discharge from the hospital, I decided to do something meaningful for the rest of my life. By a stroke of luck -than of human effort- a family whose mentally impaired child became friends with me while in the hospital decided to help me. This though was after the story of my recovery must have reached them. They got me involved in their business as an apprentice. I was released and settled 2(two) years after joining them. Today, I am a big player in the textile materials business. I fly to China every quarter to do business and life has really been good"

REFLECTION
The beauty of life is that every human challenge has a life span. As long as one is still breathing, the chances of survival increase by the day. Therefore, the big concern here is how you stay in the battles. If you don't quit, some battles might be lost but your chance of winning the war stays alive.

Life is not about how fast one is able to go; it is about finishing the race with purpose and intent.

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Brian just performed his fifth surgery of the day. He called it a day and took me to an eatery close by. We got talking. "I came from a polygamous family. My mother was the last of three wives. My late father asked for her hand in marriage immediately before the civil war. He was a good man and stories claimed that he treated all women fairly. The downside though is that 'fairly' does not always translate to 'equally'. In this regard, that fairness became inconsequential because he did not treat the women equally. The natural instinct to compete for attention and for assets would put my mother and my stepmothers at war- it was a cold one at the beginning. But as the children grew up into adults, and began to take sides, it birthed the declaration of a domestic civil war where combatants were charged to shoot at sight."

He would go on while sipping a glass of juice with some ice cubes. "The situation got me disoriented. Because I saw first hand, all the fights and scheming; home was like a war zone. The three wives made 27 children for my father. Unfortunately, he didn't live long to have a full dose of the house of commotion he created. Farming was our traditional profession. It became the financial barometer through which every man in the community was measured. You can see why the fight for my late father's farmlands became intense and blinded us. We all sat back to fight for our stake. Nothing else, not even education, was considered as an alternative. It was so until providence opened my eyes to the reality on ground. I sustained an injury in one particular fight. I received a heavy blow on the head that paralyzed one side of the brain. I could move my hands and legs but I couldn't coordinate them for anything meaningful like walking, running, holding, etc"

Brian beckoned on the waiter. He then continued, "I was taken to a local hospital where the doctor told my mother that I might never walk again. The constant wailing from my mother pressured the doctor into referring me to a specialist hospital in the city. That was my first visit to the city. I spent two years in the city putting up with a family friend. I later got my legs and hands back to form but the experience was an eye-opener. It unveiled my eyes to better opportunities in life. I realized that I had been in the village fighting a meaningless war- an unnecessary war that had no purpose nor substance. I refused to return to the village where I realized had no future in store for me."

He concluded, "I became fascinated by the doctors in the hospital where I was treated. I had several dreams in the night where I was one, looking after the sick. It would take me several sleepless nights and several years of hard work to become a medical doctor. I graduated as a surgeon and later owned a hospital. My elder brothers ended up in the village fighting for land. They spent their youthful age tilling the soil. My experience showed that a lot of people waste away because they never had a good perspective to help them build a better future. Serendipity exposed me to one and I took it with both hands."

REFLECTION
If it doesn't kill you, life will present you with a life-changing opportunity. The thing with adversity is that it will always show up with a weakness. That weakness, once identified can become that strength that we need to move to the next level of life. Perspective is one of the greatest gifts someone can present us with. But the issue is that we could become so much engrossed with irrelevant things that don't really matter in life that we fail to harness the inherent or the intrinsic value in what is presented to us.

There is nothing that you are going through now that life has never thrown at people. The fact that some persons conquered whatever it is, underlines the fact that if you persevere and look deeper, your pathway to freedom might just be two decisions away.

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Collins’ first child was celebrating his 5th birthday. Collins and I sat at a corner observing proceedings. He tapped me on the arm and said. “I was the only male child and the last of eight siblings. My father died when I was four- so I was told. From that moment, there was a race against time to get me in a position to start producing successors to keep the family name going. The initial plan was to get a wife for me at 18. But I resisted every bit of the plan because I wanted to advance my educational career. I didn’t want to have some human luggage tagging along, as a form of distraction. It was a fierce fight though. Elders from my maternal home had to be invited for a serious family discussion. In the end, I had it my way- but, it was just the official launch of round 2 of the struggle.”

He continued, “At 24, after my graduation, the struggle was resurrected and it was a hair’s breadth away from breaking point. The pressure, this time, was massive especially after I was nearly killed by armed men while traveling home from school right at the end of that semester. They all thought it was a narrow escape and believed it was time I tied the knot. I succumbed to their emotional blackmail and took a wife to quell the tornado that was forming in the family. But you see, life has a way of humbling humans. My wife couldn’t get pregnant in the first 7 years. When she did finally, it ended in a stillbirth. She took in again and was delivered of a baby girl. The frustration of not having a male child and the urgency to have one connected all of us to some doses of desperation. When we were trying to adjust for another baby-making marathon, we lost baby Jessy to pneumonia. We were back to square one.”

He went on. “Meanwhile, I had this cousin in the same situation as I was. But his parents who were both alive saw things differently. They had better spiritual dispositions than my people. My cousin took all the time in the world to further his education and then got a job. He got married thereafter. Even though mine happened 6 years before his, his wife bore him 4 lovely kids while I was still hoping. I looked at the futility of throwing me, right in the ring too early, and realized that no matter what we do in life, nature would always run its course. The same parents and siblings that pushed me into early marriage now wanted me to dump my wife, for another, or go for adoption. I looked at my wife and what she had been through and vowed never to add to her woes. I felt for her and swore never to let people play God in my life anymore.”

He concluded, “My wife was 45 when she took in and bore us some triplets: two boys and a girl.”


REFLECTION

It is our expectations in life that put pressure on us. It deletes the register of ‘the right time’ from our emotional dictionary. We sacrifice hope and perseverance on the altar of impatience. When things happen at the right time for the right reasons, our lives become punctuated with the beautiful moments we all cherish. Collins started the race early but his cousin who started off late got ahead of him on the same issue that drove the need to go early. So, it’s not about starting early nor about how strong you are.

Waiting for the right moments has always been the common denominator in life. The only difference is our tolerance level for perseverance. While Collins was racing against time, his cousin spent time focusing on doing the necessary things at the right moment. The time hardly comes wrong for someone who trusts in God and patiently waits. It is worthy to note that ‘waiting’ is not the same as shuffling your feet against the floor just to while away time.

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"We have been married for 10 years with three kids -all girls- before he became convinced by his family members that taking a second wife would give him a male child. I have heard stories about two women sharing a man but I didn't see it coming to me. During my childhood days, sharing things I adored was not my strength- much more sharing a man that I loved, as a grown-up. The moment Gina walked in as the second wife, the drawn battle line became more visible. Things went quickly from normal to toxic like slamming the accelerator from zero to 260miles/hr."

Louisa is a fighter. And her shark-like frame fits the profile. She continued, "I was dragged through hell for what I did not sign for. Stating that my husband, Kenny, changed overnight should be the greatest understatement of the century. He was no longer interested in my food nor our kids. I was getting sex like doses of glucose just like it was administered into our palms, during games in our college days. Our matrimonial bed became a danger zone; as if it had a skull and crossbones sign boldly inscribed on it. My husband wouldn't touch me with a 'rubber covered pole'. Gina became the toast of the season and the queen mother of the house. You could notice the big sneer on her face each time she walked by. She was enjoying the faceoff between our husband and me. She became the evil umpire who loved me."

Louisa kept talking. "At the early stage of our marriage, I wanted to finish my university education but my hubby said that it was not necessary. He claimed that he had made enough money to keep us comfortable. I became a decorated housewife that was absolutely dependent on her man- one that presumably loved me and would die for me. He claimed that I was too precious to him to be put to any hard labour. I saw this as the expression of the love he had for me. As a result, I accepted it and sat at home like a five-star housewife. But things changed when Gina walked in, and shockingly, it did so fast. It didn't take me time to know that I had to respond to the prevailing situation. I borrowed some money from family and friends and went into the foodstuff business. My customer base grew astronomically- probably because they knew my story. With excellent customer service, I converted their pity to loyalty"

She came to the closing part. "Within a couple of years, Gina had made another three girls for the family. The boy child remained elusive. Her relationship with our husband began to get rusty and rocky. When I was thinking that the third wife could be in the offing, our husband got involved in a fatal motor accident. He got involved in a shouting match with Gina one morning only to rush out angrily and didn't come back the way he left. It was a head-on collision; the driver and three passengers died instantly. He survived but we were told he would never move his limbs ever- he was going to be in that vegetative state till death calls. Hardly had he been discharged from the hospital when Gina picked her things and left with the kids. I, the rejected stone became the headstone that carried the family. By this time, I had acquired 15 shops in the market; I rented 12 and kept 3 for myself. I had two delivery vans and later started exporting to the neighboring countries. The day Gina walked into that house became my turning point. The wolf that came to consume me ended up becoming my source of food. The only dark side is the condition my husband was left in. But everything happens for good for those that trust in God"

REFLECTION
Adversity has a way of beating us into a pulp that we become resistant to tough times. If we respond well to adversity, it will always open the door to something exciting. Adversity is the best practical class where lessons about life's fundamental principles are taught. Nonetheless, how you come out of it at the end is a function of how well you respond to it. The narrator did not recluse nor start whimpering. Neither did she start playing the victim in order to attract sympathy. In fact, she arrested the situation and made it a prisoner.

Your response to adversity might not yield the desired result immediately. But you see, there are wars that you will need to fight more than one battle to have a peep at victory. Whatever that it is that is troubling you right now has been seen before. I may not know what it is, but I know one thing for sure: if you respond well and make the right decisions, everything would turn out well.

References:
https://anekearinzeblog.com