HERDSMEN ENCOUNTER
Hey fam, it’s really been a long time. I’ve not written anything here in over a month now and I am really sorry about that. In between long hours of work (and the stress associated with it), a faulty phone, and power supply issues, I’ve not been able to find the emotional strength to write.

I am trying to resolve these issues but in the meantime, I promise to give us something to read at least once a week until I am able to find the right balance. Thank you for understanding �.

You remember I wrote about the stress of harvesting cassava from my family farm a few months ago, you can read the story here.

https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/2020/05/farm-work-amateur-farmers.html Today I’ll be giving you a rather painful update on our farming activities this year.

Farm land at the base of a mountain range
One of the reasons I love coming to this particular farm is the beautiful scenery.
After we harvested the cassava, dad hired someone to help us till the ground for the next set of crops. We also acquired a larger plot in a close-by rural community for the planting season. My parents are teachers as you know and farming provided a much escape from the idleness that came with the lockdown.

Once the soil was tilled, my parents and siblings visited the farms (we now had farms at three different locations) three to four times weekly over the following month for planting and weeding. We planted yam, groundnut, melon, watermelon, maize, soybeans, and bambara nut. I couldn’t go with them most of the time because I resumed work fully when the lockdown was lifted in June.

The plants began to grow and we were really excited but our excitement was dampened when we went to our yam farm for fertilizer application and discovered that the yam tendrils growing on the outer ridges of the farm had been eaten up by grazing cows of nomadic herdsmen. My parents in their good-naturedness decided to assume it was a grazing accident since it was only those on the outer ridges that were eaten up.

We consulted with the local farmers after the days’ work and they told us it was no accident, that they suffered the same from the herdsmen every planting season. They advised that we poison the remaining tendrils with sniper that would kill intruding cattle. We thanked them but quickly threw the advice out the window because we felt it was too extreme.

Weed choked farm
What used to be our yam is now completely covered by weeds because the yam tendrils were eaten up by cattle before they had the chance to really grow.
A few weeks later when we came back to the same farm for weeding, we met a very heart-breaking scene. More than half of the farm had been eaten up by the grazing cattle under the watch of their herdsmen and the ridges had been completely flattened by the stumping of the cattle. The yam farm was our largest farm and we had invested thousands of naira into it with the hope of harvesting enough yam to last us at least a year. My both parents were speechless, we didn’t do any work that day, we just quietly climbed back into the car and headed home.

We gave up on the yam farm and decided to focus our efforts on the other two farms where we planted the other crops. Both farms were not cultivated at the same time so while we were already harvesting corn cobs from the first one, the maize plants in the second one were just starting to flower. While the second farm was being cultivated, we had kept driving away grazing cattle that “strayed” into the farm while their herdsmen (or boys, because they were actually small boys) watched saying nothing. My parents felt that since the farm was located in a residential area, the cattle won’t be able to do much damage. It turned we were VERY WRONG.

Two Fridays ago, my dad visited the farm in the evening and came back home with the report that the maize stalks at the edge of the farm had been eaten down to the roots by cattle. On our way back from church the following Sunday, we stopped by the farm to see the extent of the damage but alas not one maize stalk was left standing. The herdsmen and their cattle had visited the next day and finished up what was left of the maize leaving only the Bambara nuts and soybeans that were just sprouting. Though this farm was our smallest, it was far more fertile than the other and we really looked forward to a rich harvest of maize.

I saw the pain on my father’s face, it was deeper than any I had seen before. Time, effort, and money poured down the drain because of the wickedness of fellow humans. Sometimes I wonder if they are actually humans because they do not act like beings with a conscience.

Now I can better understand the pain of the Benue people, I just wonder why the government seems to have endorsed this wickedness. When a cow is killed government intervenes but when peoples’ livelihood is eaten up by cattle, the government is silent. If this can happen in Abuja then nowhere is safe.

Please leave a comment and don’t forget to share. And if you’ve had a similar experience please feel free to share your story with us in the comment section or send a mail.
https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/2020/09/hey-fam-its-really-been-long-time.html

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BOOK ADDICTION 1: THE BEGINNING
I started reading fluently at the age of five; I was just in nursery two.

About two and a half years before, we had just moved to Abuja and my parents were trying to pick out the best school they could afford for me. When I was brought to be enrolled in my school, my mum explained to the school management that I had completed pre-nursery and had started nursery one at my previous school (this was in January so it was the second term) and so she wanted me to continue from where I stopped. The proprietor refused to admit me into that class because I was too young to be there and didn’t think I could cope (mum believes he thought she was lying).

After all, efforts to have it her way proved abortive, she came up with a deal for the proprietor.
“Fine, we would have it your way, my daughter will repeat pre-nursery but if she makes it to the top of her class with an average score above 80% at the end of the academic session, then she’d be promoted to nursery two instead of nursery one,” she said to him. He readily agreed because he didn’t think I would meet the criteria, he probably thought my parents were just trying to put up a show. What he didn’t know was that my parents were more than ready to win.

My parents bought a blackboard and lots of children's books and would spend hours teaching me daily, mum during school days, and dad on weekends. Of course, their efforts paid off, they won the deal because at the end of the session I emerged the overall best student among all the arms of my class even though I didn’t have a first-term result. I was promoted to nursery two and I still came out the best at the end of the session. And so my journey into books began with my parents as my foundational teachers.

For the first nine years of my life, I didn’t get to play with other children and didn’t even own any toys; books were my toys, books were my dolls, books were my teddy bears and books were my playmates. I rarely got the chance to go out and play with other kids in my neighborhood. Whenever mum needed to go out, she would drop a novel or an educational book for me to read and summarise before she got back home after which she would mark and grade the summary, even the smallest grammatical error was never overlooked. However, as I grew up and had younger siblings, mum gradually became very busy with running the house and work and so the book tradition slowly died off but I was already hooked.

My mum hated it whenever I had to tidy the house. I would read every scrap of paper I found on the floor and always ended spending hours tidying one room. Therefore tidying the house was always a full day affair for me. A waste of precious time that greatly irked mum.

My parents soon stopped buying novels for me. They wanted me to concentrate on school texts and recommended readings. But I had already built a good network of friends (most of them older) with whom I exchanged novels both at school and in my neighborhood and so I didn’t lose my supply, I only stopped being a supplier.

Relevant Lessons (for parents):
1. You are primarily responsible for the all-round growth and development of your child/children. Stop leaving that responsibility to the school. Get in there and do your part and you’d be surprised at the level of improvement that will follow.

2. Start early. Stop using unnecessary excuses to shield that child from learning necessary life skills (not just reading). At six, you said the child was still a baby and would learn how to do dishes before he/she clocks eight. That child is now nine years old and can’t even hold a broom properly. Wake Up.

3. Discipline will not kill your child. And discipline does not necessarily have to be flogging. Teach your child that the pain of discipline is what births the pleasure of victory. The home lessons were not always pleasant for me as a child, in fact, some days were dedicated to tears but in the end, it paid off.

https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/2020/06/book-addiction-1-beginning.html

Part 2 to 4 Already on my blog you can read it at
https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/
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NNU0000:
Very nice story.I thought it was real to the end.

Its Very true like
my true stories
thanks please check my Blog

No matter how little the amount, losing money can be a painful experience for most persons particularly when it involves hard earned money. Worse still is when the lost money happens to be your last card. By last card, I mean no other money in hand and nothing in the bank account. How do you feel when you lose your last card?

For the majority of Nigerians particularly those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder losing money no matter how little (even as little as ₦50) can disrupt their economic balance. Only a very small percentage of Nigerians can afford to replace lost money without much pain, thought, and planning.

So about a week ago I lost my money, I mean my last card. I didn’t lose it in the literary sense of losing something because it neither got stolen nor misplaced. I chose to say I lost it for want of a better way to put it.[img][/img]

Here is what happened: I ran out of data a day before and had been offline for the meantime while weighing my subscription options. I had to really weigh my options because all the money I had on me that Saturday was ₦1,500 and some small change (nothing in the account), the five hundred being the exact amount I’d need for transport to work the following week.
Although I appreciated the internet break, I knew needed to get data because I won’t be able to work effectively without it and so after my calculations, I decided to purchase a thousand naira worth of data since I was expecting some money during the coming week.

The next evening (Sunday) I gave my youngest brother the money to get a recharge card for me while I went to the kitchen to make dinner. I was busy in the kitchen when he got back so I told him to keep it in my purse with the intention to recharge it after making dinner.

I use MTN network provider for calls (like most Nigerians) and GLO network provider for internet subscription, the reason being that although MTN has stronger network coverage and cheaper call rates, Glo data rates are way cheaper. And because I use MTN for calls, I recharge it more often and so whenever I want to recharge, I almost subconsciously input the MTN code first.

As I picked up the recharge card and my phone to recharge, I automatically dialed the *555# code for MTN instead of the *123# code for Glo. I inputted the pin and hit the send button before I realized my mistake and there was no cancel option. Normally the process would not go through when you dial a wrong code but unknown to me glo has a promo offer that is activated when you dial the *555# code.

Immediately I hit the send button, while I was still trying to process my mistake, I received a notification that the promo package had been activated. It hit me like a thunderbolt as I immediately let out a scream, dropped my phone, and flung myself on the floor murmuring, sobbing and laughing at the same time. My scream attracted my family members to the room where they found me on the floor half sobbing, half laughing and muttering incomprehensibly.
Sounds like madness abi? I know. The pain was just too much for me.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I reacted this way. Remember I said the ₦1000 was all the money I had asides from my transport to work and some loose change. Because of the tariff plan I am subscribed to, when I recharge my Glo line, I usually get about 400mb bonus data and ₦5000 bonus airtime asides from the normal ₦1000 airtime with which I’d eventually purchase data. Now the *555# promo code gives you 5× the value of your recharge without the additional bonuses.
And so by dialing that code, I got 5× my recharge value that is ₦5000 (which I would have gotten from my normal recharge), lost the data bonus and worse of all the ₦1000 airtime I purchased was taken in exchange for the 5× value meaning I would be unable to purchase the much needed data. Plus the airtime was not so useful to me because Glo has an outrageously high call rate.
I hope you understand my pain now. I just had to mourn my loss.

I was left with no choice but to use my transport for the week to purchase data the next day being Monday and thankfully the small change I had carried me to work. The money I was expecting came in on Wednesday but before then I had to borrow money for transport to work on Tuesday.

https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/2020/07/how-i-lost-my-last-card.html

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