FLUCTUATING HOPE
Fluctuating Hope – Episode 1
Written By Amah’s Heart. & Blessing
Oh.. No! not again!
I uttered as I sat dejectedly on the bare floor with my phone in my hands, upon receiving another disappointing email from a scholarship platform I applied for.
This is the eleventh disappointments and to say that I am frustrated is an understatement… I am utterly fed up with life and it’s huddles
Can’t a person just live life without having to go through hard times? I repeatedly think to myself
There are times I wonder why I was born in the first place and if I wasn’t too young for all what I am going through?
Whenever I got no response from my subconscious, I knew without a doubt that life made me grew up and mature mentally, intellectually, and emotionally earlier than I should have.
I am Debby Thomson, a twenty one year old girl from a family of eight; my parents and five siblings.. that is an elder sister, two younger sisters and two younger brothers.
My father is a contractor by profession and my mother is unemployed which is mainly because of her low academic qualification.
My mother’s father never believed in females training or education, he nursed the stereotypical belief that female education is irrelevant. To him, a woman’s worth is limited to marriage and the investments will all end up in her husband’s kitchen, bedroom, and the labour room for child birth.
Due to this, my mother stopped at her primary level education and her dream to be a banker was abruptly cut short by her father, who had later given her out in early marriage to my dad at the age of seventeen.
Initially, my dad had privately promised to send her back to school to complete her studies but after marriage he never kept to his promise to her.
As years passed it became clearer to everyone, that my father shares almost the same perspective with my maternal grandfather who believes that female education is a waste of investment.
For the past thirty of their marriage, he refused my mom venturing into a personal business, his excuse was that a wife is meant to always be under her husband wings and that if there are given small wings they might end up flying higher than the should, which to him it’s wrong in all proportions for women!
I grew up to see him always use every opportunity he had both in actions and words to downgrade my mom and oftentimes termed her an illiterate, which made my mom swear that she will try every means possible to ensure that her children soar pass the primary level education and even became a university graduate she couldn’t become.
Unfortunately she couldn’t stand up for my elder sister when the time came for my sister to further her education to the university level.
At the end, my elder sister had to stop in her secondary education level not necessarily because the funds wasn’t available but for the fact that my dad who is supposed to be her sponsor showed no interest in doing so, while my mother who badly wanted to do so was financially incapacitated.
Don’t get me wrong, my dad is not a bad man! He provides all our physical needs and he is very playful and fun to be with
He plays the fatherly role perfectly well which makes me come to the conclusion that probably the wrong perspective he grew up with about investing in a female child… is as result of how he was brought up to believe that male children are more superior and important than the female children.
Years passed and I soon finished my secondary school education, this was when my mother decided not to let it lay low like she did in the case of my elder sister.
She gave me some money to purchase a jamb form and took care of all the transportation expenses until I successfully wrote my Jamb exams (UTME) and had passed remarkably.
Few months after that, I successfully got admission into the University but at the same time disaster stuck.
My dad lost his job! He was sacked alongside other working staff due to the company’s low revenue to pay much workers.
It was a devastating news that completely broke the family into a thousand pieces since my dad’s earnings was the family’s only means of survival.
Now it was more glaring that I was about to face the same fate in education like my sister did, I completely lost hope of ever smelling the four walls of a university,.. this was one of the many reasons why I avoided any discussion with my friends whenever the gist centered on where we would be studying after secondary school.
Well luckily for me, my mom saved a considerable amount during the years for a time like after my secondary school completion, she wanted me to at least start school while she runs around to gather more funds for my subsequent years in the University.. but then she never expected the unforseen sacking incident that eventually occurred when I was offered admission into the University.
She became caught in a dilemma of either using her savings for my education or reserving it instead for feeding and house use, considering the fact that my dad was no more working and it was at that time life was gradually getting tougher for us with bills slow but consistently pilling up.
(Do NOT take credit or plagiarize)
