I thought family was everything. Well, that's very true, family is important but can't tag it as everything. Ever heard of the saying that goes by “offer help after you've been helped” hmm..you might have heard similar sayings to that but not exactly the one i spoke about and that's because i composed that myself.
One way or the other, I find myself writing about my family's experience. Am talking about a family who had life going smoothly until a sudden turn that took us back to nothing. I've shared this story in different writings, you could check on my previous post to get more information if you're interested. This time around,I'll be a little more detailed on the role I played in assisting my family.
Image by Freepik
I'm the second child out of 5 and the only daughter of my parents. Being that my parents create many gaps between my younger siblings and I made me take up working very seriously so I could help in providing food for my younger ones if not for anyone, at least my parent’s last child who am 16+ older than. I remembered the period of covid 19, one of the toughest phrases we ever had to go through.
As a result of the lockdown my parents couldn't go out because of their daily hustle. What then would happen to us? How would we feed? To top up, we had a six months old baby who was in need of more food than the rest of us. The few people my dad usually contacted for help ignored his calls, the ones who picked made empty promises and so on. Watching all this happen, I knew we couldn't just sit back anymore.
My (baby) , like I often call my mom’s last child, was my major concern. Yes, it was supposed not to be my problem, I was just a sister but I couldn't help it. He was one child I watched grow gradually and could remember every little detail of his birth and with that, I set out a plan on doing home lessons for children in my environment. I made it very affordable for as low as #2,000 per child. I wasn't so sure if parents would let their kids come over to my house for the lesson because of the covid. However, the turnup was surprising.
I ended up having an estimate of 21 children and more, with the monthly pay, my family and I could eat. Oftentimes I go over to some of my pupil’s parent shops to get foodstuffs on credit and then ask them to take the pay from my salary. In a short time, my lesson was put on hold after I was hospitalized and operated on. At the time I came back from the hospital, most of my pupils were already in some other lesson conducted by a young girl as myself. It was quite painful tho…losing my pupils to another hand. I was grateful to the few parents who waited for my return and brought their children back to me. But we couldn't last long since the festive season was already around the corner. Diving over to the new year, my family and I were given quit notice and due to that I couldn't continue my work as a lesson teacher anymore. Since I already got a little exposure in teaching, I was given a job as a teacher in one of the primary schools. Trust me, I never wanted to do teaching work due to a clash that happened between my parents and I.
So I was literally forced to be a teacher again. I didn't last teaching in that school before I found a job as a secretary for an interior company, I spent 3 months working there. I resigned after my boss accused me of stealing 1.2 million from her, an amount that I have never touched in my life. Before then, she tried pairing me with some of her potential customers who took a liking to me, so I believed my refusal resulted in the aftermath's reactions from her. From there, I went over to work at one of the local government secretariats within my location.
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I worked as a computer operator for one of the civil staff. It was at that stage, I considered going back to school which in the beginning didn't go well, luckily for me i got to meet a God sent woman who i normally refer to as my second mom, she taught all i needed to know about baking. After I was done with my one year program that I registered for, I settled on learning baking properly and decided to give school a long break due to the experience I faced in school.
In all of these works, everything i made all went down to my house, not that i regretted any of it, but i was gradually losing myself to living for my family. You might not understand the dept of it but it was suffocating. Towards November last year, I had to make a decision to leave the house, it was the most possible way I could think of to help myself out and by January this year, I arrived at my elder brother's house in Port harcourt. My coming here is not to escape home but to help myself out. How i knew i needed breath was when i still receive calls from my family asking my for money and when i tell them i don't have, i become an enemy. It hurt tho, but i believe is a process… Family is a beautiful thing, they're important too but when you get lost in it when you haven't found your ground, you'll end up being the one needing help and not them.
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