I think one of the greatest proverbs that were ever said is, "experience is the best teacher". I strongly agree with that but what people are forgetting is that your experience only becomes the best teacher when you abide by the lessons picked from the experience and it is really surprising how most of us fail to learn from our experience.
Right now, I'm trying to reminisce about a certain experience in my life and I had to open the box where I store all memories in my head but the problem is that I put both good and bad in one place. I should have just created a folder for it. While scrolling through the memory box, I stumble on a lot of memories but there is this particular one I am going to share which I am sure everyone is going to learn from it. Many of my readers already know that I was raised by my mom and it was just me and my elder brother for 13 years before I got a younger one but this happened when I was between the age of 8 to 10 years old.
We were not rich nor are we very poor. It is normal for us to know how to do stuff like fetch water, wash our clothes, and probably cook noodles but my story was different because the only I did at home was wash plates. My mom pampered us too much and it made us lazy.
To fasten the story, my mom had a health issue in 2006 and she had to go to the hospital for some weeks, so she can get treated. For the weeks she would be gone, we had to crash at our family friend's house which I thought would be super fun. I haven't spent a night without my mom but we were not allowed to stay in the hospital with her, and while she was leaving, she gave instructions that we should take raw food stuff to our family friend's house so that they can cook it for us, so we can eat well.
Every time we want to take foodstuff down there, we take more than enough for us but after the food is ready, we are always served less compared to what we should get but we have no choice since we can't cook, we can't even sleep alone at home, so we kept enduring because it is either there or stay home. Aside from the food issues, there was this night they sent my brother to go and bring our stove home because theirs wasn't working and it was raining heavily. I wanted to follow my brother but they insisted he went alone even when they have older children than us. Tears roll down my eyes and I said in my mind, "I miss you, mom".
After one week and some days, we already had a lot of dirty clothes and there was no water at home so we decided to wash our clothes and fetch water so mom won't have to stress herself once she come back from the hospital but guess what, it was a wrong idea. My brother who was 3 years older than me carried the bucket of water on his head and I was supporting It with my hand at the back as we struggle to get home, More than halfway down the road, the bucket fell and broke, it was an embarrassment that lasted for years. When we got home after disgracing ourselves, we decide to wash cloth with the remaining water and we poured all our clothes together into one big bucket but ended up not washing any and we just left it inside the room there.
My mom got home after 2 weeks and it was straight to chores. I and my brother went on our kneels and beg her to please teach us how to do these things, I enjoy cooking a lot now and I do all other chores with happiness.
Just that two weeks made me feel useless and it was then I decided that I would be self-sufficient and ever since then, I hold up to my promise. I was even given the name cooker by a man who always sees me cooking whenever he visits our compound.
I hope it wasn't too embarrassing, don't forget to let love lead always.
