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It feels good to be back to @ecoTrain-QOTW after a brief time away. I must say, it's been quite some feeling not coming around. Like always, the questions coming from here could be thought-provoking and make you want to wear your thinking cap all over again. Many that's to @ecotrain community and @charleywhittall for putting up such beautiful questions.
Some years ago when I was offered admission to the university to study history, I knew this good thing could not be celebrated because my parents may not be able to fund me. I held my admission letter to myself for quite a while before a summoned courage to tell mother that I have been offered admission. With the news, she jumped in jubilation. I would be the very first to be given such an opportunity in my entire family. It appeared to me like this is a huge celebration but I didn't join because I knew the financial power of my parents.
The University is about four states away. And in those days, there were no mobile telephones and if you have to write a letter through the post office, it will take another fourteen days to reach the preferred destination.
I was willing to go to the university and my dad knew that cannot be taken away from me. So, a week before our resumption, my father took me to his bank and withdrew every dime he had. I felt so sorry and weak that I had to go to school with everything he had saved.
When I arrived at school, as a fresher, we were compulsory asked to reside in the school hostel and we have to pay #90 (ninety nairas) as hostel fee for a session and since our school was a federal school, tuition was just #200 (two hundred nairas). After paying, I had more than enough money to spend for a whole year. My mother had packed everything I could need in school from beverages to raw foods.
At this juncture, something struck me. I regurgitated that back at home, my parents and siblings could be starving, I couldn't bear it. A week later, I boarded a bus back home to return a huge part of the money left with me to my parents. She wept. When I got home, my mother thought I had come to collect some money from them. I read her countenance but didn't utter a word.
After dinner that night, I went to my mom and dad to return the money. There and then, I saw the tears gathering in my mother's eye as she rained prayers of blessings on me. The next day, I was off to school. I didn't return home until after my second-semester examination, during the Christmas period.
Years later, after my grandpa passed on. He had a very big cocoa farm in Cameroon. Each year, proceeds from the farm is delivered to the family in Nigeria. My parents conceived the idea that if I could return money when my peers were buying new clothes and shoes, then I could be vouched for in terms of money.
Most of the property that could be seen in my family compound today was erected with the proceeds from grandpa's cocoa farm in Cameron.
Sometimes in life, some of the attitude we toy with turn out to either make or mar ou future. I am glad I took that decision and today it is in my route with members of my family.