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Sometimes I tend to wonder what would have happened to me or become of me if my mum had not played her role as a mother in my life, I guess would still have been a man but maybe I would have become a vagabond and anytime I looked back to where I came from, how I have grown and the kind of man I am becoming, I will always give kudos to my mom because her role in my life is the reason a woman will not want to say no to me in the place of relationship/interaction.
The reason I am not part of the people who are terrorizing the society, the reason I am part of the people making the society a safe place is as a result of the upbringing or values inculcated by my mom and this is not to say my dad was not there or played his role as a father but the major training came from my mom.
I lost my dad at a young age which really changed the trajectory of our lives as a family because my siblings are four and with my mom, makes it six. This was a challenging season for me, her and my siblings. So there are many memories of my mom and it is really hard to pick one but I will talk about a particular one I will never forget in my life.
As at the time we lost my dad, she began to think of what to do that would really sustain five children so that they won't become thieves or vagabond in the society. So she settled with doing odd jobs such as washing clothes, sweeping houses for people so as to make a living for me and my siblings. I remember vividly how two of my siblings and I will close from school, get to the house and after eating afternoon food (garri with groundnut) we will have to follow her to those places. So while she's washing, I will rewash, one of my siblings will rinse and the last one will spread the clothes. During that period, I learnt resilient, I learnt hard work is the way to succeed in life, I learnt no matter the situation you can survive.
But truth be told, there were days I prayed we do not go out to do those odd jobs and I guess you know as a teenager, you tend to feel ashamed of those things most especially when your peers see you and God help you to be seen by the girl your eyes are lurking around on. Lol. Sometimes we will deliberately get home late because we don't want to do those jobs anymore and you can't blame us, any teenager could do the same but we like it or not, we will have to go because we know at the end it will put food on our table.
Looking back now, I realized if she had not trained us with those things, maybe I must have turned an internet fraudster, or maybe a kidnapper or anything that might cause the society unrest.