Patrick was so relieved he decided to buy a bottle of soft drink from a passing vendor’s cooler to go with the N100.00 moi-moi he was eating. He was sitting at the Faculty of Arts Quadrangle amidst scores of other students, some of who were eating, reading, typing their assignments, surfing the Internet or chatting with friends. The quadrangle had become his favourite spot on campus for cooling off between lectures in the overcrowded classrooms where he scarcely got a seat.
His Nokia 3310 phone was on top of the books beside him and he was certain that at any moment, he would receive a credit alert from his bank. Patrick was a second-year History student and he hadn’t paid his first semester school fees. The university had announced that the online portal for printing school fees receipts and registering one’s courses would be closed that day. After unsuccessfully soliciting for help from so many people in the past week, he had only one ray of hope to meet the deadline: the promise of a cash transfer from his uncle, Matthias, who lived in Abuja.
Matthias was his mother’s elder brother and although a rich trader, he had never helped his family before. Patrick was certain his mother would be cross with him for appealing to her brother because she swore to train her children singlehandedly after he let her down repeatedly in the two years immediately following her husband’s death. But Patrick was hard-pressed and had reached out to every living relative with means that he knew. They all told him they could squeeze nothing out for him because of their immediate family obligations and projects.
“So much for Africa’s much-touted extended family networks,” Patrick had sneered after the last call.
He had even approached his lecturers and got a total of Eighteen Thousand Naira from two of them, half of which had already been gulped by assignments he couldn’t afford to submit late for fear of having poor results.
In spite of the tough financial difficulty at home, Patrick had never been one to beg in the past. But all efforts to raise the money for his fees and other school expenses during the long vacation had been frustrated by his mum’s ill health. Her diabetes had become so debilitating that she stopped her petty trade in fruits.
Patrick’s two elder sisters had married artisans right after secondary school, one a welder, the other a painter. The oldest girl, Adanna, had three kids in quick succession before becoming a sewing apprentice. Her sons were aged between 5 and 2 and half. The younger, Nwanyioma, had a two-year-old daughter and plaited hair at home. Their meagre contributions couldn’t pay their mum’s medical bills, so Patrick had to sink in all he made as a labourer at construction sites during the long vacation and the strike that followed.
He sent his dear mum, whom he called Omalicha (for she was truly a beauty before the ravaging sickness came calling) to stay with Nwanyioma and her family when he came back to school and still sent them help from whatever he made from working over the weekend or when he cut classes, which had become more frequent than in his first year when his mum was healthier.
Patrick’s late father was a victim of a hit-and-run driver. He had been a carpenter and had worked tirelessly to pay for his children’s education. He specialised in roofing houses and had several young men working for him but he was knocked down by a speeding commercial bus as he was riding his bicycle home after a hard day’s work. Patrick had just entered secondary school when the tragedy occurred. His sisters shelved their father’s ambition to see them go to the university but Patrick’s mum encouraged him to proceed. But by his Junior WAEC year, she became sick and he started his labourer work to help. He devoted a year to it after writing his O’levels to save money to begin his university education.
Paying for his WAEC and NECO exams was a miracle. He had given up hope of taking the exams with his mates but his pastor (a 20-year-old who didn’t finish secondary school himself) surprised him by raising an offering on two Sundays for him. Their church was small: about 100 members, mostly youths. Their offerings were seen as seeds sown to help a needy brother with the expectation that God would intervene to better their lots too
Another miracle helped him to complete his first-year fees even before he accepted the admission. It was on a fateful Friday as he came down to carry concrete to the first floor of a building he and others were working on. He saw a handsome young man in dreads talking with their foreman. He was angry that the contractor was not on site and Patrick learnt he was Chigozie, the owner of the building. He and the foreman began a tour of the ground floor while Patrick continued his work. By his third trip down thereafter, the foreman asked him to run after the visitor and return his PDA which he had forgotten on the ground floor railing.
By the time Patrick got to the main road, Chigozie was entering his SUV (Patrick didn’t catch the model). He tapped on the driver’s window and when Chigozie rolled it down, he breathlessly informed him, “Sir, the foreman says to give you this. It appears you forgot it.”
His Nokia 3310 phone was on top of the books beside him and he was certain that at any moment, he would receive a credit alert from his bank. Patrick was a second-year History student and he hadn’t paid his first semester school fees. The university had announced that the online portal for printing school fees receipts and registering one’s courses would be closed that day. After unsuccessfully soliciting for help from so many people in the past week, he had only one ray of hope to meet the deadline: the promise of a cash transfer from his uncle, Matthias, who lived in Abuja.
Matthias was his mother’s elder brother and although a rich trader, he had never helped his family before. Patrick was certain his mother would be cross with him for appealing to her brother because she swore to train her children singlehandedly after he let her down repeatedly in the two years immediately following her husband’s death. But Patrick was hard-pressed and had reached out to every living relative with means that he knew. They all told him they could squeeze nothing out for him because of their immediate family obligations and projects.
“So much for Africa’s much-touted extended family networks,” Patrick had sneered after the last call.
He had even approached his lecturers and got a total of Eighteen Thousand Naira from two of them, half of which had already been gulped by assignments he couldn’t afford to submit late for fear of having poor results.
In spite of the tough financial difficulty at home, Patrick had never been one to beg in the past. But all efforts to raise the money for his fees and other school expenses during the long vacation had been frustrated by his mum’s ill health. Her diabetes had become so debilitating that she stopped her petty trade in fruits.
Patrick’s two elder sisters had married artisans right after secondary school, one a welder, the other a painter. The oldest girl, Adanna, had three kids in quick succession before becoming a sewing apprentice. Her sons were aged between 5 and 2 and half. The younger, Nwanyioma, had a two-year-old daughter and plaited hair at home. Their meagre contributions couldn’t pay their mum’s medical bills, so Patrick had to sink in all he made as a labourer at construction sites during the long vacation and the strike that followed.
He sent his dear mum, whom he called Omalicha (for she was truly a beauty before the ravaging sickness came calling) to stay with Nwanyioma and her family when he came back to school and still sent them help from whatever he made from working over the weekend or when he cut classes, which had become more frequent than in his first year when his mum was healthier.
Patrick’s late father was a victim of a hit-and-run driver. He had been a carpenter and had worked tirelessly to pay for his children’s education. He specialised in roofing houses and had several young men working for him but he was knocked down by a speeding commercial bus as he was riding his bicycle home after a hard day’s work. Patrick had just entered secondary school when the tragedy occurred. His sisters shelved their father’s ambition to see them go to the university but Patrick’s mum encouraged him to proceed. But by his Junior WAEC year, she became sick and he started his labourer work to help. He devoted a year to it after writing his O’levels to save money to begin his university education.
Paying for his WAEC and NECO exams was a miracle. He had given up hope of taking the exams with his mates but his pastor (a 20-year-old who didn’t finish secondary school himself) surprised him by raising an offering on two Sundays for him. Their church was small: about 100 members, mostly youths. Their offerings were seen as seeds sown to help a needy brother with the expectation that God would intervene to better their lots too
Another miracle helped him to complete his first-year fees even before he accepted the admission. It was on a fateful Friday as he came down to carry concrete to the first floor of a building he and others were working on. He saw a handsome young man in dreads talking with their foreman. He was angry that the contractor was not on site and Patrick learnt he was Chigozie, the owner of the building. He and the foreman began a tour of the ground floor while Patrick continued his work. By his third trip down thereafter, the foreman asked him to run after the visitor and return his PDA which he had forgotten on the ground floor railing.
By the time Patrick got to the main road, Chigozie was entering his SUV (Patrick didn’t catch the model). He tapped on the driver’s window and when Chigozie rolled it down, he breathlessly informed him, “Sir, the foreman says to give you this. It appears you forgot it.”
Comments
Post a Comment