I was to write my GCE examination, mathematics to be precise, on Monday, May 28, 1990. Unfortunately, I took ill on Sunday the 27th.
You may be wondering how I am able to remember the date and day of the week after more than three decades
Well, that’s one of those peculiar gifts God endowed me with. I can recall and rehearse events that happened when I was less than 10 years old
Do you see why you shouldn’t assume that your kids are too small to understand what is happening around them?
Back to my story…
I was living with my sister then; may be I should call her my mother because she has been a mother to me from childhood, even when our mother was still alive. Two of us just got “addicted” to each other very earyin life
Early that Monday morning, we set out to the examination centre under a heavy downpour
By the time we got there, I was not only feeling cold I was almost freezing, and at the same time having very high fever
My sister was perplexed, and guess what? She was heavily pregnant! Before the exam started, she found a place where I lay down as she went round looking for hot balm to use on my palms and feet. Thank God she eventually got one after very frantic efforts
Sympathisers gathered round us. Suggestions were coming in from all angles. Some were blaming her for bringing me to the exam venue in that condition. You can imagine the dilemma of this young mother in that condition. She was only doing what she knows how to do – showing her kid sister love.
She didn’t want me to miss the exam as that might mean that I would miss my admission into the university that year. Imagine such love
Then something happened…
We discovered that many of the boys flocking there were not GCE candidates; they were “machines”!
You know what that means?
I will tell you…
Those boys were hired by parents of candidates to come and write the exam for their children. The plan was that they would stay outside while the candidates go into the examination hall. As soon as the question papers were distributed, those involved would look for a way to smuggle one of the papers outside to the “machines”, who will solve the questions and send back to them.
What of the invigilators? They were there of course! The policemen nko? All of them were there. But they had their shares from the proceeds of the ignoble business, so they posed no threat at all. So unfortunate!
Some of the boys approached my sister and told her to cooperate with them so that they would write the papers for me without stress. In fact, one of them after looking at my condition was ready to write the exam for me without collecting a penny.
The pressure was high, I mean very high. Other parents there were adding their one cent advice about one using “number six” in times like that.
These back and forth talks were already going on before we entered the hall, and my sister later told me that the pressure increased when I left her with them outside. She simply prayed for me and told me to go inside the exam hall and do my best, as neither she nor I was ready to indulge in examination malpractice under any circumstance
Inside the hall I could barely raise up my head. I was having serious rigor
. At a point, I just prayed, covered the paper, put down my head on the desk and slept off.
Some of the advisers and self-imposed helpers with my sister outside the hall suddenly turned to enemies, ridiculing her and her faith
To cut the long story short, the exam ended, I submitted my paper and we went home. Thank God we arrived home safe and after a long battle I recovered my health
Whether I passed that paper or not is irrelevant now, but the lessons from that experience are still very much valuable today.ย ย
And the lessons are:
1. My “mother” taught me that nothing is worth disrupting my relationship with God, not even a crucial examination that will determine my being admitted or not admitted into the university. And she stood by me all the way despite the pressures and mockery that came from various sources.
2. Examination malpractice did not start today; the story I just told you happened over 30 years ago. There may be more innovative ways of doing it, but cheating remains what it is irrespective of how it is done.ย
There are still parents who have chosen never to sell the souls of their children to the devil through examination malpractice, as my sister did then. Are you one of them?
On another occasion, the child of this same sister of mine was sick and was at the point of death. Suggestions came again for her to take him to a native doctor or to certain ungodly places.
Her response was that if doing something that will displease God was the only thing that would make that child to survive, she was ready to watch him die and be buried. When this was happening, that boy was her only son, yet she chose to please God.
3. This experience built me and made my faith in God stronger.
Does it still surprise you why I hold unto godly parenting and preach it with everything in me?
The seeds you sow into them now, will germinate and nourish or destroy both you and them tomorrow.
This my sister would say then that, she wouldn’t use colours on her face and lips, not out of any religious beliefs but because it doesn’t look good on her. According to her, she looks like a doll baby whenever she use those things, so she chose to go natural – without colours or makeup/makeover, whatever it is called.
I learnt another lesson from that…
Fashion shouldn’t be whatย others are doing, or something that is in vogue; it should be what looks good on you and makes you feel good. So, you shouldn’t follow the crowd; what looks good on others may make you look weird. Be yourself.
What can your children learn from you with respect to fashion, as well as in other aspects ofย life?
A lot of the things I do, say or write today were planted in me in those pre-teen and teen years I lived with my sister.
She taught me how to take care and nurture babies passionately. She could spend her last penny to provide for orphans or any indigent child around her. She could not withstand the cry of a child, without trying to find out why the child was crying.
Yet, she was a firm disciplinarian. The way her children, and I am her first child, turned out is a proof of this
She allowed me to be me and helped me to discover a better me as a teenager. She refused to let me be when I wanted to live a solitary life. She broke down the wall I was erecting and came into “my world”.
She gave me freehand and encouraged me to use my potentials to serve God. She made me her prayer partner.
Doesn’t that explain why I am so passionate about children and teenagers?
There are great potentials in every child entrusted to you; will you be diligent enough to nurture them to fulfillment?
No matter what stories are going round these days, older versions of them had circulated before now. Yet some parents were able to wade through the muddy water and raised their children successfully. You can do same today if you choose to.
Note: This write-up is not about my sister; it is about intentional parenting.ย
She was so young when she became”my mother”, but she did such a nice job in raising me that I have no regrets whatsoever.ย
Can your children say this concerning you? I am still praying that my own children would say that concerning me
Courtesy Ijeoma Igwesi
Family Life (Parenting) Coach
