“Oginnni? It is as if Mother has refused to get
well, and she knows we cannot afford this at all, mba” blurted Onyinye
immediately we left the hospital to get food for our mother who has been hospitalized
for the past one month, the sickness has been diagnosed to be malaria parasite
but she hasn’t improved a bit ever since. when she threw up the concoction rice
Onyinye bought this morning, again it occurred to me that we might be losing
her but Onyinye shares a different opinion, she believes mother is just not
trying to be well, according to her, she is not trying enough to get out of
that hospital bed and go home to take up responsibilities, she says “mother
knows we can’t afford to spend the little we have on hospital alone when there
is no food in the house, the rent is there, debts have been incurred and she is
just lying there accepting all the sympathies, I don’t know of anything she is
doing to get well” when I explained that people don’t pretend to be sick at
least not for so long and when people get sick, they just don’t determine to
get well and miraculously get well but she won’t hear any of this. don’t judge
her yet, Onyinye is not heartless, she is just frustrated.
My name is Nonso, you just met my sister and my
mother and now me, I still have three other siblings and we are the family of Nwokwuku.
First thing you should know about us is that we are very Poor, if you know all
the definitions of being poor then ascribe it to us because I wouldn’t want to
go into all those horrible details of being a host of poverty. My father is
alive but dead to us because we don’t even know where he is, ever since madam “syntheleta”
vyed for the post of councilor in my community and lost my father disappeared
with her for the past ten years but news reaching us says they got married and
are now living in Port Harcourt while some claim Madam took him out of the
country. As you could guess he wasn’t the responsible type before his disappearance
he was unemployed though he had a motorcycle he uses for commuting passengers but
his proceeds never get to be used for our welfare, he always made sure he had
no money on him when he returns home late into the night, some days he would not
even show up. before he disappeared we had already concluded that he was dead
to us except Mother who still nursed the hope of him returning someday to come
beg for forgiveness as she would sometimes say” I don’t want your father
returning and see you suffering, he would not appreciate me”. My mother and
sometimes my elder sister who had married earlier shouldered the the family’s responsibly
of feeding and the payment of our two-room apartment alone, anyone who desired
to be educated would have to see him/herself through with no help from home.
So my journey began, I had a small farm I was
managing for one of my uncles as soon as I was eleven so I planted all manner
of crops and with so much hard work and many other menial jobs like bricklaying,
block making, painting I saw myself through university and finished with strong
a 2-1. I am the first and only graduate of the family. My elder sister was in
her first year in the polytechnic when she got pregnant for a staff of the
school, luckily the man married her and she managed to get her OND but she has
not been able to go back to school because of family obligations but she is
averagely okay. Onyinye enrolled in Government empowered program to learn
sewing and ever since she finished, she has not been able to get money to buy a
sewing machine and get a shop. She works with a woman who over works her with
such a meager pay but its either that or marriage to some never-do-well. My
immediate younger sister left with one of my mother’s sisters to Ibadan with a
promise to send her to school but Nena has been engaged in food selling in my
aunt’s restaurant, now………………..(TO BE CONTINUED)
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