MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD STORY : HOW I GREW UP FROM INFERIORITY COMPLEX TO BUILDING MY SLEF ESTEEM - 02/04/21

MY CHILDHOOD MOST IMPACTFUL STORY

Hello everyone!

I am really excited participating in this contest, I have always loved talking to my peers about a lesson I learnt when I was 10 and how this has gotten me far in life.
I came to this world in the year 1997 and I had my first educations in Ivory Coast where I was born, I grew up speaking French until I moved to Ghana in the year 2007 to stay with my grand mom.
In fact this was a hard time for me leaving away from my parents and also I was about to experience a new education system and language all together, I remember how granny was treating me special just to cope with the Ghanaian environment .

A PICTURE OF ME AT AGE 11 ,DURING A CULTURE DISPLAY

One month later I was sent to school and this is actually were all my adventure began , everyone in the school called me Frenchman instead of my real name “BABS” , my name in the school continue to change anytime I make a mistake pronouncing any English word .

This led me to develop a bad habit of not going to school but staking to games and watching football because I felt inferior and I cried anytime I find myself in the school, the teachers tried their best to make me feel comfortable but I was not ready to go back to school.
One day grand mom took me to the mall and actually bought so many study books for me to improve my reading skills and writing skills, and she hired a home teacher for me.

My home teacher was as old as my mum , this teacher was more unless a nanny to me , on her first lesson she narrated a story that changed my life and this story still got me moving in life .
She said (I might not narrate it same way):

“ Once upon a time there was this little child who felt inferior anytime he is among his peers until one day he met a gardener who studied him for long and knew he had such an habit , the gardener invited the child to join him and when the child got there , the gardener ask him to pull out a small mango plant that just germinating for him the child did exactly that , he then ask him again to pull out a mango a 3 weeks old mango plant the child quickly went to the plant and struggle a bit before being able to uproot the mango plant , the gardener then showed him a full grown mango tree and asked the child to uproot that as well ,he tried it but couldn’t and the gardener laughed and told the child that : you see this is how habit grows in someone when you have it in your early days it is easy to do away with it than letting it grow with you “.

After this narration my home teacher told me to work hard and overcome the fear I had in me that people will keep making mockery of me and learned hard to achieve what I want in life , because in the world everyone has a problem . I actually stayed home for long learning how to read and write in English, until the next semester when I was sent back to the same school and my class was shocked about the new improvement and everyone started praising me again.
One thing I learnt from my childhood life is that in a society that the same people who praise you during your success days will mock or underestimate you during your hard time, so for me I shall never leave to impress anyone but myself although I give back to community.

A PICTURE OF MY CHILDHOOD TEACHER // NOW VERY OLD

Finally I will like to thank the admins ; (@belenguerra, @writingnreviews & @fendit) for this opportunity as I share my childhood experience that keeps me moving in life .