Education, And a Childhood Without Love.

The first term in the classroom, we had our chalk and slate(small piece of black plywood for children to write on). We began to learn how to write the alphabet, how to read, and this was in the early 70’s. We began to understand what was being taught to us because, the English that was spoken at that time was almost in our accent.

The British set a curriculum for us that will help us understand their ways, structures, and their system of education. The system of education and the school was still intact and in place, every curriculum, every activity was the way it was supposed to be, precept by precept, the same way, the same lines, that was how the system was initially followed. There was strictness in the school environment, a place of learning compared to what we see today. In my little way I began to cope and progress.

There is another factor that came to be very significant for me as a child, it was not easy for me coming from a broken home, my mother was not there and I was raised by my grandmother. I was seen more or less like a street child and treated like one. I noticed that I did not experience the thing called love. There I was, I had turned into an errand girl for the neighbors and for everyone else because my parents were not there, I was made to take care of other people’s children at quite an early age, most of all, no one cared about me, or about my education, I found myself amongst the children who were struggling to pass their examinations. A real struggle for me, but on my way of seeking love, there is this woman, that showed me love, when returning from school I would hear her yell from her house, “oh dear, come over, I have something for you!”. I would go over to her house and find out that she would have kept some special delicacies for me. I was used to eating solid foods like “fufu”, but the woman would serve me some ‘tea and bread’ which in those days was known as a whiteman’s food, this was very different from the usual solid ‘fufu and soup’ I was used to.

Moreover, no one had ever done this for, this woman would serve me and tell me how much she loves me, showing me the kind of love that I had never received from anyone, like giving me a bath, having my hair done and grooming me.

This helped me to feel the thing that I had never felt before, which was love.

The photos used are all labeled 'reusable', and gotten from pixabay.com