ONCE UPON A TIME, ALL HOPE WAS LOST

I have faced some really troubling and fearful experiences in my life, but the story I'm about to tell now is what I would call an “ONCE UPON A TIME, ALL HOPE WAS LOST” moment. Both playfully and sincerely I had given up hope, but today I look back at how I am currently and I'm consoled to face my current challenges head on. I have encountered a lot of other challenges after that one, and for each challenge that comes my way, I remember that there was a time when I had lost hope, and God came through for me. Like literally having done everything within my power, there was no hope from anyone, nobody I could run to, I couldn't even picture a future for myself again, but look at me now, I survived.

Image by freepik

A lot of people reading this post might never understand, and if you don't I do not blame you. Some will never know what it means to go through what I went through, and I'm not saying this out of self-pity, but because it's the truth. I wouldn't even pray my enemy would go through such a situation having seen many who went through it take their life because they couldn't bear the shame. If you have the opportunity of having your parents care for you in school, you don't know what God has done for you. You can't even tell me you can imagine how it feels, because no matter how good you are, if you haven't gone through it, you will never know. It's different when you are hustling in school and can still call your parents for major finances while you struggle to keep up day to day.

Sometimes I do not blame girls who went into prostitution because there was no one to help and everyone who wanted to help wanted something back in turn. It's easy to say there are other ways when you haven't gone through that part. I mean the part of compromising just so you can end the suffering. it's worse for those who never even had anyone to discuss their pain with talkless asking for help from. I've been there, and I know how it feels. It was the period I was getting close to my final year. I was to write my fourth year exams and I started working hard for the school fees because I didn't have a sponsor of any kind. Staying hungry was the norm, as I wasn't even concerned about food as I was concerned with raising the money for my school fees.

Three months before that, I got a contract job to redesign a website. The client was a friend of my friend, and because it wasn't the first contract he was giving my friend, my friend and I agreed to do his job without advance payment. My friend focused on the backend while I did the design. I planned to pay my school fees from the money I would be getting from that job. But suddenly the client stopped talking to us after we had gone halfway into the project and were asking for part payments. I stopped the designs hoping the client would pay afterwards, but to our surprise, he never paid but kept on giving us empty promises. A month before my exam I knew I couldn't continue to rely on his promises, but had already put in so much effort especially because I didn't have a PC yet I was borrowing every single day from friends just to make his designs.

At the end of the last month, the only money I could gather was 10,000 naira which was barely enough for even my textbooks. I needed nothing less than 150,000 naira if I should have any chance of writing my exam. When the time for exam clearance came, I couldn't go, everyone in my department had cleared and was ready to write exams the following Monday. In fact, I was holding tutorials for most of my departmental coursemates and also teaching those in other departments just so I could feed them. They were all anticipating that exam but deep down I knew I wasn't going to write. I had asked for help from everyone I could possibly know, but they all gave me the same reply “The economy is hard”. On Monday I went to school, sat, and watched as my coursemates entered the exam hall, while the exam officer would not allow me to enter because I had not been cleared to write.

While they wrote I just thought to myself “Is this how I'm going to drop out for the second time?” My coursemates came back telling me how the questions I thought were what came out in the exams, while some tried to console me for not writing with them. One even asked me what I was going to do, I just smiled and said, I would find a way, but there and then I had already given up hope. I was leaving school when they were called in for the second paper. My phone rang, and it was my pastor that called, he asked about my school, (being the president of the school fellowship) and asked about my exams. I just told him everything as it were, and then he consoled me and hung up. A few minutes later I was already home when my phone rang again and he said I should go to the bank, and meet someone who was going to do my school fees transfer.

Image by freepik

At that point I was dumbfounded. I didn't even know when I started shedding tears having already given up hope. I was very hungry before then and was looking for what to eat, although he paid only my school fees and fees needed for clearance which amounted to 78,000 naira. I still needed to pay for my textbooks if the lectures were going to allow me to write. However, I now had hope and knew if I could pay my fees, I would write my exams. I ran to the bank that day. I can remember jogging for 30 minutes until I got there 😂, met with the person, and had my school fees transferred before going back home. That night I thought about what I needed to do to ensure I wrote my exams even though I hadn't gotten my textbooks. So I texted all my lectures one by one and pleaded with them to allow me to write.

Some responded, and others did not, but I didn't mind. I went to school the next day with new Hope and full confidence. Having a good relationship with most of these lectures, I had pleaded with them to allow me to write, promising to pay the next month. As God will have it, they all agreed, and that day the 100-level students were given an emergency assignment. A lot of them came to me for help, and I knew this was God walking miracles for me. I charged them for express services because of how urgent they needed to do the assignment, and from there got money to clear 8 out of 11 textbooks. This was how I wrote my exams in my 4th year, but damn it wasn't an easy one. I had to carry over the two courses I missed on the first day of the exam, but I am happy I survived and did not drop out like I did in my 3rd year in 2018.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 105 EPISODE 3