TOUCHING A LIFE

About two months ago, two women came to see me. the first was a lady who wanted her sister to learn a craft while waiting for her to raise money and send her to a higher institution. The other was a mother whose daughter had just finished her JSCE. She was worried that the holiday was too long and didn't want her daughter roaming about out of boredom; she wanted her daughter to learn sewing while on the vacation that never really seemed to end.
"She would come here by the end of each vacation till she graduates", she began, " if she decides she likes fashion designing, she will go on to study it in a higher institution."
There I was, sitted in front of a truly 37th century mum, mortified, unable to find words to describe her. She hadn't just sat back worrying about her daughter getting in trouble; she had come to do something about it. When I told Maduekwe Ejike Anthony about what had transpired, he asked what planet she had come from. EARTH of course!! LOL.
Last year, our unanticipated fashion prodigy was Charity - a stunted young Hausa girl who had not experienced any formal education for more than 2 years of her life. She could neither read nor write and as such, it was no surprise she could not perform simple arithmetics like division, subtraction and multiplication. She was our little Hajia...a visitor in our midst and she was our project. I too had worried about her for her breasts had begun to grow and she would be seen as a woman ready to be given away in marriage. My heart went out to her and with each effort, I told her just how special she was and encouraged her to challenge the norm. My Charity would someday refute the stereotypical idea that every poor uneducated Hausa girl was good for one thing alone - marriage and baby making. Training Charity was the toughest training experience we ever had; first, she was taught basic arithmetics. Here we were, ready to train a girl on sewing only to find ourselves back in kindergarten. Cut the long story short, we did it! Within two months, charity learned sewing and the funny part is this.... to drive her lessons home, we made her a mini fashion instructor; she would teach the new students how to pedal a sewing machine and as a reward, we would give her fabrics to sew for herself.
News soon came that she would leave and we all waited sadly for the day to come. We would tease her about her endless grammatical errors and she would join in the laughter. it was fun having Charity around and looking back now, I would do it all over again.
As I spoke to her one day, she looked at me and said, " When I go back to my place, I will go to my aunt's place and continue learning how to sew. I will not let them force me to get married and have nine children like my mother. Thanks a lot for teaching me; I will never forget you". A few days later, I tearfully hugged her goodbye but in those tears was the assurance that a life had been touched.