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.