Amaka - The Story Of A Village Girl And Her Race Against The Tide Of Poverty.

Amaka – The Story of a Village Girl and Her Race against the Tide of Poverty.

Amaka was born in a small village near Nnewi in Anambra state, southeast of Nigeria. She was born into a family of 6 including her parents. The father was a retired soldier who fought in the civil war and now a local palm wine tapper while the mother is a full-time housewife looking after the home and the children.

She is the first child of the house and this comes with a lot of challenges as she is practically the mother to her siblings and sees to their wellbeing day in – day out. Amaka is a very ambitious and focused young lady with a dream to make a difference, not only in her life but the life of her siblings too and help her parents along the line out of poverty.

A village girl with a tall dream – She had to make a sacrifice by dropping out of school so her siblings can at least get some as well. She couldn’t finish her junior years unfortunately while her siblings are aiming to at least get some junior education too.

The fire for success that is burning in her is beyond her peers and she is aware that for anything to change for her and her family then education is not only important but a paramount factor that will play an important role on her path – she designed a path to achieve her desire. She is from a village where there is no access to internet, phones or electricity – A visit to Nnewi City is always a dream but she has never had the opportunity – someday she hopes her “London” Nnewi dream will come through.

With no teachers and no guidance. Amaka’s journey started and she devised a means to get self-educated. She asked her father for permission to use his famous and overprotected transistor radio. He agreed on a sharing formula that the radio must always be available whenever he is back from his farm to enable him to listen to his favourite highlife artistes such Osita Osadebe, Nico Mbarga, Sir Warrior and Oliver De Coque. The second condition and the most challenging part is Amaka must use her own batteries – who could blame the father, it would cost an arm and a leg to secure some batteries from the City. He usually gets batteries as a present sent from his long-time colleague and friend in the Army who resides in Umuahia, Abia State.

Conditions accepted – not much of a choice anyway. Now the dilemma is where is a young village girl getting batteries from? No contact in the city and nobody owes her a favour. Then she decided that while waiting for that opportunity, there must be something else that can be done with her time. Her routine is to clean up her siblings and get them ready for school with breakfast made from whatever that’s available at home then help her mother to clean the house, prepare a meal for lunch and support her in her passion of knitting and stitching which she is also beginning to grow an interest in.

It is not unusual in any part of Nigeria and Africa at large to use newspapers in wrapping practically everything, from suya to fish or local medications – the paper is always handy for these chores. You may not find a current newspaper in a Nigerian home but a guarantee to find old ones somewhere wrapped around something. This is the next chapter in Amaka’s life as she started reading old newspapers and taking notes of vocabularies that she is not familiar with and cross-checking them with the old Oxford dictionary that has been with her father since the civil war.

Now Amaka goes about the village requesting for any old magazines and newspapers from other households and she is never disappointed as there is always one paper or the other. Now Amaka is beginning to understand how different the world outside her village is. She is now informed on the importance of health and how to attend to one illness or the other and what each symptom means. She now knows what democracy is, names of other countries and tribes. She now knows about other modes of transportation exist aside her father Raleigh bicycle.

Amaka started speaking to the mirror and read the words from the newspaper back to herself, she saw a column in the newspaper where strangers write to each other across the glove as pen-pals and that really fascinated her, then she thought what’s there to lose for trying? Amaka wrote everyone on that paper even though the paper was published 5years ago!

She wrote the letters, made the envelopes from a plain paper and used some portion of garri from her dinner as the sealer. Then she would wait at where buses pass through to the city requesting help to post the letters in Nnewi, she kept going every day and no one was willing until luck shone on her one day, a teacher from her former school heard her predicament through her brother in school and sent a message to that she will be going to Owerri in Imo state in a month. Was she excited? It was a dream come through – she couldn’t wait for that month to come by and she used the opportunity to write more letters to new pen-pals including the World Bible School in the states, requesting for correspondence.

The teacher made an agreement with her to post the letters in the city but she must do something in return. She accepted the agreement and she is to clean the teacher’s house and fetch water from the river for a month!

All letters posted – life goes on in the village with no difference to yesterday and no hope for a better tomorrow. Amaka is now known in the village as the “Papergirl” she picks up any paper anywhere and she does not need to ask people anymore, whatever paper they got from the city are now being sent to her even without asking and she is always eager and happy to receive and learn in her private time – usually after dinner under the moon.

Months later, responses are coming in from Pen pals from across the Nation and beyond, from Lagos to Kano, from Makurdi to Benin, From Lafia to Onitsha and few others from Mumbai, Vancouver, New York and London. Amaka is receiving letters – the postman only visits the village once in two weeks and Amaka is practically getting letters every time Mr Azubuike is delivering letters.

Most of the letters are from bored teenagers around the glove seeking friendship from fellow teenagers – Amaka was happy to have friends from faraway lands and she was extremely happy, her pen-pals knowing her stories started sending her all sorts of books and batteries, now she can listen to her radio. She now reads books and is able to tell the difference between philosophy and psychology and knows what science and technology are all about including who invented what and what.

She listens to VOA and BBC to help her with her pronunciation and listening ability. Once she hears a word, she references the dictionary to understand the meaning and the context it was used. She will pen this down and try to construct a sentence out of it until she is happy – her practicals are usually marked as passed once she hears similar sentences over the radio.

The radio, the newspapers and the books were handy to help her and she started writing short stories and sending to her pen pals to mark and resend the marked sheet for mistakes correction. Amaka started helping her siblings with homework even though she is not attending any school herself and other children in the village started visiting “Aunty Amaka” place to do after school lessons and help with their homework.

Amaka spotted an opportunity here and spoke to her parents for a space in their compound under the Guava tree to start lesson sessions for the kids for a fee. The parents agreed and that was the birth of Aunty Amaka classes.

She already knows how the school curriculums are, she divided her classes into English, Mathematics and Social studies. She will schedule her class into days and hours such as English class for Thursday 5pm, Mathematics Friday 6pm and Social studies for Saturday 2pm, 4pm and 6pm.

Amaka started charging weekly and the news started travelling round about Aunty Amaka, people from nearby villages are now sending their children to Aunty Amaka’s every evening for knowledge acquisition.

They are paying weekly cash with zero tax or government intervention. The books are coming in from pen pals and correspondence letter are coming in from established schools with newsletters and books to support her in her quest. Children books are coming in from donors. Now the only job Mr. Azubuike the postman does is to bring letters and books to Aunty Amaka’s place.

Good news travels fast just as bad news, all children in the village and the nearest villages started to disturb their parents that they must be part of Aunty Amaka’s success. Now the dilemma, there are more students than the available space and the teacher herself! Aunty Amaka must secure a bigger space to teach the pupils. So she started scouting and seeking for a place.

In a small village like hers – her problem is the village problem. There is an African proverb that says “It takes the whole village to raise a child”. As she was searching so was everyone else spreading the news for a place and the purpose. The news got to Igwe Anachemba and he invited Amaka to his palace for a discussion. The Igwe promised to donate 6 plots of land in the centre of the village near the Ohafia market square to accommodate future development but on one condition. The centre must become a proper school and get registered with the government as that will give their town some sort of recognition and attention from the government along with some employment opportunities in the village. There is no other establishment in the village but farming.

Amaka instantly agreed to the condition of course. She started the preparation, the land is waiting and so are the students. Young men from the village offered to help in clearing the land in return for class sessions to learn – Amaka agreed and the land was ready in a week! The trees on the land were cut down and converted to seats for the students – Aunty Amaka was set to go.

Makeshift houses were built with muds and bamboo and 12 of them were standing in no time. Suddenly there are more students at Aunty Amaka’s than all available schools combined as Aunty Amaka has welcomed both the young and the old, the poor and the comfortable ones. The school is now becoming a home to everyone and some sort of “ I must belong” to in the village.

Amaka’s pen-pals were so happy at her achievement that majority offered to help with books, school uniforms and various other school supplies and needs. Within 6months, the Centre has transformed into a school and the government officials visited from Nnewi to inspect their facilities and safety before considering their application. All the villages around her village showed up in their regalia’s and masquerades to give support.

The officials were dumbfounded at what the found – A village where there is no electricity, pipe borne water or good roads. A school was built from scratch with all facilities in place and ready to compete with a school in the city – they didn’t have to go back to their boss in Nnewi to take a decision on hearing the school proprietor’s speech, her good command of English language and the story of her journey is enough to know that the children are in  good hands.

The school was approved and stamped with additional grants from the government to provide electricity, tar the road that leads to the school and promise to build modern classrooms with a continual support to the school and the community at large. Amaka was invited to Owerri to meet the commissioner of Education, a government vehicle was sent to fetch her and her parents. She was celebrated, awarded a state medal of recognition.

Aunty Amaka Nursery and Primary school was born!.

Amaka was born poor but she didn’t blame anyone for that.

Amaka sacrificed her classroom education for her siblings but she didn’t give up on her pursuit.

Amaka created something out of nothing.

Amaka believed in herself and her dream.

Amaka didn’t allow herself to be discouraged.

Amaka remained focus.

Amaka was determined.

Amaka was a nobody from nowhere that was destined to be somebody and lead somewhere.

Amaka turned what she has into what she needs.

Amaka was resilient

What do you think could have happened to Amaka if she had run to Nnewi or Lagos?

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CONTENTED WITH WHAT YOU HAVE ALONE BUT YOU CAN MAKE WHAT YOU NEED OUT OF WHAT YOU HAVE.

BE AMAKA – CREATE AMAKA OUT OF YOUR SITUATION.