BALANCE AND BETTER

By Jaho-kagbare Temoefe 

Ese was the only child of her parents. They died when she was six. She had to live with her uncle. The uncle had six boys and he was a civil servant. When Ese was 10 her uncle died. It was obvious she was in a fix as  he was her only relative. As fate would have it she wrote her common entrance examinations that same year. Due to her astounding performance in the exams she got a scholarship that took her to the city.

When she got to the school in the big city, she made friends who had well to do parents. Although her friends wanted to corrupt her good morals but she overcame. She also made friends with the hair stylist in the school. After some years the hair stylist left the environment of the school. Ese knew that the end of her secondary school was near and the only home she had was the school as there was nothing for her in her uncle's house.

She approached the school management with a proposal. For a young girl of 14 in high school to meet the management of her school,she had purpose. Determination glinted in her eyes as she held her own in the principal's office amongst other members of the school's administrators. She did that job for the rest of her stay in the school. She also graduated from the school as the best graduating student with lots of awards. She wrote her Jamb, passed and gained admission into the University of Lagos to study law.

Whilst in UNILAG she did whatever odd Job she could find to make it through her first year in school and also send to her uncle's wife. In her second year she was awarded another scholarship. But that did not quench her fiery spirit. She graduated as the best student from her faculty. She was the first female student from the faculty of law to give a valedictory speech.

She met Wale on an official assignment at some point and after three years of courtship,they got married. Today they are married with  three children. She has a chain of luxury shops, an NGO as her way of giving back to the society in mentoring young girls, bringing out the best in them by sending them to school and teaching them a skill or two. She is a partner at the firm where she works. All these she achieved within a space of ten years.

Ese was  determined to make it.

She had a vocation and made sure of her Education. The fact that she was a girl did not make her feel that she was ambitious

She knew her purpose in life.

She performs her duties as a wife, mother, business woman and a worker. Although she has had her share of life; she still pushes on.
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This piece is to encourage every struggling woman to be like Ese. Women are Amazons. Our girls should look at us and be proud and the First step in achieving that is to make our own children look up to us as role models. I should say my mother is my role model because she RESILIENT. A woman is a nation builder.
Let us strive to be the best and maintain balance so that we can produce revolutionary results and and leave impacting footprints.