“So he gave you 500k just like that?”
“My dear, I kid you not. Today is my last day on the roadside. That was my last aristo”
“Abeg, so because of 500k you will quit your job”
“Uju, I am done with this life. I want to create a better future for my daughter. I will start a business with this money. Uju we have to start thinking of moving forward. We can no longer make excuses. We have to take our lives in our hands”
“Osheyyyyy! Brian Tracy, aspire to perspire”
“Uju, you have started again. I am being serious right now.”
“Hm, I hear you my sister”.
Everything you need is inside of you
This top the list of the words we hear so often and so much that they do not mean anything at crucial points of our lives. No one could have convinced Omotinne that she could be reborn. That she could edit her story and insert her bits but here she was. She had to see it herself. And until she did, she was just a victim. She could not make that transition to become something different, something less jarring – a survivor.
That she would still have to sleep with men for a living for five years to make that transition after she came to what was supposed to be home was not surprising. That her people and her government shamed her for it was. That she could not get a job was expected after all, twenty percent of Nigerian youths were unemployed and an even greater percentage is underemployed. That she would build a business empire from all this was surprising. That she would live to tell her story was beautiful.
“Morning Dew” ……an exciting and educative piece! With some Harlequin-like wordsmith, enwrought with “Nigerianized” English flavor, Temitope is undoubtedly one of the best budding authors in Nigeria. Keep it burning.
Great Ife!