Celebrating an awesome mother

I watched Father beat her, but she picked the pieces and built a life

When people ask me who my role model is, I say my mum and they say “no we mean a person we all know and respect” and I insist my mother and it is because of this. As a child, I lived with both parents in a “loving family” to the public eye but a night mare to us in the family.

My dad stopped my mother from working, I should say because of insecurity or something I do not know. She was a medical nurse, but just as she began to practice, my dad stopped her and said he would provide all that she needed. I do not know if it was submission or too much trust in my dad or anything, but yes she did give up on her job.

A violent father

For some time, he would provide. My dad was the kind of man who would get his salary and out of it he would get off a percentage that he thought would be enough for his other businesses and give the rest to my mum. This went on for some time, but things started to change in no time.
The money was no longer coming in, she had lost her job for this man, he was not living up to his words and there are family needs to be met. With no help coming from my dad who expected food every day, my mum begun smoking fish for survival. This caused her a lot worse problems with my dad who expected her to just stay home.

I have witnessed all kinds of domestic violence at such a tender age, from my dad beating my mum with his belts to hitting her with metal. Sometimes he would find her cooking and pour all the food just because he did not like it. This happened even in our presence. He started beating her even during day time in front of all the neighbours. He would come home drunk and just pounce on her to the extent that she nearly lost her life one time. My mum was stopped from visiting her relatives and neither were they to come over. She was not to speak with us in her language (so none of us actually speaks it) and was also not allowed to talk to the neighbours.

The turning point

However, mum realised we were growing up and needed a sense of direction and education if we were to be able to do anything for ourselves in future and so she decided to face my dad. She went back to Public Service, did interviews and fortunately she was re-enrolled in the service. They had to separate. I was only six years old in 1996, when we moved to the hospital quarters with totally nothing. No shoes, clothes, beddings because my dad told her not to pick anything and also since we just had to escape from home.

I remember my mum borrowing shoes and clothes for us to go for our interviews to join a new school and also for our baptism. She cried every night, but managed to get up every morning to go for work. With six girls and a salary that could not pay fees for even three of us, she would have opted to leave us but no, she pushed on. She was not stopping till her children reached where she felt was okay. In my Primary Four I learnt the term bank loan. This was the only way we would study although our dad was working.

Not giving up

My mother persevered. She has managed to educate all six of us alone, live with debts that a times. Once we thought she would even be arrested for not paying back in time. She has been undermined and at work called all sorts of names, rejected by her family for being poor, but this lady has stood the test of time. We did not know what a father did in a child’s life because from school visitations to medical bills house hold necessities it has always been our mother. With all the pain that she faced, she would have walked out on us but she didn’t. She stood firm and led us to the right path.

As we celebrate mother’s day, there is no way I can fail to recognise this lady, Joyce Azikuru for all that she has gone through and done for us to make us what we are today. Happy mother’s day to the strongest woman I have ever met in my life, my mother.