The dance was not one of the trending dance moves; she aptly got into the traditional African dance, bending and jerking her back to and fro. It wasn’t her worry that her moves weren’t modern, she just danced to celebrate her children. As she danced towards the miniature stage on which two of her children were dancing with the other graduating students, their mates, I saw love.
I saw a dutiful, loving, never-giving-up mother whose dream for her children to gain a degree came through.
Though there were other parents there, her case particularly interested me because she single-handedly raised these children. And she, too, was the only parent who got up when the music began, danced to the stage, climbed the stage, danced through with her daughter (the son, my friend, claimed ‘man don’t dance’), and returned to sit after the music slowed and faded. The other women there still had their husbands with them, and I presume they could not have possibly known what joy rang in this widow’s heart seeing her son and daughter graduate from the university at the same time.
This same widow lost her second-to-the-last son last year. Quite terrible a thing to happen, after already losing her first son and husband years ago, that she wept for a month, and still mourns him.
I have no second-hand knowledge of how expensive it is to study in a Nigerian university, given the economic situation of the nation. And this woman took two children through it all. What other success is greater than this to her!*
Fiction
Maestro GMK 