Hey! I am happy to share my story with you all today. Most of my teenage days were spent with my grandma, who happens to be the oldest daughter of their family.
My journey into the tech space today won’t be complete without making reference to my grandma, the late Mrs. Medina Ekhaizor—a woman with a heart of gold, one who fears God, and an amazing grandmother.
It was late August 2011, to be precise, when some persons from Living Faith Church, Alias Winners Chapel, came to my school, Success Secondary School, to talk about “free computer literacy,” which was not really free. After we closed from school that day, on getting home, I and my cousin Julie told my grandma about the advertisement and what one can do with a computer after learning. After explaining much about the advertisement to her, she inquired about the price, which we told her was a thousand Naira. She then asked us to start that July 31st since the training was scheduled to last for six weeks.
So, we started the training, and sometimes we enter an Okada. Otherwise, we trek to the Living Faith Church, which is almost an hour away from home, and also do the same thing after closing, but on a Wednesday, we were asked to stay for their mid-week service, which I always like to attend.
Classes for training start at 8:00 a.m. and end at 4:00 p.m. everyday, but I was unable to attend the full weeks since we do go to church on Sundays, and not all Saturdays were suitable, but we just had to attend for knowledge’s sake. It seems my grandma knew she would be leaving me in no time and decided to do all this.
On a Friday, which is normally our day for testing, each group was to choose a representative to represent them at the test since learners were many; we were about 5 groups, of which I was in group D if I can recall correctly. Some of the persons I can remember being in the same group are as follows: Freeborn, Abiola, Uche, and Darlington, who happened to be the girls who told me I couldn’t represent our team (group), although she was a bit older than me, later chose me to represent them. I went there and I did the job; I thought my team failed, but I heard someone clapping from behind. On checking who the person was, it was the church’s then resident pastor, Pastor Kelechi.
Pastor Kelechi said to me, “You are brilliant; how did you do that?” but I was not able to explain how I solved the problem on Microsoft Excel; even to this date, I don’t know how I was able to fix (solve) that problem.
So, from 2011 to 2013, there was no laptop or desktop to exercise all my trainings, so one faithful day, I was able to link to my auntie in the United States of America via Facebook, one of the most popular social media sites today. On reaching her, I told her about my desire to own a personal computer (PC). but took some time to respond, but she did finally respond. She informed me that she just sent me 100box, which was about NGN35,000 then, so I had to travel from home to Auchi, which is a different local government from my local government, without the notice of my uncle (grandma’s brother), who I was staying with at the moment. On getting to the bank in Auchi, I was asked for some credentials, for which I tried presenting my voter’s card, which was rejected.
And the pin from Western Union, which was sent to me by my aunt (Evelyn Omo-Abu). The bank guy asked me not to expose it like that, as it could be compromised and my funds would be extracted. So, I immediately hid the pin, knowing full well that without it I wouldn’t be able to buy the laptop I needed.
So, after the bank rejected the credentials I presented, it was now time to return to my local government area (Agenebode), but I was out of funds at that moment and I was tired after much trekking from the bank’s site. I went to visit a friend, asking for help so I can return home and be in school tomorrow, but all gave me the same reply, so I took courage, and my faith was made alive that moment. and I trekked to the motor (car park), and I was just wandering up and down just trying to get any driver’s attention, but none answered me. It looks more like all hope was lost and my faith was about fidgeting; I had to give one last try. I then asked a man (a driver)—I have forgotten his name—about my situation and explained it to him at the moment. The man was GOD’s messenger that day.
I got home from my local government that day at about 7:00 p.m., so the next day or that night I told my auntie about my experience. So, I was able to find a way to withdraw the money.
After the withdrawal, I was able to buy a laptop for NGN18,000 from a book vendor who put his laptop up for sale. The laptop has the following description: Dell Inspiron, 8 GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, running on Windows XP, very small computer; battery doesn’t last up to an hour. So, I was happy using the laptop to do things I planned on doing, but I was not satisfied and comfortable as the laptop gets drained easily and the space was hell. So, I had to buy a USB card reader, and I bought an 8GB memory card so I can plug the card reader in anytime I want to use the software on my memory card, and the system is now okay for me as I have a memory card I can insert anytime. Still in secondary school, there is this one classmate who happens to be a phone repair guy. He has two laptops, one Hewlett-Packard (HP) and one Dell (without battery). They only come up when plugged into electricity; otherwise, they can’t be used, and when there is a power failure or outage, the system goes off immediately. I lost a lot of files due to this, so I implore Control + S as my best friend to save quickly without losing files and contents as before.
This my story I hope it inspired you. Do not worry, this is not the end of my journey; it will be continued later in my subsequent writings.
Thanks for reading my story; kindly share with friends and families.
God bless you.
