If you don’t know your worth, someone else will determine what you are worth!
Six weeks into working for them, I was yet to start the course; neither was there a clear understanding from them when that would happen precisely.
When they were still dragging their feet three months later, I became frustrated and decided to leave the job. So I went to them and asked for my money; I had done almost four months by that time. They were reluctant to let me go because I was a ‘clean and hardworking little girl,’ according to the wife; they promised I would start at the end of the following month. When it became apparent that ‘sweet-talking wasn’t going to change my mind, the wife turned sarcastic. ‘So you want to leave a good job just because you can’t start school today, today? You young girls of these days, you all want everything at once and want it now.’
I believe she thought her sarcasm would guilt-trip me into changing my mind. But unknown to her, I’d been raised by the queen of belittling words. Compared to the mountain of humiliation I’d just come from, hers was a tiny, tiny molehill. I wasn’t moved and insisted on leaving. She refused to give me my money, claiming they had no cash available at home. ‘Come back next week.’ ‘Next week’ turned into two, then three, then two months. Eventually, I gave up. I never got paid my money.
Their duplicity taught me that for what I wanted, the best kind of job was in sales. Working in sales did not require staying with the people you work for — you came in the morning and left in the evening. Perfect! But finding a job in sales was not easy. Firstly, every young person was gunning for that kind of job. Secondly, the minute the owners of the shops saw me; they rejected me. I was ‘too young.’ I would not be able to handle the responsibility of a shop, they said. Despite much begging, none of them was willing to give me a chance. Some shop owners looked me up and down and said, ‘She’s too pretty; young boys will con her into taking her eyes off off the goods and use the opportunity to steal things.’ Again I thought, as if! These people had no idea that what drove me was far greater than the allure of boys or anything else that drove young girls my age: I have to be honest here, even when I began dating some years down the road, I did so with smarts. My father used to say, ‘associate yourself with people you can learn from. If they know two things and you know one, you walk away knowing three things; but they know nothing, and you know just one thing, you will walk away knowing nothing at all.’ I took my father’s advice to heart. I wanted to date people who knew more than I did so they could teach me things I didn’t know. And so, if I could not learn from you, I didn’t date you.
Anyway, It was amid the job-search that I had another dramatic life-changing experience. Read about it in my book, BUT HE CALLS ME BLESSED! When the Unbelievable Happens to Believers, Rhea’s Story (available on Amazon). I was about fifteen years old at the time.
Of all the terrible experiences of my young life, this was to become the one that unravelled me completely. At the time, it led to my making a 360-degree decision: to go back home to Cross River, my home state. Not to my parent home or anyone within our immediate nuclear family, of course. I went to live with a male cousin in Calabar, the State capital. As a man, I knew that he was unlikely to look too deeply into my eyes or notice whether I was quite ‘there’ or not.
It turned out to be perfect timing because I got a job soon after my arrival as a salesgirl in a provision store. As soon as I received my first salary, I registered immediately in an evening school for secretarial studies. My salary barely covered my upkeep after paying for my course each month. But, again, it did not matter. My parents had large spreads of the farm back home with staples from cassava to yam and mango to plantain and poultry and other livestock: several labourers and servants worked the place, so food was never a problem. I could supplement my meagre salary by travelling home now and then to take back garri — the main staple — and everything else that I needed.
This was how I acquired my commercial-secondary school education.
