surviving and learning in africa... during covid

2020 was a very hard year for me, to the extent that i lost hope in myself and my studies. Being the only girl in a family of five, and the first born child ,the one is expected  to be a role model to my siblings.
When 2020 began, i was excited because it was going to be my last year at high school, the year i was going to write my  O'level examinations, my last sitting before college. The first  problem  i faced was the shortage of money for registration of my November examinations. The registration price for the subjects i was going to sit for were expensive. My mother could not afford the registration fee. She was the only one who sustained our  daily expenses with money she got from doing part time jobs in and around  the city, washing clothes and cleaning people's homesteads.

At times  i would wake up each and every morning,  going from street to street, selling  bananas so that we could get some money not to sleep on an empty stomach.

My dad divorced my mom in the beginning of my  third year in high school. He left us with our mother and left without a trace, with some of the  home property. At that moment i dropped out of school to attend to my mom and siblings. My father was the bread winner of  the house, so he had provided everything we wanted  and now that he was gone, i could not carry on with my studies. I had no one to pay for my school fees and  I was in fear of putting my family in debt with the school.

As days moved on, my mom in grief made three sucidal attempts because of the  desperation  of losing father.  Her first attempt was to hang herself. I was lucky enough to arrive at the scene before she had  tied the rope on her neck. At that point and time i shouted for help and all the neighbours gathered and assisted.

After this we had asssisatnce from some of the church members in my community. They went through our school adminstrations and assisted with them to put us back in school . During that time my mom was going for conselling sessions from time time. Sometimes they were administered at our house and other times at the church.
Having experienced all this pain, my grades at school began to drop, but at that point I never gave up. I kept my head held high and kept on working hard .
After some months, my mom got better. She could not go back to her old self, she was still broken inside i could see her pain every time I looked in her eyes.They were some cooperative programs which were offered at our church and workshops to sustain single mothers. She attended all of them and became  a member. Each and every time she went there, she kept growing strong. From there on, she moved with being a part time maid so that she could get income to sustain us.

So now the exams where around the corner and I  still could not afford the registration fee. Looking  my mothers income, i asked her if i could skip the exam sitting for that year but she insisted that i shouldn't. So after the exam fee was declared by the education ministry that it had to be affordable for all, my mother payed my registration fee in february. Beginning of March, we then hear rummors about a deadly virus. After it was confimed and
nations were to be put on lock down  with restrictions, this sititation struck us deep because my mom had to stop her daily work.
Without any other form of income to put food on table, we were left in a very dark age, but we survided because we thought it was  a 2 weeks problem. We never imagined it was only the starting point  of another promblem. We had to endure  for months, nearly to a year.

I had been disturbed in my studies and this time, I lost hope of  ever achieving my dreams because it seemed like they where shuttered for life. I had no text book or even a cellphone for internet access, nor a daily tutor. I had to survive with only that using i had learnt at  school. After 6 months, some lockdown restriction measures were removed.
We were now at  a level where essential  services we  able to be accessed. We had to go back to school, finish our O'level and sit for exams and although we went back, not all the teachers were available because people in a single facility had to be reduced.  
Quite a number of teachers were under qurantinee and some had received the last calll. Despite all of this, end of December 2020 to January 2021, I was able to sit for all my eximanations  and later received my results. My results were quite average and standard, with some fails but more chains of Bs and Cs.
​With this, I will  always thank The Almighty for moving with me each time and strengthening me as a woman. A big apprecitaion is for my mother, who never gave up on me nomatter what.