Continuation from post 6.
I matriculated and went to university, as you know, but the challenges remained.
The Vice-Chancellor’s scholarship covered my tuition fees, but I still had other expenses to cover. There were registration fees, study-related expenses, and, importantly, transport. I was living at home and travelling from the village to the university to attend classes and back to the village every day.
My uncle, the middle child of my grandparents, took care of my first-year registration fees. This was the same uncle who, years earlier, had asked to see my primary school report. After looking at it, he smiled, went into his house looking for a pen, and wrote under the parent’s comments:
“Well done and keep it up.”
Those few words had stayed with me.
In the following years, my grandmother managed to save from her pension to pay my registration fees. She also helped with the money I needed to travel to university every day and continued supporting me until I completed my first degree.
My mother also started taking odd jobs to assist whenever she could.
Whenever she managed to get work and was paid, there were times when she would want to give me everything she had earned. If I suggested that she should keep some of the money for herself, she would become angry.
She wanted me to stay at university. She did not want to take chances with my education.
Suddenly, everyone was chipping in.
And that left me with a question that I have never completely answered:
What had changed?
Was it a change of heart?
Or had I misunderstood what was happening during those earlier years?
Could it be that my guardians had also been overwhelmed when I reached rock bottom in matric?
Perhaps after carrying family responsibilities for many years, my grandmother had simply reached the limit of what she could manage at the time. Or perhaps seeing me matriculate and actually make it to university restored hope.
Maybe what had previously appeared uncertain now seemed possible.
I can only speculate.
What I know is that the same family that had been unable to provide some of the things I desperately needed during matric was now doing everything within its means to help keep me at university.
It made me reconsider something about human nature.
It is easy to judge people’s intentions by what they fail to do for us, particularly when we are the ones suffering the consequences. But sometimes we do not know what is happening on the other side.
Perhaps lack of help does not always mean lack of care.
Sometimes people may simply have nothing more to give.
Join the conversation
Have you ever looked back at someone’s actions and realised that what you once interpreted as not caring may have been something more complicated?
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