House Help, Ngozi Andrew, a determined and brilliant woman, recently shared her inspiring story on her LinkedIn page. She recounted how she had lost her father when she was young, and how she had entered university at the age of nearly thirty. Despite these setbacks, she was able to graduate with first-class honors from the University of Port Harcourt in Linguistics and Communications.
Ngozi revealed that she had dropped out of secondary school at SS1 due to the financial burden faced by her mother to support her and her seven siblings. In order to raise money for her education, she moved to Lagos State to work as a house help.
She was able to overcome the event of loosing a father to the claws of death. She was able to over come her predicaments and set the records straight. Her story is an inspiration .
Below is her story:
“I was a high school dropout❗
“Only my immediate family knows this about me, but I didn’t finish secondary school. “I dropped out at SS1 which is equivalent to grade 10 in the American Education System.
“My father died early, leaving only my mum to take care of 8 of us. Out of these 8 children, 2 were seriously sick and had to go in and out of the emergency room at regular intervals.
“The burden was just too heavy for one woman so I had to put my education on hold and get a job. “This decision was doubly devastating for me because I was a straight A student and had such lofty dreams for my future.
“I wanted to be an international lawyer. “I left the village for Lagos to take up work as a house maid, for a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who lived in Ikeja. “My job was to take care of the their 3 children.
“Within a month of my stay with them, they sacked their children’s lesson teacher and I took over. “In their words, I was better than the teacher so why pay when I can do it.
“Apart from my regular duties and lesson teaching, I also work as office assistant in his home office, during the weekends.
“I thought that, with all the extra work I was doing, they would enrol me in a secondary school but they never did even though I begged them on several occasions.
“When I think of it now, I wonder if I wasn’t doing as good a job as I thought I was doing for them or maybe I wasn’t asking the right way.
“I kept my dream of getting more education alive by reading. I read everything in the lawyer’s office, from the Nigerian law review to the complete works of Shakespeare and he graciously indulged me “Then I left them and went to work for a lady who was a manager in UBA at the time.
“I negotiated with her to work without salary but she has to enrol me in an evening school so I can finish my secondary education. “I was never enrolled and neither did I get paid.
