HUMILIATION IS EDUCATIONAL AND TO EDUCATE IS TO EMPOWER.

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As a child and now as a Youth, I can proudly say that I have encountered so many challenges and humiliations in my life. I would've love to conceal my entire ordeal as a former security officer, if i had any other story that can give meaning to my topic. I decided to use it not only because it drew image of educative humiliation but it still went far in empowering me through the humiliations. However, I don't know if my story fall in a better position to be categorized as that of a humiliating type but because of my humble understanding  on what humiliation is all about and changes it could muster, I decided, extemporaneously to share it.
After my Jamb and WASSC examinations, I lost hope of gaining admission from any Federal University because my friend and I ran into a scammer who changed our motivations to the exams with inferiority complex there by conjugating us with a planned failure. He promised us heaven and we surely had a meritorious heaven, but that should be a story for another day.
Having failed woefully,  I neither wanted to stay idle at home nor to work for mum in her small restaurant. I needed a job, but one is scarce to come at the initial stage. I spent most of my days at home, idly sleeping and thinking if I will ever be successful in life. I quite knows that my new life pattern of sleeping and fearful thinking is a prerequisite for poverty and to cut is shot the word "Poverty" sends fear to my spines right from birth and having a thought of it makes me strive to do much for my self. As a matter of facts, I started going to sites asking engineer to hire me as "one" of their labourers. I could only find favor from one of them, but such favor was an encouragement to the fear of poverty its self, because he underpaid me. Because of such exploitation, I had no option but to resort to my usual sleeping and thinking about my life, my future and my past. I was once a 'wealthy' boy, with lots of respect as a secondary school rich gu, but I lacked financial discipline and now paying its price in depression. Albeit, I just realized later that I was in depression, and mum's humiliations worsened my predicament. I would later learn that depression is a sickness that has efficacious drug.
Every morning, she would come inside my room to check on me before going to market.
"Olii, I kept soup for you. Hope you will eat and come to shop?"
"No...I'm coming to the market" I do say even though, I have decided that I won't go and I suggests she knows I don't want to stay with her in the shop . My bed was a comfort of thinking and mourning, sometimes crying out in depression if my younger kids were not around became a hobby. I wants to study law, law was a passion, law is my passion; it was my childhood dream. For me, any thing apart from it was a ruin of my life, but my jamb scored couldn't give me a fair chance to fulfil my dream and my passion.

Yet another peaceful morning, when I wasn't in thinking, i wasn't in fear of shambled future and I felt no depression; precisely in my peaceful and depress free sleep, she came in and woke me up. Oh God! This woman!
 After replying my greetings, she sat down on my reading chair, and I was sitting on the bed, ashamed to look at her face.
"Eehmm, this is not how you will be staying here, sleeping everyday. It won't continue this way, mba. You will go and find work...." She had said this severally, even with her facial expressions.
I couldn't here her anymore, I began to cry immediately she left. My fear rose to my brain, I won't be successful at all. Its not long, several ponzi schemes robbed me of my life savings; i dropped from young hundred thousand(naire) to a cashless fool, who wasted all he had accumulated to online ponzi in his insatiable desires to have much more before he enters University. Yet the truth remains that I had wished to pay my first year school fees as a law student, but I was greedy; it ended up sadly. No one could've imagine that I have such amount at that time and still collects pocket money on every slightest chance that comes. I was a hustler from birth, and mummy knew that and she was much aware that I have gone through series of disappointment just under a little period, and the least I could get from my mother was humiliation. I rose up, and walked out of the room resenting her, but she never acted as if my feelings matter. She went to market and yet again disrupted my sleep the following morning with such "humiliation".
"My own is that no body should stay at home, impossible. I will tell Christian so that he would employ you as a 'serving meson'. One one naira and two two naira is something. I can't afford to be giving you money..."
"How many times have I asked you of money mum? Doing your responsibility.."
"Olisa I don't say that you are lazy, only that I'm saying you must get a job...no body will stay at home." She said and left. From her tone, I could sense that her mind has been directed towards me bringing in girls as soon as she left; of course my imagination must be truth because my street is a garden of omniscient soothsayers, perhaps eyes of the gods. Although quite often, I have heard from my little sister how she had defended me the other day a woman suggested that I goes in with girls. "...she said you don't behave like all this poorly grown boys, who talks to their parents any how, drinks around and smoke around with spoilt girls..." and I really wanted to protect such trust otherwise I loss her immeasurable favours. The fact is that every child would wish to have the kind of my mother as his or her mum. She supports every nice movement of me, financially and otherwise.
The following day, I mate a friend, whom I pleaded to secure me a job, when I was still writing my exams. No work! He said.
The job available was a concrete type , which I hated passionately, but because I couldn't find a job, and I can't afford to loss mum's trust, I joined the cement industry. Everyday, I returns home in body pains but when mum asked how was it, I would humbly say,
"It went well mum, I was able to pull three bags. I made 2k today"
She would cheer me up, and happiness would portray all over her face. I have never  nudge grudges for mum before but I resented her for humiliating me; for mocking a once young "Hundreds thousand(naire). My new humiliating job however reduced the much thinking, at least became a role model among my mates who doesn't go to work in the day but would come to our restaurant in the night, to eat half plate of food without meat and make much noise on how lucky the day had been to them in bet Houses, while some frequently talks about new set of girls they have sexed with. I became a happiness to her, but she was not happiness to me then, but a creator of humiliations.
Many mothers would tell their boys 'look at Olisa, the mother can employ him and be paying him on monthly basis, but he goes about with shovel, making money, while you sit here putting different hair styles"
I wish my own mother would allow me to rest, I wished she could only say those fearful words without action, but mummy never did; she had never touched me before, yet i fear her "humiliating words" more than the action it self.

While I work, I save for another plan; I can't continue with such stressful work. A times I depends on stimulant drugs like tramadol and ibruplofen to sustain my self and reduce body pains.
I was able to save #10,000 within twelve days, albeit #2000 went on medication.
My plan was to go to village with the little money that I  have saved and invest in Agricultureu and mum supported the idea; as far as I don't stay at home. Staying at home may result to frequent request for money, or pave way for illegal smuggling of girls once she it out for market. she must have been told by one of our street's 'eyes of the gods' to humiliate me more, I thought.
The following week, a friend sent a number and assured me of a  hotel job. I was so happy, at least I'm leaving home where I won't be humiliated by mum again. My deepest joy was that I will leave 'this house' to a far distance place, where she would have to think of me constantly and call always to hear my voice and I will have the 'right' to whisper into the phone and say 'call me back later, I'm busy now' even though I may be free to take the call.
 I deducted from my savings, #2,000 and departed for Nibo nise where the purported interview was scheduled to hold. I was very angry and disappointed, it wasn't a hotel Job as said but a network marketing, a similar deceiver that rendered me cashless and contributed to my failures and humiliations. Another humiliation of mum's kind, I tagged it and left.
Mum's facial expressions made me think she was happy i didn't get the job; she wouldn't want me to work in a hotel because of dirty stories surrounding it. I nearly cried because wasted part of my savings on 'useless' transport. #6000 is so small for my plan.  Can it clear a plot of land and also pay the labourers who will thrill the soil? Can it be enough to buy cassava stems and transport it down to Adani- the location of the farm? It can't, oh it can't!  With such frustration, I went back to cement industry but God answered my prayers. Few days later, I got a job at Awka, perhaps in a very big hotel. I haven't seen the hotel before, but I have read and heard much about them . I was so happy, that I couldn't tell mum the day I went for interview, but she was smart enough to know may be because I woke up by five am, without greeting or praying, took my birth and pretended to be going to morning mass which everyone knew I don't fancy much. After my interview, I accepted to start work immediately without calling my people to tell them, I have been employed as a security instead of a receptionist, the post I applied for. The salary is was OK, even though it comes late. When she heard that i accepted the job she called me and her voice was marred with fear. It's a risky job for a small child like me. She was afraid.....
She couldn't convince me; I have decided and my decision stands.

My decision to accept the security job, gave me another hope and motivation to thrive. Nice Cars, flashy and expensive cars droves in and out in minutes, and I saw my self opening and closing the gate for those that I aspires to be great like, even greater than. Mother's humiliation became a minor to the one I received as a young security officer. Our managing director comes often  to call us names which I have never accepted from any human before, and the rich men's drivers horns with no respect or regard to my uniform as a young security officer and to add salt to the injury, our MD will seats down, idly with cigarette on his left palm and shouts "You idiot, animals Vagabond! Will you wait for the car to hit the bar or the gate before your search and open gate? You think here is for idiotic ingrates! You're not trained, I will sack you all, Vagabonds, idiots" He would say and leave.
I would meet the very big men like Arthur Eze's driver he would wind-down  the wind screen a bit and said " Don't you know that this is Arthur Eze's car? You don't know that they don't search us at any checking point? Had it been he was in this car, he would recommend your sack immediately " he would finally come down, and allow me to search. And as security officer, I had no fear; I search without consideration of ranks in other to save my work.
The humiliations i suffered as security officer was actually educative, that it went to long way to empower me. We work day on day off, that is to say you must work 24hrs without sleep. When you do, #400 is surcharged from your salary. We don't sleep and I don't have accommodation; so I illegally made use of the security room. I didn't misuse my day off, I goes to cement jobs each day that I'm off and from the money I realized from it, I spends it on feeding and books; I often buy clothes.
Each time I narrated my story to her, she would feel proud and also muster grudges against my Managing Director and those who has belittled me. "His children are vagabonds and idiots. who is he and how much is he paying you that I can not give you in double fold. Ara gbagbue ya, Olisa I hate this kind work, come out from there. Pls resign, you know you use to have typhoid...." But I won't listen, I already made a decision.
Humiliation made me to buy post umte form. If I should end the insults of 'fellow' rich kids, privileged drivers and uneducated fat belly Managing Director, I must relocate to another level.
I invested any free single minutes that I had to studying for the post UMTE exam, reading also once I get back from 'day pay job'.
There is a sense in which i could agree that luck was on my side. I was able to be saving #4000 weekly from my 'day pay job, although this was possible because mum sends food stuff through friends coming to Awka.
My saving was encouraging that it saved me from spending from my salary.
 It provided me with capital that I invested in a friend's business that yields profits for me up till now.

Humiliations led to my education, and the education empowered me. While as a security officer, under the peril of insults, a friend called me and told me that my name was on the merit list of newly admitted students, even though I didn't hope so. I just purchased the form because mum pressured me and I studied because I still want to prove to her that falling jamb does not mean that I have faded from "former olii that she used to know as a bright child". I leaped over the cutoff mark with 10 points and the course I was  admitted to was a short cut to law if I still wish to switch.

Humiliation educated me to persevere.
All the things I considered humiliating and nudged grudges against people, actually gave me the audacity to try.
If I had continued with my desired sleeping and thinking in depression, It would've been disastrous.
Many out there are in depression due to one failure or the other.
Many are humiliated and their morale was at the Verge of collapse.
Many lost there path because they were not educated by the humiliations that will lead to their empowerment. It doesn't matter what empowerment meant at this point, any success  achieved at this point is a product of humiliation. If my mother had not humiliated me, I would've lost my morale and path.
If my Managing Director didn't regard me as " a fool, an animal and a Vagabond", I  wouldn't have dare to think constructively.
If the driver didn't call me a fool for conducting a search, which its engender was for the safety of his highly exalted Boss, I wouldn't have made my movement.
If I had not stood under sun, under cold and under rain, raising bar up and down for flashy cars, I wouldn't have aspired to be served in the same way.
If the young privileged child of a wealthy patroniser, who can never muster the thought of debating with me outside the four walls of the hotel, didn't threatened to have me beaten and sacked because I asked him to park properly, I wouldn't have purchased the post University matriculation tertiary examination form.
If I was not belittled by my friends, I wouldn't have been proud to tell you this part of my story. Do this, you must have a story to tell.
But in all, I have a big motivator, my mother and I'm a lucky child...a  man who engenders so much in my career called me 'son of a rising sun' and i belives you are son of morning sun. Do not sit and cry, think and regret; dare take a step, because 'HUMILIATION IS DEDUCTION AND TO EDUCATE IS TO EMPOWER.

In this long race, I shall be counting on you for we all knows: success is sacrosanct.

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Ben Onyekelu Olisa