A Tale Of Hope's Audacity

The jet of local brew wine from mother’s mouth hit my frail, naked body in fine spray as she made spirited efforts to hold back the ravaging spread of measles rashes. Occasionally, wine particles would find their way into my eyes and the stinging sensation left me feet stomping and wincing in discomfort. This remains one of the earliest memories of my childhood.  

I was barely eight years old when measles struck – leaving in its wake a steady decline in my hearing, impaired nervous functions, and a compromised gait. I never recovered fully from those scars. Instead, this definitive occurrence and its sequence were to peg me many years behind the normal developmental milestones of the average person. It took an extraordinary spirit of resilience and a deathless hope to keep going right from that time – till now.

Prior to that tragedy in the 90s, I was this lively, hyperactive kid set on the fast lane of life. At eight or thereabouts, I was on the verge of gaining admission into one of the best public secondary schools in Lagos State. Then it happened. The illness that would permanently put a stamp of disability on me struck. Initially I was able to hold back the assault and bounce back on time to sit the national common entrance examinations. After that, I gained admission into the Lagos State Government College, Ojo (now Model). With a tinge of melancholy, I still recall being the cynosure of eyes during those early college years. This obviously under-aged, small-statured kid cut an unusual sight among a crowd of bigger, more matured students. Had the sailing been smooth, I would have completed my secondary education between age fourteen and fifteen – bagging my first degree at eighteen or nineteen. However, Providence had other plans. In retrospect, it seems now that I was fated to travel the long, hard road to finding my life’s purpose.

My hearing rapidly deteriorated soon after the measles episode. I still remember the struggles of my junior secondary years – an under-aged, hard-of-hearing kid competing in a mainstream school was never going to have it smooth – academically, socially and otherwise. Nor did it help matters that he came with an overly sensitive nature that would repeatedly react negatively to the myriad challenges of a hidden disability. Looking back, I can trace the onset of a marked social/information disconnect and a host other indices of slowed progression in my developmental curve to this period.

By my third year in Junior secondary, tragedy struck again. This time I wasn’t that lucky. A mysterious illness which ravaged all four limbs and sensory organs incapacitated and kept me out of school for some five years. When I eventually resumed my academic journey, it was to endure another agonizing four years as the lone hard of hearing student in a mainstream setting. Academically, I was well above average, but not without big doses of the extras as I heavily relied on personal study to cover the gap imposed by my defective hearing. Unfortunately, in between, I lacked a social life. Those were the recluse years. Bereft of a much needed support system and without vital information on deafness and deaf education, I was walking alone without knowing it. This void cost me heavily as the accumulated trauma of hurtful experiences associated with my hearing defect snuffed life off the drive to pursue further studies at the end of my secondary education.

The resultant disillusionment and academic hiatus was to last a decade. During this time, I drifted in a vicious cycle of highs and lows – often tottering dangerously at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Interestingly, in all of these, there remained within me an uncanny ”voice of hope” that urged on with an audacity that wouldn’t be silenced amidst overwhelming odds. Looking back now, I believe it was this deathless “voice of hope” that Providence seized upon in 2014 to trigger off the series of divinely orchestrated events which has continued to unfold in a slow but steady upward climb in the path of fulfilling Destiny.

It all began with unforgettable encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Deaf community and, of course, Sign Language.