Doctors said I lost my eyesight due to excessive weeping over my husband’s death —Beggar

She is not mentally impaired. She is armed with a wooden tamborine with which she sings gospel choruses to draw attention and curry sympathy from old and young people. She stops over at stalls and shops mostly belonging to her kinsmen. Her feet kiss much dust as she trudges across the streets of Warri and environs, begging for alms. Her mobility is aided by three children – a boy and two girls — also unkempt, barely covered. They serve as her compass for navigation from one place to another.

This is the life and daily existential routine of Mrs Emabon James, a (partially) blind and traumatised woman whose survival is squarely hinged on alms. Unusual to see folks of Igbo stock of South East Nigeria, taking solace in panhandling, Emabon has accepted it as a norm, an only and, perhaps, surest way to beat hunger while awaiting salvation in a country where even the able-bodied are at their wits’ end.

“I am Emabon James. I’m from Imo State. (At another time she said ‘I’m from Anambra, at Okpor’). My husband is from Calabar. He lost his business at a time; that time we were resident in Calabar. I also lost my business. I was selling okrika wears,” the 28-year-old said when our reporter met her near Ginuwa Junction along Warri-Sapele Road in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State.

Profusely pleaded with to relate her life story and what brought her to the state of begging for alms with her children, she continued in Pidgin: “The emotional trauma associated with the loss of our businesses led to the untimely death of my husband. That was in 2015. We already had four children. Three are with me here (on the road). You can see them. One, the eldest is at home.

“So, my husband died and I began to struggle to survive with my children. It wasn’t long, my parents too died in Imo my home town. There was no help from anywhere, thereafter. My husband’s family also abandoned us. I was depressed coping with the demands of catering for the children.”

Emabon wasn’t born blind. She said so. According to her, doctors, who attended to her had attributed her eye problem to excessive weeping after she lost her husband and breadwinner so suddenly.

“Out of excessive weeping and agonising over the death of my husband, I developed eye problem. A good Samaritan came at a time to take me to the hospital for medical attention. I was treated, but the eyes didn’t heal. Doctor said I over-cried. The man tried to help me. The doctor requested N250,000 to carry out surgery on my eyes. The man helping me was only able to pay N100,000 and I was given drugs. It wasn’t long the man helping me left me and my children alone as he was tired of helping us,” the Igbo woman further narrated.

“I now live near a market. Where I was living before, we couldn’t cope with the rent so I was chased out. We don’t have any abode of our own now. The landlord threw our things out and chased us out of the place. As we beg around, anywhere night meets us, we’d look for a place to rest our heads. Often, we sleep in people’s market stalls after they have closed for the day.

“My children are in school. I pay their fees through begging. One is in JSS1, another, Primary 5. Emmanuel, Ijeoma, Chioma,11, eight and six years old,” she further narrated.

With the excruciating economic hardship in town, how does she meet up with catering for the needs of the kids? Emabon, whose main clients are Igbo traders across the twin towns of Warri and Effurun, said: “I’m 28 years old. As we beg, people who take pity on us could buy food for us to eat. What is left we manage for the other days. As per my children’s schooling, sometimes, people help me to pay their school fees. Sometimes, I go to beg their teachers to let them be till we pay up. I also help with money we make from begging.

“We sleep in stalls. How we bathe daily is not a problem. It’s very easy. We do that before daybreak.”

Asked to suggest the kind of help she needs to have a change of story, Emabon laughed hysterically. Yes, she’s in need of help, but, according to her, many individuals, including journalists, had come to deceive her in the name of assisting her in the past. They all ended in deception and more frustrations.

Hear her: “If I have money, I’ll like to rent another house. People have deceived us with promises in the past. A man once told me that he could treat my eyes for me. So, I allowed him. We went to him. He put acid in my eyes and I almost died. It was someone else that then took me to a pharmacy where it was reversed.

“The help I need is for my children’s education and upkeep. I know that if it’s well with them in future, they’d remember me. And people can also help me with genuine treatment, I won’t reject it. I’ll also need an accommodation so that we’d stop being at the mercy of the weather in market stalls.

“Someone has once suggested that I should allow my boy to go and learn a trade since I can’t cope with paying his school fees, but how do I go about this even if I agree?”

At a point, she became confused on her state of origin. She mentioned Imo at a point, then Anambra. What she is sure of is her being from Igboland.

“I’m not lying with all I’m saying. Who would like to be trekking around town begging alms, shamefully? How good is it for me to be trekking about with my children? What beauty is in that?

“We don’t go out to beg everyday. We go out any day we know there’s no food to eat at home.. We’ve had some ugly experiences where some bad boys will rob us of our hard-earned alms. For instance today, where we were lying down, some rough boys came after us and my children had to tell me to quickly hide our money tightly. As per sexual molestation since I’m still young, I don’t allow it. I won’t agree I’m raped. How do I cope if I become pregnant, again? she averred.

The children told our reporter that they did not like as they trek about with their blind mother begging for alms. “We don’t like it. It’s humiliating,” the boy, who didn’t want the reporter to take the photograph of her mother, said.

“I don’t want you to snap us. Some people have done that before. It’ll spoil our means of survival because when people see us in paper publication and still see us begging, they’d say ‘shebi they.have helped them, why they still begging on the streets? If I’d been helped all this while, why I’m I still suffering? You think it’s easy to trek round town? Often I get back home fagged out, unable to stand,” Emabon concluded.

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