Patience is a widowed, petty trader who sells kolanuts and ginger along Ikpa Road, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. The mother-of-two young, sat on a wooden bench, as she spoke to Saturday Tribune on Wednesday.
“My name is Patience Edet Udoh, I’m from Itu Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State and my late husband hailed from Ikot Ekpene Local Government. I am the last child of four children that my parents had. I can’t remember my age, but I think I am in my 60s,” she obliged.
She sits and sells alone by her improvised stall with her scanty wares on a tray covered with a sky blue linen.
Patience’s existential struggles are copiously expressed in her abode and living status. Unable to foot a one-room accommodation, she pairs with a fellow indigent woman who trades in palm oil.
“I live in a one-bedroom apartment at Ikpa Road where I pay N3, 000 per month, but split the rent money with another woman who sells red oil in small containers. I’m a Christian, I attend Mount Zion Church,” she further narrated. Obviously, a room apartment that goes for N3,000 in Uyo city speaks volumes of a squalid structure in a slum!
Patience’s somewhat respite is in her siblings who have graciously taken custody of her two children to lessen the burden of catering for them. She said that’s the greatest help she has received from her siblings, and she couldn’t have asked for anything more.
“My first daughter is in JSS 3 and the last one is in JSS 2 and my brothers are the ones sponsoring them.
“I have two children, both of them girls and are in secondary school. They are currently living with my elder brothers at Ikot Ekpene,” she noted.
How could a woman in her 60s have kids so young as to still be in junior secondary school? Did she marry late or had delays in conception? Patience provided some answers:
“I couldn’t have children on time because I had fibroids. The monsters dealt with me so badly and we had to spend heavily in the hospital to get rid of them. It was only after the successful surgery that I could have children. Unfortunately, my husband died some years ago in an accident when he was working in Aba, Abia State.
Patience made a peep into her early days and her present means of living before fate brought her down to her knees, selling kolanuts on the roadsides.
“Before I started this business, I was farming at the University of Uyo. I had been farming since I can remember. I was farming before I got married to my husband and also after he died.
“Most of what I was cultivating were vegetables. After harvesting them, I would take them to the market to sell. Then they brought tractors to scatter the farm.
“As a result, I and most of the other farmers lost our sources of income. I could not sit down without doing anything that is why I’m out here selling kolanuts.
“After I lost my farm, I borrowed N10,000 to start this petty business. I have been able to pay back half of the money. It remains N5,000. I normally go to Itam Market to buy my goods.
“On the days that business is good, the highest I make is N1000 and on slow days, I make only N20. On days that I do not make enough money, I do go to bed hungry.”
In spite of her adversity, Patience contends with forces whose pastime is extortion of the poor in the society. Her meager earnings yet attract street urchins popularly called ‘agberos.’
“One of the challenges that I face in this business is all these agberos who normally collect money from me. I pay at least N200 every day.
“If they come and I tell them that I haven’t made any sales for that day, they will keep coming back and threaten to throw me out of my space by the roadside if I don’t pay,” she narrated in pidgin.
She would want the governor of Akwa Ibom State, Pastor Umo Eno, and other good spirited-individuals to make life worthwhile for her and her children in whatever way they could before she joins her ancestors.
According to her, “the kind of help I want is money to rent a shop, expand my business and add other things to it. They should also help my children in their education so that the memory of my husband will not go down the drain.”
When, asked if she’s aware of the reasons why things were hard, Patience retorted: “I don’t even know what’s going on in Nigeria since I don’t have a phone or radio set. I just know that things are getting more expensive by the day.”
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