This is our discussion story of the month. You can
participate by leaving a comment. Enjoy it!
James Dennis was one of the
forty-four thousand Liberian refugees registered in Ghana under the UNHCR in
2003. His only sister in the US had asked him to come to Buduburam in 2001 to
pursue a better life for the future; leaving behind his illiterate mother along
with his 77 year old grandfather in Zwedru who vehemently refused to step out
of her native Liberian soil. Those were his only relatives spared by the bloody
civil war in Liberia. With a stern determination, he finished his High School education
at BUDUSEC in 2005. His spirit of academic excellence placed him at the top of
his class and eventually granted him numerous exceptional scholarship
opportunities, having passed the WAEC Exams with pure distinction. Everyone who
met Jimmy clearly prognosticated that his future was loaded with absolute
greatness.
With an ardent conviction and an
unperturbed determination, Jimmy employed all necessary efforts to secure his
dream of becoming the best Lawyer in Liberia…until the bad news came. He was preparing
for is Sociology class at the University of Ghana, Legon, that morning when his
sister called him from the US to tell him to go to Liberia to check on their
grandfather who was seriously sick. Everything was arranged immediately and two
weeks later, he was in Zwedru attending to his dying grandfather who was
suffering from a serious stroke attack. With the little financial support of
his sister, Jimmy and his mother took the sick man to so many places in Liberia
in their effort to restore the oldman’s health, but to no avail. Seven (7)
months has passed and the situation has moved from bad to worse.
Now, the organization that granted
the boy the scholarship opportunity to study at Ghana’s premium university,
Legon, is almost fed-up with the boy’s delay to further his studies. So they
called him last week again, for the fifth time since he left, to finally inform
that he has only two weeks of grace period to decide if he will come to
continue his scholarship program that is intended to even cover his Master’s
program.
Jimmy had vowed, as long as he
lives, not to allow anything to shift his time and attention from his dream of
becoming the best Lawyer or anything that will cause him to quit this golden
opportunity of scholarship. But now, the man who stood by him all along as his
only father he knew always from childhood up to the very moment he left Liberia
for the first time is now fighting the pains of sickness and there’s no one
else to assist his old illiterate mother to do the running around from the
churches to the hospitals. The only man in Jimmy’s life who has loved, cared
for, and fought for his survival throughout the civil war is dying slowly. The
grandfather’s health is not improving and Death is not yet ready to take him
too.
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