Simon Ateba in Washington DC on July 2, 2017One day in Nigeria, I did not have money to buy food or to pay my house rent. I did not have any family member there and my landlord, a retired Navy man, tired of waiting for his money, called three of his former colleagues and they began to beat me up.
They were old but still very strong. They lifted me, as I fought as hard as I could, and crushed me to the hard ground. It was painful. My body was hurting and my trouser was turned. They warned me to pay the next day and left me on the cold and dark floor.
Those days in Agbara area of Lagos/Ogun state, things were hard, and friends who were members of the Youth For Christ (YFC), a group of holy guys and girls, who had all vowed to have sex only after wedding ceremony, unlike me, began to advise me to give my entire life to Jesus Christ. If the only thing I would get from Nigeria was to become a born again Christian, that would be a great achievement, they said, almost giving up on me.
Many days, they would all go to school or work and I would be at Youth for Christ, reading books, quickly switching to the bible when I saw them, and sweet-talking the girls who came around when most of them were away. English was still a big challenge and people found it hard to hear me.
Some laughed when I began pronouncing hard English words with my French, Ewondo and Manguissa accent combined. I had spoken only French before then in addition to two other dialects popular in the dusty streets of Yaounde, the Cameroonian capital. My best scripture back then was a verse in the book of Ezekiel Chapter 37 “dry bones shall rise again”.
I told them, do not give up on me, do not write me off. Believe in the same bible you’re preaching that ‘dry bones shall rise again’. I began slowly to crawl back up, spending almost seven years in school up to the postgraduate level, reading Mass Communication, and leaving the institution as one of the most recognised names there.
I began writing incredible articles for a newspaper and a magazine, and before long, I was the guy many of my former colleagues in Christ were reading.
One day, I went to Victoria Island to have a meal in Lagos, and one of the guys, who used to know me when I worked as a cybercafé guy, shouted my name and gave me a hug. This was because his own mom had called him a few weeks earlier to turn on the TV and watch his former friend analyse issues on journalism hangout on Television Continental, TVC.
When many of my former colleagues turned on the TV, it was often me they were seeing and wondering, how did you know all these things in few years?
I began to explain to them that after I left you, I went back to school, gave all my best, and learning all I could. I overcame rain, sun and even fire, to achieve my dreams.
In the United States, when I first came, some people found it hard to hear me, and others warned that America is where dreams are dashed and destinies are cut short, and I am telling them, mine may also be dashed, but do not write me off yet, do not give up on me too soon. I have done this thing before, I can do it again with more knowledge and experience.
And when I ask people on GoFundMe to donate for my book, I certainly have a book to complete.
You know, I have lived long enough, and got white hair by the way, to know that whether here in Washington DC, where I am writing this, doing my things as slowly as I did in the past, or over there, wherever you’re reading me, the truth remains that I always believe that “dry bones shall rise again”.
SIMON ATEBA is the publisher of SIMON ATEBA NEWS. He operates from Washington Dc