My Mother Had Only Three Dollars And Five Children
This is a story I experienced, and I hope it will motivate you through your difficult time. It was around 1994, and I was in grade 11 at St. Catherine High School. One morning, my mother was faced with a tough decision to make: which of her five children was she going to send out to school that morning because she had about three dollars to her name, just enough to send one of us to school. So, she decided between me and my sister Melissa, who followed me. She decided to send me instead of Melissa. This was how she broke it down: she said I was at a more critical stage of my education. She said, “Boy, Craig, you take the money and go to school.”
I said, “Mom, no, send Melissa. She’s very, very delicate and needs all the time she can get in school. I’ll figure something out.”
THE PAPAYA FIELD
I’m a big boy, 16 years old at the time, so I walked from home in Tawes Pen to St. Catherine High School, and that was about a 30-minute walk, 20–30 minutes easy; that was a regular thing. And as I walked, I said, “Fadda God, You know You have to go provide some lunch for me today.” And I just forgot about it and went to school.
I did the morning session, and when lunch time came at 11 o’clock, I didn’t see my lunch fall from the sky, and I was a little shy to go and ask anyone for some of their food. So, I got out of the classroom so I wouldn’t be around everybody eating their patty and coco bread, which would just make me more hungry. I decided to walk the campus—to walk out the hunger, you know—and as I walked, I ended up in junior school, and that’s where they had a farm.
On one side of the fence, they had some papayas planted. I was doing agriculture, so I was familiar with the area, so I ‘screechie’ (slipped) over the fence and scouted out the papaya farm to see if I could find something to eat. I was hungry…bad…but I was only lucky enough to find one half-ripe papaya: half side of it turn, half-side green. I picked it, and looking around to make sure nobody saw me, I sat down in the papaya
farm. The grass was high, so nobody really could see me, and I decided to eat the papaya. I had no knife, so I decided to use my teeth. Yeah, man, I peeled it with my teeth and ate it. I remember it was kind of crunchy and tasted a little bit sweet and stainy. I enjoyed the papaya. As I’m telling this story, I’m feeling very emotional because it was a tough day, and I ate the papaya. My belly was full, and I was ready to go back to class and finish the day.
At 2:30, everybody went home, but I remained in the classroom, studying my math and physics, and was on the blackboard, practising.
TOP SCIENCE STUDENT
At the end of grade 11, I graduated as the top science student from St. Catherine High School, went on a couple years later to Med School, and you know, about seven years to eight years after that day, I graduated as a medical doctor from the University of the West Indies.
Listen, I didn’t give up. Through hunger, pain, and stress, I made it, and today, I’m living my dream.
Some of you are going through a difficult time right now in pursuit of your goals and your dreams. It took me eight years from that point. For some of you, it might be five, might be ten, might be twenty. It doesn’t matter, but guess what? You’re going to make it. You know why you’re going to make it? Because you’re not going to give up. You’re gonna tough it out and trust God, and you’re gonna work hard through the hunger, pain, and stress.
I could have turned to crime. I could have given up. You know that you are not going to do any of that. You’re going to continue working, praying, believing, trusting in the process of hard work, and using your mental capacity to get you to where you want to go. Just keep working. This is my personal encouragement to you: life is tough for most of us, but this will not last. Your big day is going to come. Don’t give up!
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Dr. Orlando Thomas is a certified functional medicine physician. Contact him at 876-583-5632 or [email protected].
