THE STRUGGLES OF LEARNING A SKILL

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Learning a skill has been a very difficult task for me, I can remember after my secondary school, I had a strong passion to learn tailoring but I was a very shy person and I needed my mother to take me to this fashion designer we fellowship in the same church so that I could apprentice with him. my mother refused because my father had strongly warned against us learning any skills. After all, he believed that learning a skill at that early age would open a door to earning money, which would discourage us from furthering our education and becoming something in the future. Only if I were a stubborn child would I have disobeyed their wishes, and if I have learnt how to sew, I will sometimes sit and remember the event, and I'd get angry with my parent for making me miss that window at that time.

The skill I picked up that changed my life was learning to operate a computer system, and later learning about poultry farming and the processing of animal feed. After my Junior secondary school, my father sent me to a computer training Centre to learn how to use the computer system and the applications on it. I was there for a period of about three months, learning Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a bit of CorelDRAW. Although after that period and having no computer of my own, I lost most of what I learnt, the remaining knowledge still helps me to this date, working as a data officer at the firm I work for.

After my service year, I wanted to start up something for myself, and I decided to go into poultry production. I started by learning with two-week-old birds at my first batch, and for my second batch, I went with day-old chicks, rearing them up to table size. It was a nice experience learning about poultry farming, vaccination, feeding, medication and the need for ventilation. Alongside, I was able to learn how to produce feed for my stock, using these three ingredients, maize, soya bean meal and concentrate in the right proportion for the different ages. This skill got my elder cousin and pulled me out to manage his whole animal farm, managing the farm expenses and the feed production in general.

My name is@rishagamo, and this is my submission to the IU contest "THE SKILL THAT CHANGED MY LIFE".