Johannesburg: Family Support Never Failed...

Lanre told me that Ulo was arranging to send me some more money through him. 

I was really so grateful to Ulo. With her I could go into detail about Kechi's condition that others could not handle at that time. Everyone was saying that I was so strong but the truth was that Ulo was the strong one because she always had just the right words to lift me up. For all I knew, she probably went to pieces after calling or texting me, but at those moments when I needed strength, she gave it to me through God's word. As anyone who knows Ulo is aware of, God has imbued her with uncommon wisdom and I drew from her when I needed it. I thanked God every day for her.

Betty's husband, Ike had just returned from Nigeria. He visited us in the hospital and came with letters and newspaper clippings from my family. When I got back to my room that night, I started to go through the letters from my sister Nkechi's kids for Kechi. I broke down crying as I read those letters because for the first time I was seeing the whole situation from their point of view. If Kechi had gone to be with Jesus last Saturday, those boys' lives would never have been the same because she was so close to those cousins of hers that at times it seemed that her spirit was connected to theirs. Bichu especially would have been devastated. They all wrote that they saw that there was a calling on Kechi's life and that they loved her very much.

My crying jag set the mood for the next few hours as I went through the newspaper cuttings Mom had enclosed. I was sinking into gloom and despair, looking at pictures of parents grieving. The last straw was seeing the pictures of some of the students, including my friend, Angela Ubah's son, Ifeanyi.

Mom and Nkechi called just then and I told them what I was doing and that I could no longer handle it. Mom immediately told me to pack them up and put them at the bottom of the box and forget all about them. They spoke with me until midnight, consoling me and encouraging me to remain strong. I told them to pray for a little girl, a baby, really, Erin, who had been brought into the ICU for burns. She was so little and it broke my heart to see her burns and hear her cry.

After the phone call, I felt better but still had a feeling of heaviness as I prayed for the hurting families.

I called the hospital before going to bed and was told that Kechi was stable...

To Be Continued...