Perhaps what sealed my determination to become a medical doctor, was my first girlfriend’s rejection of me, for a medical student. While at secondary school, I had been sort of ‘anti-girls.’ It wasn’t because I hated girls, but because I still remembered how on the day before I started secondary school, my mother had called me into her room, her face serious and her eyes wide open, as she warned me in a stern whisper, “herh! Let me warn you. If you make a mistake and impregnate any girl while you are in school, you would leave school and come back to the village to farm. Do you understand?” This threat kept ringing inmy ears for the first five years I was at school, and this defined the kind of relationship I kept with girls. However, when I got to lower six, I decided that it was time to enter a responsible relationship with a girl. I met this beautiful girl that I really liked, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her. However, we exchanged love letters and pictures. One day, I got a package from her: a big, yellow manila envelope. Opening it up in excitement, because of its bulky nature, and surrounded by my excited friends, I wondered what she had sent me. To my shock however, it was a bundle of all the letters and pictures I had ever sent her, together with a note which read, “I do have a new boyfriend, who is a first-year medical student, so please move on with your life.” That was my first heartbreak, and I had diarrhea for two weeks. However, it strengthened my resolve to go to medical school, I had to prove a point. The Sting of a BrokenHeart 13 The Birthday Journal
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