I was treated unfairly due to a language barrier. 

No one wants to experience unfair treatment, but on a few occasions, it just happens. Personally, I detest being treated unfairly or seeing someone being treated the same way. I can remember on some occasions where I stood in the gap for people being treated unfairly in my presence. The spirit in me wouldn't just overlook such ill treatment of our fellow human beings. Just because you have the opportunity to occupy a higher position than others or whatever shouldn't give you the space to treat others unjustly. However, it's almost inevitable to escape unfair treatment among our fellow human beings in our society today.

If I'm being honest, I have been treated unfairly so many times that I have lost count of it, but there's this one where the experience got stuck in my mind till date, and it hurts to remember it. However, it also pushed me into learning a compulsory new language to avoid such an experience from repeating itself.

It happened that I took my baby for an immunization at the government health center. I usually use the government center because it's free, and of course, most people like me like free things, especially when I get the same quality. Why not spend the money on other things? So because the immunizations for babies are free, the government health centers are usually crowded with mothers and their babies, and so each time my baby has such an appointment, I leave my home as early as 5:30 am, still meeting a crowd.

This day, I got to the hospital and picked number 71. It dawned on me that I would spend a long time before the nurses could attend to my baby with such a far number, but I didn't know that I would even spend a longer time due to the language barrier. It's just a pity. I live in Lagos State, Nigeria, which is a different tribe from mine. Lagos native language is Yoruba, while I hear only English and Igbo, my native language.

At first, the nurses were calling the numbers, and mothers were getting the health services in an orderly manner until they got to number 37, we stopped hearing them calling the numbers according to how we came. What I noticed was that mothers who came very late were being attended to codedly, and they were going home, leaving some of us behind. After an hour of no progress in waiting, I went closer to the nurses department and complained to them; unfortunately, they didn't give me a listening ear instead, they kept speaking Yoruba, attending to Yoruba mothers that came late even in my presence. Seriously, I couldn't believe it. I spoke English till all the grammar I knew got exhausted, yet they kept blowing their native language, attending to their people, and ignoring me. This time, who came earlier didn't matter to them until they were satisfied with how they wanted to give the service; that was when they finally gave my baby the immunization on already in the hot afternoon.

I didn't only stop using that particular health center to avoid such an experience anymore in my subsequent clinical visit, but I also started learning Yoruba in order to avoid similar cheating. This is just how I moved past the hurt. I am not really so great at speaking this new language, but I am better than I was with it initially.

Thanks so much for reading!!!.

This post is in response to the #hivelearners community contest on the topic titled It Was Just Unfair

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