In Africa where I was born, a man's family is made up of not only his wife and kids but also his brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins and other distant relations too numerous and remote to mention. This is called the extended family system. It has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages by a very wide margin. I would not waste the time of the reader by going into how this peculiar family system works because doing so would take me away from the topic above.
My family has been very supportive of my academic exploits. Each person in the family makes effort at all times to find out how my program is progressing. During holidays, I receive gifts and money from the members of my family who are well-to-do and words of advise and encouragement from the ones who are not wealthy. The younger persons in the family who have neither gifts nor advise to offer, call me on the phone several times each week to inquire after my health and progress.
There are many members of my family who are more educated than myself. They are also scattered across different continents of the world. They all receive the same encouragement as I do. This serves to motivate not only myself but all of us. We always dread doing anything that may drag the name of our family into mud. We take pride in the fact that our family has never produced a criminal or ex-convict. And surely, no one in the family wants to create the record.
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