A TIMELESS CHANGE, THE STORY OF ADZOWAVI SAKPONOU ADENKA
A man can be a father when the baby is born on the day of delivery, but a woman starts calling herself a mother right from the day of conception so say a major maxim. The story of humans, therefore, especially those that came to this world and made that remarkable impact on the sounds of time are encapsulated right from the time of their conception. This can be said of this distinguished personality of the person of Adzowavi Sakponou Adenka, a woman of substance who was born on 2nd August 1976 in Togo, a West African country. However, her parents who are late now were originally from the Benin Republic. Her father was from Oueme while her Mum was from Savalou.
Growing up was interesting as she grew up in many towns in the country of Togo. First, she started her early life in a small town called Togoville, the then village where the name of the country was gotten from. At age 2, she was released to live with one of her paternal aunts who lived in another village. At age 15, she had a child, something that was a bit strange then, because she was the youngest teenager that had a baby in that village at that particular time. Eventually, she went on to have four other children making five in all that include 2 girls and 3 boys.
Though it was a bit difficult raising kids at that age, she navigated her way through the tick and thins, today her first child and daughter is married too to a military officer and he is serving in Japan with their two children Yannis and Kenzo. Her second daughter, Adetade is going up for her Masters's program in the medical field. Next in line is Adekambi a male who is in the Military, an Airforce personnel to be precise. Next is Adeboute who is still in high school but preparing for an advanced program in Technoloy and lastly, Adesina who is presently in middle school. Adenka was married for 18 years but is now divorced since 2018 due to some pertinent factors and domestic abuse stood tall among the reasons for the divorce.
It was this issue of domestic violence that eventually spurred me to found an organization known as “Speak up for a Change” a nongovernmental organization with a principal mission to empower women and children who are for the most part vulnerable to abuse and societal degradation.
I equally established another organization known as “Bring Them out of Hiding” LLC, based in Virginia, Virginia, United States of America. Today, Adzowavi is a certified advocate for women and children and also a certified nutritionist and fitness coach. It is instructive that experiences in the real difficult world prepared her to engage in what she is involved in today. For a long time, she worked with children in schools, and also for another very long time she worked as a beautician who braids hair for women. Her interaction and engagement with the women and children on a daily basis coupled with her own personal experiences at home vis a vis the domestic abuse she consistently faced in her marriage really made her know what women and children go through, thus, making her champion their course when the opportunity presented itself.
It is quite interesting to note that she is a survivor of multiple strokes, ovarian cancer, and colon inflammation. Having gone through these multiple experiences that life pushed along her way, she kept on discovering her true self as she doggedly fought her way through. Though providence was kind to her and in appreciating what the almighty has done, she too decided to give to her society.
Sharing her experiences, she decided to speak out to a much larger society through NGO projects. She wants people to know that, despite all their troubles and travails, if they can garner enough strength by way of counselling, having a support system that helps and empowers, and having mentors who would nurture them based on their own experiences, they can navigate their way through the vicissitude of life, because, in her words “when life throws a bacon at you, throw back a wheat flour, with that combination, sure and the synergy will work out”. That is the main reason Adzowavi founded the other NGO, Speak Up for a Change.
Starting this in the United States, her main thrust is Africa, the land of her birth. She realized that this decadence could be reduced if the women and children are empowered educationally, hence, the resolve to come to Togo with the organization, Speak Up for a Change. For some time now, the organization has been involved in building schools in Togo and contributing to women's emancipation. Recently too, having lived in Nigeria before, precisely Abeokuta, the capital city of Ogun state, before, as she puts it that Abeokuta is her second home, she decided, therefore, to extend this gesture to that city so that the world could hear from her and her organization more.
Interestingly, some of the little things she has been doing in lifting and championing the course of women around the world has earned her accolades and awards. Among the numerous awards is the Triumphant Woman Award in 2017, She also received the Domestic Survivor Award in 2018, not leaving out the Inspirational Black Woman Award, in 2019 in Quebec, Canada.
Adzowavi Sakponu Adenka is also a certified leadership trainer through the John Maxwell team and is the author of three books that include, “Including the Heart of a Warrior”. Her second book is, “The Rays of Love” which she wrote when she was going through a moment of Bell’s palsy disease which she survived. Surprisingly, at this agonizing moment, she could only see with one eye and could hardly see without the other eye being bandaged. while her current book is titled “Generational Survivals”. It is an anthology of what black women go through in the race of life, their experiences in the face of hardship, travails, and abuse. It is a collection of shared experiences.
Part of the role that the Speaker for Change organization is to feed the homeless in their own little way every month. They move to selected locations around Virginia, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach. Also, at every resumption time for schools, the organization ensures that randomly picked kids from schools have the necessary kits they need to stay in school. She revealed that she has partners who believe in this course and are there to support this project which is very dear to her because she was not privileged to have access to all these. As a matter of fact, when she had her first baby at age 15, she was almost turned or rather she was actually leaving as a housemaid. She would go through starvation, and be punished, while her baby would be crying on the floor with no mats, no clothes, and any other convenience of livelihood.
It was in this situation that one night while she rested her baby in her bosom she cried out to the heavens and prayed to the almighty God that if HE could take her out of that situation and be better placed in life, she would not let anyone down, she would take care of people that come her way in her own little capacity. She confessed that since then she started seeing a different version of herself right from when the baby was four months old as she started going back to school. Tricky though, but she trudges along with support from the community and especially her aunt’s husband who is late now. Adzowavi said that he would babysit her little girl at home and would only go to his farm once she came back from school.
However, it was still difficult as many people still looked down on her as an outcast. Many times, there was no food to eat, yet she still kept moving because of her instinct to her that her journey is still far far ahead. In her words, Adzowavi said, “No, this is not me, this scorn is not going to define my life, I was raped by a man, and I got pregnant, had a baby, am never going to be a wife to that rapist”. “
Am an advocate against anyone that gives their son or daughter away at an early age, because, I lacked the fatherly and motherly love and care”. This is why she made the Speak Up for a Change Foundation a focal instrument to speak out and re-orientate parents and would-be parents on why they need to take up the responsibility of their kids once they have them. She would always advise folks on the need to be ready and prepared before they got themselves pregnant and have babies as the responsibility involved is more than just copulating and giving birth to children that they will not cater for. She is so passionate about this because she passed through this phase in her life.
Instructively, the biography is not ending here, it is a voyage that is still navigating the high sea of accomplishment. Doggedly, she would coast shore together with those who believe in this vision of helping others.
So, readers can take a quo from this that ‘it is not always the door that provides us the way out all the time, the walls too sometimes have openings in them that lead to freedom. The ability to discern when and how the walls open up to provide freedom lies in us trusting the almighty God and believing that success can be achieved if we truly will it.