Chinyere didn’t have the money for the car she dreamed of giving her son.
For years, she imagined buying him a Mercedes-Benz pickup truck on the day he graduated. But the food and drink sales she made as a vendor in Ubaha-Eze, an agricultural town in Nigeria, didn’t come close to covering it. So she traveled more than an hour to the Federal Polytechnic Nekede carrying, instead, a brown goat tied with a rope.
Her son Promise Okoro, 23, had just finished his final exam in pharmaceutical technology. Amid the music and cheers of his classmates, he thought someone was about to propose marriage. Instead, he saw his mother making her way through the crowd, pulling the animal along.
Among the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, a goat is no ordinary gift. It is a symbol of respect and pride, reserved for weddings and important ceremonies. Chinyere had promised it to her son if he stayed away from bad company and finished his studies. She kept her word for 88 dollars.
Today, the goat lives with Promise, eats fried rice from his leftovers, and even joins him on trips to the supermarket, where people already recognize her more than him.