GOOD NEWS:
After 3 years of living in separate continents, NIGERIAN Family Re-Unites in Canada…JOY MAXWELL narrates how she came from Nigeria to Saskatchewan to write a Nursing Exam
*Laments: ‘Few months turns three years. The idea of giving her children a brighter future helped keep her strong’
* “Right now (my youngest) doesn’t really know who his mom is and that is kind of hard for me. I can stay on the phone for hours, but I can’t touch them. It’s hard, it’s lonely, and it is quite challenging”-JOY, Nigerian Born Naturalized Canadian
BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU/AMERICAN Foreign Bureau Chief
JOY MAXWELL IS AN EMBODIMENT OF SUCCESS, RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF ODDS, WITH AN ASSURANCE THAT YOU CAN BECOME WHATSOEVER YOU DESIRE TO BE IN LIFE. After three years of migrating to Canada to write her Nursing Examination, while her husband and children were all back in Nigeria, good news eventually came when she passed her medical examination and filed permanent legal residency for her rest of family and were all approved.
It is great to inform you this family of seven in numbers are finally back together after three years of living on separate continents. According to Maxwell, she came from Nigeria to Saskatchewan to write a nursing exam, hoping to obtain employment and eventually bring her family over.
“I thought it was just going to be a few months. Those months turned into three years”, she reportedly said.
She lamented that aside from been apart from her husband and five children, the youngest just under a year old when she left Nigeria, had been very difficult.
“Right now [my youngest] doesn’t really know who his mom is, and that is kind of hard for me. I can stay on the phone for hours, but I can’t touch them. It’s hard, it’s lonely, and it is quite challenging,” she said.
The idea of giving her children a brighter future helped keep her strong, she said. One of her sons wants to be an astronaut, which was impossible in Nigeria.
“Now I can look him in the face and say ‘Yes, you can be that thing you want to be,’” she said.
Earlier in the year, Maxwell was issued permanent residency status in Canada through the Saskatchewan Immigration Nominee Program. In August, she returned to Africa for the first time in three years to fetch her family and bring them back to Canada. They arrived in Saskatchewan on Saturday morning.
“I feel so excited. I can’t really describe my feelings right now. It’s actually a dream come true,” said Maxwell.
Her husband and children are delighted to be in what they call “the land of opportunity.”
“Seeing the huge welcome, smiles on people’s face, it tells me that this is the place, the land of opportunities. And this is the land where people say they are happy. Where people come and get their dreams fulfilled,” Joy’s husband Opara reportedly said.
“I’m so excited, I’m very happy,” added one of Maxwell’s daughters.
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