If I was religious I'd worship this girl

I will never forget my first night at the Orok household. It as pitch black when I woke up to a ‘sweep, sweep, sweep’ outside my door. By a single candle’s light, I could make out Ijoma. Blurting out my first stupid question of the day, I asked “What are you doing?!” “Sweeping.” Oh. Right. I blearily wandered into the living room to check the clock. 4:30. I returned to ask my second stupid question of the day: “Can I help?” She smiled and started scrubbing the bathroom. I stood there processing this for a while, then went for the third: “Why are you doing this so early?!” “My classes start at 7.” As she made her way to the kitchen to start on breakfast. So was my introduction to the relatively common practice of a wealthy family adopting a distant relative as household help and, in this case anyways, paying for her education. While I never completely felt comfortable living out this practice Ijoma always went to great lengths to make every other aspect of my living there as comfortable as possible. But my greatest comfort was seeing the extreme diligence and dedication she poured into both her household and university education and knowing this girl is going places. Her work ethic was my gold standard that I aspired to every day.