Living to learn

Machete attack victim, a mother of three, claims her East Carolina degree

GREENVILLE -- Knowing smiles and nods spread through the crowd at East Carolina University's Williams Arena on Friday afternoon when the keynote speaker for a pre-graduation event acknowledged the sacrifices parents, husbands and wives had made so these 138 students could get through college.

"Without you," said Dr. Phyllis Horns, a vice chancellor in the College of Allied Health Sciences, "some of them wouldn't be here today."

In the sea of purple gowns sat Ebele Achonu, who had made it this far in spite of her husband.

On Oct. 5, 2003, the man Ebele (eh-BELL-ay) had married 11 years before attacked her with a machete with such force he fractured her skull and nearly severed both her hands. The News & Observer told her story on its front page on Aug. 21, 2005.

Today, while Victor Achonu sits in Nash Correctional Institution serving a sentence for attempted first-degree murder, the woman he tried so hard to beat down will stand up and receive her bachelor's degree.

"There were many times I didn't think I would make it," Ebele, 38, said Friday, referring not just to the ordeal of recovering from her injuries, including the loss of her right hand, but also to attending college while raising three children. "There were the challenges from what happened before, but also, this was just really hard work."

Ebele's degree in health services and information management qualifies her to work as a data analyst or a health information administrator at a hospital or doctor's office. At one time, she had hoped to be a nurse, but the loss of her hand forced a change of direction.

A difficult marriage

Ebele, a native of Nigeria, married Victor Achonu in 1992 when she was 22 and he was 40. A striking woman with a quick laugh, she had hoped to marry a man closer to her age, someone she loved. Her mother and a trusted great-uncle encouraged her to wed Achonu.

The marriage was difficult from the start, with Achonu obsessing over his wife's every move and accusing her of infidelities she says she never committed. After their wedding in Nigeria, Victor, who had moved to the United States in the early 1980s, returned to America. Ebele joined him in 1996, two years after their first child, Brian, was born.

In North Carolina, Victor drove a cab. Ebele managed the household finances. She made friends, enrolled in nursing classes. The couple had two more children, girls named Amarachi and Chinwendu. Victor continued to accuse his wife of being unfaithful, monitoring her cell phone calls and checking her receipts. He made veiled threats, saying a man could be pushed to commit violence.

He attacked her on a Sunday as she talked on the phone in the bedroom with a female friend in Nigeria. Victor thought she was talking with a man.

Steering an obstacle course

After the attack, Ebele continued to take classes through Wake Tech and Johnston Community College and then transferred to ECU. She took most of her classes online, traveling to campus only when she needed to make a presentation. Again, not the way she would have chosen.

"I'm a people person," she said. "I like to be face to face. But with three children to take care of, this was the only way."

Even with a high-tech prosthetic right hand, small motor movements such as typing are arduous. Her left hand also was severely injured in the attack, leaving several fingers immobile.

So she did her homework on a voice-activated computer. She slept four to five hours a night.

She is graduating with honors. Her grade-point average was more than 3.9.

She walked out of Friday's event -- the one at which all the graduates of her college were recognized -- into bright sunshine and the arms of her mother, Miriam, her cousin and her daughters, now 10 and 7, who had taken the day off school for the first time ever. As a graduation gift, a friend is taking her to St. Martin for a few days. When she comes back, she has to study for a board exam and start looking for a job.

It looked like she was going to be all right.

She laughed.

"I am all right already," she said.