International day of the African Child

Today I will proudly walk the streets as an African. I respect this continent as our Motherland. 

I am proudly African because her lands are blessed with resources,

From her oil deposits,

old as gold,

her beautiful diamond pearls,

and her elusive African curves,

her soils are fertile with foods.

I am proudly African because it is the symbol of black,

I am proudly African because of her deep heritage and traditions,

I am proudly African because her diaspora is proudly African,

I am proudly African because she is THE Motherland.

I will forever embrace my pride as an African because despite the odds against us, each and every day many of us defy the odds. Each and every day people get out of a warped mentality that faces us as Africans. I am proud that even as that happens, other people love spending their time empowering our fellow Africans and live to eradicate the poisonous cycles of poverty, lack of education, corrupt leadership and disease.

I am proudly African that despite our infested leadership, there are young people out there making a difference and exemplifying true leadership or should I say servant hood? 

I am proudly African because we continue to produce the best out there in different fields.

From Nobel Peace Prize Prof. Wangari Maathai, to writer Chinua Achebe. I will be forever proudly African because of our fallen heroes, those who have paved the way for us. This is because we are here in the present because someone else suffered/succeeded to lay a foundation for us. Be it our resilient Mau Mau fighters, budding leaders such as Tom Mboya, The great Nelson Mandela after his imprisonment and then to fight Apartheid. 

I will also appreciate the mama mboga and her vegetable stall. Our roudy touts, because they make life seem African. All the African women, blessed with that smooth black skin - You are beautiful in all ways.

And even as we continue to forge ahead, Let us all remember that we are African and we owe it to our continent to make a difference and to empower each other. Despite the fact that our roots have been uprooted, let us deeply remain bound to the true cause of our Motherland. Let us make our own definitions for being African.

Today we are celebrating our lives.

Yes we can

I have just had a very good night, I cannot remember the last time I had a clarity in my dreams. The weekend was very awesome and we had a very good conversation with one Mr. Selelo. What struck me most yet again, is that each one of us has that one dream or passion they would do for anything. Most young people actually do. Yet again, it is my view point that YES WE CAN. We especially have this tendency to have a crowd mentality, let that one be ours.

Indeed, we are currently doing stuff today, whether we like them or not. Whether we are passionate about them or not, each and every day we do stuff. Fortunately or unfortunately, we find ourselves in systems where we cannot change the way things really work but the Hope is usually following your heart and your gut, and through your passion, other people get to see that it is possible and in turn are empowered enough to ignore the norm. Moral of the story is that you owe it most importantly to yourself to follow your heart, to follow your instinct and secondly you it to every one around you.

It is a new day of the week yet again, but let us pledge to do it differently this week. Let us edge closer to our dreams. Today we will do what has to be done, and I say that with a lot of skepticism but the NEXT thing we will do will be to follow our dreams.

If you will need someone to tell you why, rather to REMIND you why-Talk to me.
Yes we can! 

We know where it all starts from

STOP!!!!

This is where we will draw the line - by force :-) Today, we are going to start afresh. We all know where it starts from - we all know the answers.

Lately I have been feeling a little bit bogged down with a lot of CLUTTER. I am doing quite a couple of things, and I will admit I am not as good a 'multi-tasker' as our female friends :-) Last week we had this session on time management that brought things to perspective - We know all that hullabaloo about time management, but we don't actually do it. So for starters, I have created my own priority list for this year - 4 things. I will tell you about that another time.

While I was on that DE-CLUTTERING agenda during the weekend, I stumbled upon a nook called 'The power of less' written by Leo Babauta {who also has a blog called Zen habits - check it out zenhabits.net/}.

I stumbled on another book however, called The power of your other hand. Now, it picks up on a theme I had started familiarizing myself with over the past four months. It expounds a bit on our right and left sides of the brain and the various cognitive, intellectual and artistic abilities we all posses.

I was starting to write some 'did you know' facts but it already started to look boring. One thing you should know though, we have a dominant hand and for the majority of humans it is right handed. Scholars continue to bit around the bush but one thing is clear - Using both sides of your brain makes you more wholesome.

Enough of that.

The intro starts with a brief background on how the author had a depression phase because of a lot of stuff happening in her life then she stumbled upon the power of the other hand. It briefly outlines how she had a dialogue between her right and left hand and for her (she is right-handed), her right hand represented her domineering personality, her confident self while her left, her hidden worries, long time struggles and emotional stresses. She would write the dialogues down on a piece of paper. I was brave enough to have a go using my left hand and 2 quick things gained some clarity.

1.  I had a pout while I was drawing/writing using my left hand :-) Took me back to the kindergarten days, remember? when we first disregarded our weaker hands because the drawing books looked terrible/or for some because we were told it is WRONG to write with our left hands. While I was doing that I felt a sense of renewal, like the world was before me and I had the ability to re-invent myself. Parallel to that, it brought back a few of my childhood memories, some struggles, a few disappointments and my childhood torments.

2. As much as my left hand writing cannot catch up with my mental processing (for now), I already feel like it is opening me up, and removing any mental barriers, reservations that I have - My first time and I am already feeling re-energized.

In conclusion, I am on this path of a renewed outlook to life and I encourage you to STOP!! and consider the unthinkable for once. Look at it differently. We all say think without the box, and I will re-iterate that - There have never been boxes, all the shapes are in our heads. I will keep you posted on any new discoveries I find along the way. You know what to do in the mean time, don't you?