When I met Bintu she was suffering from a mild bout of malaria; it was at a Girls Empowerment Summit organized by the Visao Foundation and Women Change Africa. Although she was experiencing symptoms like aches and a fever, she insisted on staying for the whole day. We gave her pain relief medication and allowed her to sit out any activities that she didn't feel up to. I was moved by this petite 14 year old who dreams of becoming a lawyer some day. As with many of the girls in the class, she comes from a very poor family and attends a school that had been built by the phenomenal NGO FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalist). As I watched Bintu struggle throughout the day to take part in the numerous activities, perking up at times and finding her voice as she spoke about things that she was passionate about, I felt extremely proud to have chosen her as my sponsored child. It's seems a no-brainer to me that children like Bintu who face adversities on a daily basis yet struggle to overcome them, deserve our support. The things some of us take for granted are obstacles to education for many children in developing and to a certain extent developed countries. The idea of having to worry about getting a balanced meal before going to school so that they can focus in class or having the money they need for transportation to get to school on time, not to mention the essentials required for school like textbooks, some of which are prohibitively expensive. What I took away from the Girls Empowerment Summit was that in spite of these adversities and because of support from organisations like FAWE and Visao, the future of these children was starting to look very bright.
I worked with about 40 teenagers during the Girls Empowerment Summit and Visao's holiday camp and was blown away at every point of my interaction with them. When quizzed about their aspirations for the future, every one of them without exception had lofty ambitions. When asked what makes a good role model, they came up with qualities like humility, kindheartedness, generosity, education and spirituality. When one of them suggested she admired a particular celebrity, the others retorted, saying that famous people were not good role models simply because they were in the spotlight. They spoke in unison when rejecting superficial qualities and spoke admiringly about people who had worked hard to achieve their goals and had given back to their societies. These may seem like obvious choices to those of us who have life experiences and can attest to the fact that all that glitters most definitely is not gold but I can't help but wonder if I would elicit the same responses from children from an inner city school in London or a poor neighbourhood in Brooklyn. It goes without saying that these are the types of responses we would expect from children who come middle class families simply because their upbringing is aspirational; they are taught by their parents who for the most part are educated that they should value education over money, hard work over fame. Some of the parents of these children at Camp Visao however are barely literate; during one of the sessions one of the fathers came to see his daughter and brought crackers for her. As I watched him fish around in the black plastic bag he was carrying for two solitary unwrapped cream crackers, it dawned on me that the living conditions of these children were a far cry from the classroom they sat in now. As this thin unkempt man handed the embarrassed 15 year old his gift, he told me in krio "I was eating these and thought I can't eat something and not keep some for my child". The girl was well groomed and her appearance, in no way reflected a life of hunger or poverty; by contrast, it was clear looking at her unkempt, scrawny-looking father, that he was struggling to make ends meet. The importance of what Visao and FAWE and the countless other not-for-profit organisations that were investing in the education of such children, was crystal clear at that precise moment.
The beauty of investing in children's education is that we can affect real change in our countries, not just the cosmetic type - the new road that later becomes pot-hole ridden and dilapidated; the well donated by a well meaning international NGO, that a year later falls into disrepair. The change we affect when we invest in education is guaranteed because there are countless examples of children who because of the opportunities they were offered went on to do great things. The video below is an advert for the boys and girls club in America; the slogan "Great Futures start here" could be said for countless clubs/organisations throughout the world that invest in education, giving less fortunate children the opportunities they need and deserve so that they in turn become leaders who go on to influence and affect the lives of others.
We already have a glimpse into the future of children like Bintu, whose determination saw her through the day and Alieu, another Camp Visao student who scored the highest marks in his school on the Basic Education Certification Examination (BECE). And there are others....like 16 year old Abibatu, whose talent in football, if nurtured could see her doing great things or Alima, a painfully shy yet stunning young girl of 17 who could give any supermodel a run for her money, that is after completing her university degree. There are countless other examples of children whose present reassure us that their future is bright - like Kelvin Doe, a young Sierra Leonean who through his curiosity and ingenuity learned how to build batteries, generators and transmitters and has now become the youngest person to be invited to MIT's Visiting Practitioner's Program. What all these young people have in common is that they are beating the odds, setting their own paths and ensuring that their future will be so bright, it will dazzle us.
It's 2013 people - how is this year going to define you? I have decided to be the 'Girl on Fire' that Alicia Keys refers to in her song. Not because the lyrics are particularly profound but because some of the lines (.... she's got both feet on the ground, and she's burning it down, ..... she got her head in the clouds ...and she's not backing down) embody how I want to approach the coming twelve months.
During the Christmas holidays I came across an old notebook of mine....it was a red A4 notebook with the title 'Systa' and inside it were 70 odd pages of a superbly written story about a young girl who finds herself pregnant at 18 and goes through the emotions of what to do about her predicament. I have to admit that I blew me away. Although unfinished, I think this book was written either in my late teens or early 20s and it reminded me of the determination I had then, how focused I was and how much I believed that I could achieve whatever I put my mind to. Fast forward twenty or so years and the idea of writing a book is a distant thought lodged behind the banality of every day life. And yes of course I'll admit that at 18 I had little to worry about other than whether 'he' really liked me, or whether I would pass that test I studied so hard for, since then life's responsibilities have taken over. Yet that's no excuse to shuffle my way through life when there is so much potential to do something extraordinary!
I watched a documentary on Al Jazeera the other day called 'Tutu's Children' which essentially is an African-focused experiment involving twenty-five 30something-year olds from all over Africa.....men and women considered leaders in their society but leaders not in the sense of having political power but people who have achieved something and made a difference in their societies...whether in private enterprise, the not-for-profit sector or within their respective governments. I must admit I felt inspired by these young men and women who for the most part didn't see themselves as doing anything extraordinary, they simply refused to give in to apathy. From running a small business that makes African tea, to taking a stand during the Tunisian chapter of what the media refers to as the 'Arab Spring' - these men and women were making waves on their continent.
It goes without saying that our goals will differ quite dramatically depending on the contexts we live in but I'm convinced we owe it to our younger fiery selves to be more than mums, accountants, executives, lawyers, paper-pushers, we owe it to our 18-year old selves to keep on striving to do more, be more, achieve more and give back more. I was privileged to work with a group of teenagers over the holidays (who I will blog about later) and as they challenged me on almost everything I told them, I found myself smiling as I remembered that feeling of being unstoppable. One of them confidently confirmed that he wanted to become President of his country some day, and although in my mind I considered the fact that he may never achieve this noble aspiration because politics as we adults know is about a great deal more than self-belief and determination, nonetheless the old adage came to mind "Always aim for the moon, if you miss you'll land among the stars". Dreams and aspirations are not meant to be tempered with realism, that's precisely what makes them special.
I don't know about you but I've decided to view 2013 as my blank canvas, on which I intend to paint all my achievements, however small they may be. It's less about new year's resolutions that die as quickly as they're made but about taking a leaf out of the younger me's book in order to do more. At the end of the year I'd love to be able to look back and say that I did more than my job required, I inspired people, I fulfilled a goal that had been pushed to the back-burner; in spite of the adversities I faced, I refused to back down. I'm looking for inspiration from Tutu's children, the founders of WomenChangeAfrica and Visao Foundation and friends who achieve so much everyday. This Girl will be on Fire!!!
