NOT EASY

Fali Ipupa and Rael Wanjala after a #Coketudioafrica press conference.

How have you been since my last post? I’m sorry but Facebook, Twitter and mostly Instagram took all my attention. Well a little of YouTube too as I try to make a meaning out of life and as I struggle to find my identity. Take a minute and watch this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8Nn55HNMQ then get back to me with your comments.

Okay now lets go straight to what brought me here as I share my thoughts with you. I have a question. Are you a fresh graduate?  I am too and for some of us out here It is not easy.

It is not easy at all, because your script read: Get good grades, go to university, finish and get employed. Oh! You had a plan of what you are going to do after campus and you couldn’t wait to finish, those boring lectures, those assignments that to you, made no sense! Then you gave yourself a few months to do this and that, move out of your mother’s house, open a mini business! You were so ambitious, however you spent more than a month at home, applying for this job and that and twenty others but no reply! So you start doubting yourself and at this time you want to settle for anything, your dreams are not big anymore.

It is not easy I tell you, for nobody told us that growing up is not easy. Finally you get something to do, a paid internship if you are lucky , you have to wake up early every morning, cut short your beautiful sleep, the comfort of your warm bed, rush to work and sometimes you are late, you know you are behind your work schedule and therefore you have to rush through to catch up with time and deadlines.

It is not easy, when the day has been so busy, when you have been up and  down doing this and that and you are tired, very very tired. All you want to do is meet your bed, your only comfort, to nurse your sore feet and back. Sometimes your eyes are just too tired to see, not sleepy, but tired to see. But again you have to deal with traffic, and your eyes have to be alert for you don’t know who is seated next to you in that PSV, lest you are robbed of your few coins. Well you are just fresh from school so every coin matters.

It is not easy my friend, when you live one day at a time, when you are not sure about your next coin. Well yes, your parents and family are there for you, but you can’t keep asking for money. You don’t want to be comfortable with that thought and well, ain’t you old enough to make something out of your abilities and talents? So sometimes you walk home, or walk half the way so that you can save for the next day.

And then, as my very good friend Brian Okoyo says, you start wishing you were still in that cubical back in campus. When your only worry and stress was to get to class on time, to finish your assignments, to keep up with trends, to go to concerts. Those were your worries.

But then, you don’t have to worry it is not the end of the world. The struggles are there to build you, haven’t you heard that nothing comes easy? It takes time but you will get there. Ask those ahead of you, I talk to my friends, cousins, aunties and uncles who have made it and their stories inspire me to look at the positive side.

And then, do not give up, don’t relax, build yourself, if you are a communicator like me, write more articles like this to build your writing skills, there is something you can do to keep yourself up to date, something in relation to your career . Volunteer if it is possible, go back to school maybe, to help your lecturers with classes, that is also experience you know. “If you want to be great, you have to do whatever it takes”~Rael 2016 ;-).

You were not born to move with the crowd unnoticed, stand out. You have to be somebody, you have to be that black spot on a white piece of paper!