A letter to my 18 year old self

Dear 18 year self,

I am still trying to find the right words to appeal to you, to find a connection to you. A decade is yet to lapse and yet so many things have happened; so much has changed that I find it hard to recognize you. If you saw me today you probably won’t like me but may be, you would be proud of me.

First of all I want you to know I don’t hate you, you are a part of me, you are the reason I am who I am today. I have no regrets whatsoever for anything that happened up to the point I sat down to write this letter. You are a young brave woman who is torn between her past and her future, the confusion you are going through, the pain of not being able to let the world know, the pressure building up in you day after day is just temporary. Some day, it will be just a story, one that you can use to encourage others.

I know you swore to yourself that your 18^th birthday will be your turning point; a time you will start a new chapter in your life and leave behind the old notorious you. You want to be what everybody thinks you are; in your own way you think it will make you a better person. May be it will transform you to the better. But what you don’t realize is you were not born to be like everyone else, you were born to stand out of the crowd and I wish you didn't try to fit in. My dear, life is too short to waste any amount of time wondering what other people think of you. What is important is not others opinion of you but your opinion to yourself.

I hate to see you wet your pillows with tears every night. I hate the pain you keep inside yourself. You have to find a way to let it out or it will destroy you. I know you have hit several rough patches in your life, we all do and this will not be the last, that is why you have to find a way get it out of your system. If you must know Pain is a part of human life and cannot be escaped. At times it will get worse and you will feel as though someone has stabbed your fresh wound over and over again, something I wish you could do without in your life. Well, the trick is to keep living one day at a time and eventually it gets pushed into the background of your life. And then one day you know you are okay, yeah may be it will still hurt but you will realize the details of the horrible past have begun to fade away.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your mind. You really have no idea how powerful and creative you can be. I don’t know why you admire people who are so inferior to you. You have a lot better and you could do so much more than what you think you have. I want you to find your own voice, to be what you really want to be. I want you to be the best you could ever be, because the longer you wait to begin the less likely you are to find it all and enjoy it. When you find your path, you should not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointments, defeat and despairs will come, but they are tools God uses to show us the way. Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone’s life, don’t let the noise of others drown out your inner voice; always have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Freedom; it is something you have been hoping to feel when you are 18. Do you feel it?? No you don't! To tell you the truth, you don't feel it  because you still don’t know what freedom is. My dear, freedom is not found in money like many people think, freedom is not in a piece of paper, it is not in the liberty to express your opinions or thoughts or believes like your civics teacher had taught you. Freedom is not even outside our prisons. Freedom begins with the decision to be what you really are. True freedom is found in righteousness. Until you understand this you will not know what freedom is. 

Love; I know you keep saying you can’t love a person and probably you will marry just because it is what the society expects of you. But do you know what I think?? I think you are scared of giving your heart to someone because you are scared of being hurt. Here is what I tell you, Expose yourself to your deepest fear, after that, fear has no power over you anymore and you are free. You will be cheated on, lied to and betrayed by those you love the most. Broken hearts are inevitable in the path to love and the only way of avoiding them is by deciding not to love at all. But it also means you will miss the joy of loving and being loved. It is like removing your own eyes not to see bad things that happen in this life.  When you find your prince you will be glad you endured all the pain to get to him, you will be capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared to even think because love is the key to understand all the mysteries.

In all this don’t expect anyone else to support you but yourself. All these people around you might be willing to support you but you never really know when either of them might run out. Trust me; you don’t need anyone else to bring a new kind of life light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to discover and make the best out of it. All you have to do is make a decision to be true to yourself. The only person fighting you at this moment is your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.

Last but not least, memories are dangerous. They will pull you back to your past every time you try to escape it, and every time they will weigh heavier. Each day they will drag you down a little bit further. Find a way to make good memories and you won’t have to deal with the bad ones. Be careful with those who advice you but be patient with those who supply it.

By the way, do not miss use your beauty, not that you will understand but beauty is power, the same way money is, the same way a gun is. 20 years from now you will look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibilities laid before you, how fabulous you were but it will be too late.

Love you

me

P.S Don’t you worry about the future after all the real problems you will face are part of the things that never crossed your worried mind.

An Angel Came Along……………….

Some men scour the depths of the world to find that very person that gives them purpose to live, a shoulder so big and soft to lean on. I don’t know about you and quite frankly I disregard your opinions pronto. The 20 something years I have been in existence has taught me more than what I could have anticipated in another life. A few years back, if you told me that there were angels in human form I would be the first to scoff at your ignorance and seemingly blurred way of thinking. Don’t get me wrong, am not about to increase your levels of disdain for me by insisting that there are some humans who are actually angels. On the contrary, I wish to take you to a different line of thought; one skewed towards a once in a lifetime experience as opposed to the largely held views of the masses.

I had an accidental and chance meeting with an angel in the form of a human being; a woman of character, intelligence, poise, beautiful heart and above all, the most amazing woman I have ever crossed path with. Don’t get me wrong, I would repeat the same words even if a gun were pointed on my head. I don’t know at what point or instance I became this lucky. All I know is that every aspect of my life changed the moment she walked through the doors of my life. Something clicked in me, I was reborn anew, I felt happiness first hand and the very meaning of true friendship had a new definition in my life. I have always believed in the mantra that things happen for a reason; that nothing in this world happens in a vacuum. 

I don’t know why it had to be now, or why it had to be yesterday or whether I have to constantly live with my life long held fears. What I know beyond any reasonable doubt is that I have had a chance to taste true happiness, to spend time with someone who is simply out of this world, a beautiful heart, an amazing companion, the very definition of true happiness. To some, this might just be someone drunk with love talking. They don’t fathom how a person could be so brutally honest about a mere mortal. To them, these are signs of a sycophant of love, the very antithesis of reason.

To me, someone I am easy to be with, someone I don’t have to live a lie with, someone I can tell anything without having to think of the proper way of doing it, someone I can be someone more like myself with is my ultimate companion. I have been through some really difficult moments, moments that defy logic, moments that make ordinary mortals desert you and pass a death sentence on you. I have been at the lowest, I have wanted to give up many a times, I have been distant but she has always been there despite all my faults, my fears, my hallucinations and sometimes utter stupidity. She has exhibited the kind of love you don’t find in mere mortals, the kind of support you read in fictional books, and the kind of encouragement you only find in scriptures. She has literary gone beyond expectation and defied every reasonable thing I have ever held. 

I dare say again she is an angel: not because of her looks, her adorable smile or her infectious smile. She is an angel because her very existence personifies something out of the ordinary, something amazing and beautiful, something worth everything, something you don’t get every day. Yonas is her name-a great woman.

The untold story....

Dear diary,

For a very long time in my life I used to be this lonely person. With a good smile on my face I could deceive everyone around me that I was happy and okay but in reality, it I wasn’t even close to knowing what real happiness looked like. While my friends would talk everything through, analyze or even hypothesize, I knew deep in me that my life was not like their lives. I was different, lonely and a part of me that had nothing to do with the physical appearance was already dead. I remember there were days that I would get up, shower and get on with my life as if everything was okay but there were also days when I would like awake in bed wondering what was the point of me getting out of bed and pretend to be like everyone else.

With time I developed a hobby, every night I would sit on my bed, write a letter to Jesus, telling him everything about my life and how I feel. Most times I would write them with tears streaming down my face because it was the kind of loneliness that ate me up from the inside. Let no one lie to you, It is an awful thing to be battling with yourself because you feel you can’t not talk about it. Deep down you know you can never win the battle yet you fight it day after day and it wears you down and even if you try to ignore it the energy it takes to ignore it exhausts you. At the end of every letter I would say a prayer and burn it. I don’t know if Jesus ever received any of my letters but what I do know is it did help me feel better.

They say life is what you make of it but I think life is what you face. I remember how I used to hold on to my depression and loneliness because I was so scared that the worst part of me could actually be the whole of me, until one day he came along. I had never thought of myself as anything but plain, ordinary and sometimes a dead walking person until he came along. The way he looked at me, he pulled something out of me that I never knew existed. When I wanted to hide he would urge me forward, when I thought I wasn’t good enough he made me believe I was and every time I felt I was anything but pretty he would convince me that I am beautiful. Being around him made me feel special in a way I cannot explain. These are some of the good memories in my life that I would want to hold on forever though with them comes the pain of Knowing all that was done yesterday.

Today am here alone and lonely like a ghost, it feels like am in the worst place that I was before he came to my life... am like a girl who is lost in space and all the effort she makes to connect to the earth she once lived and enjoy end up in vain. I am like the girl that you see in a photograph with a big smile who will soon be gone and erased from the history of this world like a traitor in the Soviet Union. It’s funny how he is the one broken yet I am the one who needs saving. Sometimes it feels like this will never end, it feels like the world would never stop crushing me until there is nothing left of me.

Dear diary, I wonder if anyone around me can tell just from looking at me that am the sum total of my pain that the wound in me is so raw and extreme that it might be terminal. I wonder if they can tell how lost I am without him, how soulless I have become, how I have become like a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere, how I long for him to show me how to live again. I am all these things and am nothing at all. There are times when I feel like I cannot maintain the facade any longer that I may start to show through and I wish he would just tell me nothing has changed.

You know, the worst part of loving someone is that there will always be things you can’t protect them from. You finally realise there is something worse than dying and its having something happening to them because It does not matter how much or how closely you keep your eye on things because there will always be things that you cannot control. The people you love can go missing right before your very eyes and there is nothing you can do about it. But again this does not mean one should not try to fight for his/ her happiness?  If everyone who thought they might fail didn’t try where would we be today??

I think about him and everything we have shared every hour of everyday, part of me is scared that there will come a day when he does not feel the same way. When he has somehow forgotten what we have shared and dreamed of together....

3 Lessons Employers Can Learn From Game Of Thrones

Post by +Jackie Kalyonge

Let me start by saying that if you haven’t watched this epic show or haven’t watched the latest episodes then you shouldn’t read this; it contains spoilers.

I must say that I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones mostly because the plot has plenty of romance, sex, backstabbing, sworn and broken allegiances, rumor mongering and whispers. The recently ended season had a twist of events; some we wished for, others were unexpected while others were just heartbreaking. But as I reflect back on it, I realized that the regal warriors and warlocks in this captivating TV series could actually teach employers a thing or two lessons about being a good employer. The series draws clear lines between democracy and dictatorship and manipulation and influence.

1. Being A Bully Gets You Nowhere

Ever met that employer who thinks his position of power gives him the right to demand his employees to do whatever he wants? He loves controlling his employees by using fear. His employees are forever walking on eggshells around him; you never know when you might tick him off and what the consequences will be.
In Game of Thrones, there was a character that we all loved to despise; Joffrey Baratheon. Frankly, I wished the little retard a slow painful death. He was a bully and would have done everything to make sure that anyone who crossed him suffered greatly.
He rarely listened to anyone including his own mother. He was a very ineffective leader and as such was despised by everyone. His irrationality made him start a war that he couldn’t end. With his cruelty, it’s a miracle he made it to the fourth season-but then, someone who couldn’t stand his sadistic ways poisoned him.
So what can we learn from Joffrey Baratheon? First, being a bully gets you nowhere. Your employees will only tolerate working for you because they need the money but once they find something better, even if it pays much less, they will bolt.
Second, being a bully makes you less of a team player. Your coerciveness will only doom your organization to failure. And do not be surprised if one of your employees takes you down with them on their way out the door.

2. Being An Inspiration Increases Productivity

So you may not be good at accounting and you’re not very good at writing your own speeches but nobody cares because you know your strengths. A good employer uses his strengths (and other people’s as well) to steer the organization in the right direction. He knows his weaknesses but he does not let them deter him from achieving the organization’s goals.
Tyrion Lannister portrays the characteristics of an inspiring employer very well. Despite the fact that he is a dwarf, he uses his sense of humor and charm to win over the ladies and to wiggle his way through dangerous situations. Despite his petite form, he has proven that he can still have a huge impact.
For instance, he led his men in the Battle of Blackwater while the King, Joffrey Baratheon, ran to hide with the women. He inspires the men with his words knowing full well that his small stature would present him with a serious disadvantage in battle.
Tyrion Lannister teaches us that employees will naturally put their best foot forward and become more productive when an employer makes them feel like they belong in the organization and they serve a purpose. Employers who focus on their strengths rather than compensate for their weaknesses lead more effectively.

3. Democracy May Earn You Respect

A democratic employer does things that benefit not only for the organization but also the employees. They step up and do what needs to be done. They know that acquiring the title of CEO is not enough; they need to earn the respect and loyalty of their employees.
Daenerys Targaryen portrays the democratic employer very well. She has earned her reputation as the Breaker of Chains. She frees slaves from their masters and urges them to follow and fight for her not by force but out of free will.
So there you have it, the three lessons an employer can learn from Game of Thrones. As an employer, do you have any of the above three traits? Do you agree with my list or just like Jon Snow, “I know nothing?” I’d love to know what other lessons you think employers can learn from the show by commenting below.

I weep for the future generations of my country...

Dear diary,

It is heart breaking, the fact that most Tanzanians cannot reach the international literacy average. Yet year after year our education slips down the list of important matters to be addressed head on. For a long time now I have tried to look back trying to pin point the exact moment when our education system started to fall apart. When it did become a cancer that is threatening the future of our nation and no one cares to find the cure for it. I am not sure when, but what breaks my heart even more is the fact that our leaders would rather sit in the parliament coming up with theories rather than action plans to change the situation

 Perhaps it’s a just “math” and other science subjects that most Tanzanians have never been good at. Perhaps it is the teaching language in our schools or maybe it is the syllabus we use. These are just some of the many opinions our leaders use as an excuse as to why students performances is becoming poor and poor. What no one seems to notice is; low performance is not limited to science subjects nor is it limited to secondary schools where the media for communication is English. As hard as it might be for anyone to believe; there are pupils who finish primary school and pass their national exams without knowing how to write or read. The question is.... how did they do the exam and pass?? Apologists will never get tired of finding excuses as to why this and that happened, but what they don’t seem to get it the “why” is not as important as “how and what” can be done to improve the situation.

Those who went to school on the 1990s or even before that would agree with me, education used to be important back then, teachers used to be more committed to educate students than doing businesses to sustain their families, schools used to be places where one will gain more knowledge on development, growth or new invention. But now days the education is more about cramming and passing exams. Everyone seems to forget education is not about passing exams but what you remain with after you have graduated. Our government is bent on making exams even easier for students to pass instead of improving the education system and methods. It is more determined in producing graduates who have big certificates but  little brains...

Dear diary, I weep for the future generations of this great nation, the generation that the government would opt to remark national exams to improve the results (does it even make sense? I mean how do you remark the exam to improve the results? Put a tick where there was a cross before?).  I weep for those children of ours who will be taught in Swahili from primary school to higher learning institutions, our poor government is limiting their employment opportunities to a country that is already flooded with unemployment... oooh what is even worse is their second option ; teaching everything in English form primary school to higher learning institutions, using teachers who cannot express themselves in English, the teachers for never passed form four National Exams because English language was too difficult for them to build the foundation of language.

I weep for those children who go to school to use a book that says 2x5= 25 and the teacher are too busy to notice since they are busy selling candies to students so that they can get food for their families. I weep for  more than half of all Tanzania children the will be chosen to join ward secondary school because these schools have no teachers, no classes, no laboratories, no libraries and yet they are expected to compete in the competitive economy of East Africa. They are expected to be the leaders who will take this nation to the next level.

Can’t anyone else see that the principle reason for decline and fall of our education is ignorance?  Our education is ignored; we have built more schools but we have fewer classrooms and no teachers. No laboratories and no libraries, yet the government will help to improve science education by giving full sponsorship (in higher learning Institutions) to science students. The question that I keep asking myself is, if a house has a really poor foundation can you improve it by roofing it with the most expensive roof?? And By the way who are these science students that will be sponsored, are they children from the poor family who never knew what a chemistry teacher look like or are they the children of the wealthy part of the country who went to study abroad and came back to sit for national exams??

Can’t anyone see the few teachers we have in these school are ignored to the fullest?? They are the only people who can change the future of this nation yet they have no salaries, no houses to live or even means of transport to get to work? Can’t anyone see that one teacher cannot teach a class of 200 students and make each and every one of them understand what he/she is teaching?

The more I listen to our leaders the more I weep for the future generations; all suggestions to improve education are based on selfishness, little thought for the future of children of the poor. I fear for the future of this nation, a nation that was once united being torn apart between the haves and the have nots because of our education system. The haves will send their children to expensive private schools( almost all our leaders already do this), to get the first grade education while the others will be stack in ward secondary school where there is basically nothing to learn for more than half the time you are in school. The children of the rich will come back; rule the millions of other young people who are alienated and with no hope of improving their children’s future.  

I see two societies, living side by side, in the same country, one preying over the other with no mercy. I see the foreigners coming to our countries taking all the good jobs in our own country while majority of us remain unemployed due to poor qualification. I see limited thinking, low exposure and poor decision making that might put this nation in a great danger....... I see the beginning of the end.

Powerless.....

Dear diary,

They say love is not a surge of passion but it is a choice to commit to something or someone no matter what life throws in your direction. It is the ability to keep making the same choice again and again, day in day out…. Year after year about that one person because your life is so much better with him in it that all the challenges seem like nothing. But even with all this there is nothing more heart breaking than seeing the one person that you love and care for the most, your reason for living and existing sinking into intense depression and pain, knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

Yeah I know there is a war inside each and every one of us, sometimes it is the only thing that keeps us alive and gives us courage to go on but at other times it threaten to destroy us completely. But I can not help to hate the helplessness feeling, the power less feeling I get when I watch the people I really love and care about being hurt and know there is nothing I can do about it. I want to help, to easy their pain to make them feel better….. but it like being tied to a chair forced to watch horrible things happening to the people you love.

You can feel their pain in you, because part of you is connected to them and their pain is your pain. Long time ago someone wise told me that, growing up is all about getting hurt and then getting over it. We get hurt and over it again and again but each time we learn something different, each time we come out a little stronger. Everyone is down to pain because pain is for the living, pain is a part of life, it’s a part of a big puzzle, the deep music the great game.

Even though there are times when we are powerless to prevent pain and misfortune to the ones we love, there should be no time when we fail to make them feel better and give them the courage they need to get through the difficult times by reminding them we will be walking with them through this difficult and rough road. Because at the end of the day each and every one of us have their own road to travel, we can walk with our loved ones on their rough road but no one can ever walk it for them even if we wanted to.

At times life can take unexpected twists and turns, sometimes through sheer happenstance and at times through calculated decisions. In all these some lives form a perfect circle, one that can easily be understood while others take a shape in ways we can never predict or even understand. Loss, fear of the unknown, being powerless has been a part of my journey to where I am today. But in all this, it has shown me what is precious, what is worth fighting for and what is not. There are times I held on to hate because I had nothing left to hold on to… there are times when I hated myself for everything that was happening to me. But in all this I have learned so much and today I am here to tell everyone who is going through a tough time that,

No matter what happens today, no matter how bad is seems, life goes on and there will be a better tomorrow eventually. I want you to know you are not alone in all this…. You will never be alone. I know it is difficult and it can seem unrealistic but I want you to promise yourself that you will be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To focus on the good thing that life has given you, to always count your blessing not your misfortunes. Promise to talk health, happiness and prosperity to everyone on everyday of your life, to think, pray and hope for the best and only the best in your life. To live in faith even when everything seems to be impossible. To be the winner in this fight because you were born to win.

P.S I love you

I want to know you better

“The talk”, is the name I gave to the conversation we had on Sunday afternoon. Somehow it made me feel so close to you yet i felt like I needed to know you more. As I sit here in my room, thoughts of you keep coming to my mind and for the first time I feel like there is are so many things I need to know about you. Yeah, I do know you but I need to know you better

I know it may sound crazy but I want to know about all the girls you have ever had a crush on, the girls that you loved but for some reasons you could not bring yourself to admit the truth. I want you to tell me about all the girls you have been in love with from the moment you knew the meaning of the word love. I want you to tell me why they loved you and why you loved them. I want to know why it ended and if you have any regrets.

Tell me about the very first day you felt the joy of being in love, tell me if you will risk everything to fight for that kind of joy in your life, to fight the one person who makes you feel so special and needed, if you will risk looking like a fool just to fight for your love, for your dreams and for the adventures of being alive. I want to know if you believe in happily ever after.

I know what you do for a living, I know what you enjoy dong in your free time but i want to know what you ache for, and if you have ever dared to dream of meeting you heart longings. I want to know if you can disappoint other people to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your heart desires. If have a road map on how to get there, if you already know how you will celebrate the achievements of your desires and who you will want to be next to you when you get there.

I want to know what the word “home” means to you. Tell me about the longest time you had to be far from home, tell me how it happened and how you felt. If you missed your home and dreamed of the day you will be back. I want to know what you missed most and why you missed it.

You asked me what I thought of your names and I told you. But now I want to know what you think of your names and more importantly I want to know if you ever lie awake at night thinking of the day your mother pronounced your names for the very first time, the joy in her eyes, the love she had for you. I want to know if you have ever wondered why she gave you those names. I also want to know what you think of my name and what came to your mind when you first heard it.

Tell me about the very first day you felt the weight of hate; tell me what exactly happened on that day. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or you have become shriveled and closed for fear of further pain. Tell me about the person or a thing that brought all this pain to you, how you overcame it in the end. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

Tell me about the very first day you knew that babies were not actually bought but they came out of their mother’s womb, that they are the result of sex between their parents. Tell me about the day you knew boys and girls were different and if you were curious to know what was beneath girls’ skirts. Tell me how you satisfied that curiosity.

I want to know what you do when you are alone. Tell me what you do when you’re lonely; tell me about the very first time you felt like you were alone and nobody really cared bout you. I want to know if you like the company you keep during the empty moments.

What do you think of mistakes? What is the biggest mistake you have ever made? Do you still regret it or did something good come out of it? Tell me about you biggest failure, did it make you feel like you were not good enough or did it encourage you to work hard? I want to know if you can live with failure mine or your own.... I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone to do what needs to be done to feed the children.

Lastly, I want to know what you fear most and why you fear it.