Thursday, April 22, 2010

UHHMMM.....

UHHMMM....

CHANGE...the only thing in the world that doesnt change.

A lot has changed for me. And I have been too busy trying to keep up with the changes that I didn't create the time to update my blog.

Fellow bloggers, I AM SORRY.
In a few days, it would be a year since I updated my blog....SUCH A SHAME.

I am done with NYSC now. It was a wonderful experience. I met so many people, made so many friends; lost touch with many, kept a few of them. One thing they all have in common is the footprints they left behind in my heart. Footprints that I hope the mighty hands of time would not erase...even if I never see them again.

I redeployed from Kano to Lagos...leaving behind the life I could have lived, the people I would have met and the impact I had hoped to make in the lives of the Hausa children whom I had taught for one day.

"Aunty would we see you again?...Who would be our English teacher? We would miss you." One of the students had said wth a look of disappiontment, causing a lump to form in my chest. I had hoped to inspire young lives in the North, but I didn't think that one hour spent with a class of twenty boys and girls, trying hard to break away from the ignorance that was associated with their kinsmen, would make a difference.

I was wrong.

I didn't fail to notice eyes of all shapes and sizes, wide and questioning following me as I walked away from the school and hands raised naively in the air waving me goodbye.
For the first time, it occured to me that role models were what the children needed and lacked. The West and the South have abundant educated female and male role models but it isn't so in the North. In one day, I gave them something to look up to and then without even a second thought, I snatched it away.
In that moment, I had wished I could rip in pieces, my redeployment letter.

But only in that moment.

Kano bade me goodbye with her hot air and Lagos opened her arms to me with her senseless traffic. Yes, I spent four hours moving from the Local Airport Ikeja to my house in Lekki.

It took me four long and tiring months to get a place of my choice for my primary assignment. And when I finally did, it was worth the wait. Things did not go the way I had planned but eventually, they went the way that I loved.

P.S. It feels so good to be back on blogsville.