‘Alright everyone, Cameras rolling in 5,4,3,2,1…”
The room was as chilly as a mid July morning in the Highlands of Kenya, yet I could feel the sweat on my brow. My impeccably ironed shirt was beginning to stain with my sweat in unprecedented parts. I strained my eyes on to the computer camera as instructed by an enthusiastic accented producer at Al Jazeera TV somewhere in Doha, Qatar.
Thanks to the power of technology I didn’t need to be in the desert country. I just happened to be in Chicago, USA, as one among a dozen or so rigorously selected young visionaries from around the developing world. Not just that, out of said hope-carriers, I was now one of 3 who would represent the group on this popular TV program. The African show host, whose grasp of English could only have been manufactured in an elite journalism school, would interview us about Africa, Youthfulness, the future, technology and entrepreneurship. We after all, had come up with various brilliant innovations that promised to change the developing world as we knew it.
My parents wouldn’t get to see it. There was no way they were going to catch Al Jazeera from the slopes of the Aberdare ranges. My siblings sacrificed much needed sleep to catch the show at an ungodly hour back home. How could they miss? Not only was I the first one in a long line of known relatives to venture this deep into the land of the venerable White man, I had done in it in spectacular fashion, as a winner of a Pan-African innovation competition. And now here I was, my brilliance on full display on an internationally renowned TV channel.
My time had come.
This wasn’t the last time I would be showcased on popular Media as a revolutionary thinker and doer of great things. My father, bless his heart, has kept a copy of every newspaper article that mentioned my exploits in the rocky mountains of earthly achievements. I would stand in multiple stages to receive personalized plaques from people bearing names that ended with multiple acronyms. There was a time in my greatness chasing life when I had the luxury of accepting Awards in absentia like a Hollywood rock-star with better things to do.
Here’s the reality of life though; with every rise there is a fall. With every win, a loss. The yin yang of life if you may. The divine balancing act meant to keep us humble.
The year must have been 2016, somewhere towards the Christmas season. As everyone prepared to be merry, and those irritatingly jolly Christmas tunes were cropping up everywhere your ears tuned into, I was nursing a stark realization that I was about to admit my first business failure.
This would have been bad enough by itself, given I had given just under 3 years of my life building this business while working a full time job. You see, failure has relatives, and when she comes, they come along for the ride too. One eager relative was a cumulative personal debt that was enough to make any sane person develop an instant migraine. It would take me about 8 years and supernatural stamina to make it through both the heartbreak and the debt it came with.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What they don’t say is it also makes you stoic. The child in you dies a little, or a lot. The realist in you steps in, ushering the optimist to an obscure corner. Faith becomes elusive, hope following closely on her heels. They don’t tell you about the wound that needs healing, the hardened heart that takes the unnatural form of stone. Yes, you are stronger, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.
You question an ungrateful world that hoisted you on its shoulders during the good times, yet abandoned you in times of strife, moving on to the next shiny 20 something year old. You harbor resentment for partners who abandoned ship the moment they sighted the iceberg, and left you a lone captain on the Titanic. Trust becomes an expensive currency. You are tempted to embrace fate, the inevitability of death, and the futility of any effort to dent the world. Yes, you descend deep into an abyss of despair.
What it takes to triumphantly rise again becomes a story by itself.
