It’s arguably inherent in all human beings to have difficult times in life, well apart from the proverbial flaws that no one can escape. A shoulder to lean on is what we all need in such times if not a friend or two to help us through but what is most important is the will to make it, YOUR will to make the impossible possible. I have an anyixbaby quote: Obama becoming the president of the USA is the day that scrapped the word impossible from the dictionary, think that quote is self-explanatory.
On days when am stressed out, I take it out on my friends, which is really a bad trait but you can’t blame me, they are the only my punching bags I have, well until i join some sort of gym. But on the good days when I care enough to not be mean to them, I take it out on my brandy. Recently, on one such night I went to the local kiosk to buy some lemons to fix my drink. The man I found at the kiosk did not have any lemons, he then went ahead to give me irrelevant additional information, telling me how i wasn’t going to get lemons at that time of the night. That really pissed me off because I wanted lemons, I had to have the lemons! I didn’t loose hope but walked around to the other kiosks and finally I got the lemons, Yaay! I really had the urge to go back and tell that man who discouraged me that I actually managed to get the lemons but nah, had to have that brandy.

In yet another such incidence, my best boy Chimano  and I were desperately looking for a little Macbook bag, for me! It was one of those crazy HOT Nairobi days when you just wanna strip into a pool but instead of that we were walking into almost all electronic shops in town. The only bag we found was a size lager than what we wanted. I almost settled for it until Chim told me not to. The shop attendant was going to sell it for 1,600/=bob.  He then choose to ignore the decorum of customer care if he had any at all, he went on telling us how we could never find such a bag that we particularly wanted. That really gets me temperamental, someone telling me that I can’t get something. Nway we headed on to the last shop, only to get a similar bag to the one we had just left but the right size and wants more? It was only 1,000/=bob  Chim and I were so tempted to go back to the other shop and just tell that damn attendant that we actually did get the right bag, but we were too tired to go back….

Most recently, I graduated with a degree in Journalism and Media Studies with a major in broadcast Friday the 3rd of Dec, Yaaaay! What you did not know is that I almost failed to attend the graduation ceremony because of a bunch of incompetent University of Nairobi employees. HELB had allocated me some loan that was meant to be disbursed to my account in the course of December. They had clearly stated that they would remit that stash within the month and I had all the official HELB letters but my school department idiots were refusing to freaking clear me for the ceremony! I even wrote an official letter to HELB addressing the urgency of the payment but of course they have and had to follow due process seeing am not a daughter of Ruto or some politician. Well, not that they would help Ruto’s daughter at the moment anyway…

Eventually, I ended up having written sooooooo many letters to my school director, principal, even the VC, yeah Magogha himself. I bet they never read the letters, except for the Principal who at least cared to speak to me, though he didn’t help me much, which was really disturbing because I reckon he should have been able to help me seeing as he was my last resort at that time. It was only a day to the ceremony, there I was having given up until my pal Koigi convinced me to have faith and sort that issue as HELB is a recognized institution and my apparently recognized ex-uni should have been able to realize that. I had to go to the University Senior finance officer, who later couldn’t understand why the peeps at my department were giving me problems with the clearance. He said, “It depends on who you were talking to..” All he had to do is instruct his deputy to write a letter to my director authorizing her to clear me and within a moment I was good.

I kept asking myself, why did it have to depend on who I was talking to? Shouldn’t we all be attended to the same if we are all students of the University? Well, if it wasn’t for the intervention from the finance man I wouldn’t have attended my own ceremony. Not that I highly perceived of it anyway, I was doing it for my mum but when I got there on Friday morning, I have to admit that the feeling was unexplainable, just to see all my classmates looking strange in the gowns, the flashbacks of how far we had come together, I think it was totally worth my attendance plus had a seat tagged with my name, so why would anyone want to miss that?

It could be anything, from a silly kiosk man almost making you miss to have your brandy with lime, or a silly electronics shop attendant almost making you buy a laptop bag that’s a size bigger or even incompetent ISO certified University of Nairobi employees almost making you miss your own graduation for no solid reason, name them…..

The moral of this story is, we are living in hard times. The chances that someone out there will try execute their frustration on you and deny you an opportunity or just try to discourage you is very high. Be wary of such people, never be discouraged to an extent that you fail to recognize those who are willing to help you and give you hope. If you want something, do not let anyone tell you that you can’t get it, that’s because you can (as cliche as it sounds) Obama did, I did it, so why can’t you do it? Never mind going back to those who told you that you couldn’t make it because life is a forward acceleration, just move on.

Lets preserve HOPE, sometimes it’s all we got.
Special shout out to my mum for always believing in me, Chim my sidekick, Mr. J. Okemwa, University of Nairobi deputy finance officer, Bunny, Koigi, Mwendaa and Jay for being my ROCK/s haha. That’s Chim and I on the morning of our graduation day.