14/08/2024
REVISITING CHILDHOOD DREAMS
As youngsters, we had bigger dreams and the urge to live a chaste life was because we wanted to realize our aspirations, to look good in the sight of our people who spare no chance to castigate and lampoon wrongful lifestyle. When one is struck down by hunger, the thinking faculty is often one of the best of a kind. It's therefore not a surprise to us villagers who combed people's farms to feast on their surplus produce to survive. I can recall vividly the bigger dreams we had as children when there were fewer mentors to look up to. It's an undeniable fact that most children found in our rural settlements had fewer mentors to look up to in academics. Privilege to some of us is the fact that we had a bungalow in the community that housed government officials, and foreigners (whites) who came to look after our forest reserves, quarantine elephants and admire our African natural environment. As children, we saw these whites as demigods. No wonder whenever there was a friendly football match between natives and the whites, our "buga buga" kind of footballing varnishes to the tin air, there was the fear to tackle them hard so that they wouldn't get hurt because if they got hurt, we might be denied to watch TV at their place. Suffice me to add, that for some of us, the beginning of our civilization was because we had a TV to watch at their place. At this stage, our dreams got bigger and bigger as actors in the movies we watched instilled in us more hope to aspire higher, though bad lessons were also learnt watching the TV, that was for those who found joy dwelling in it😂. Success is of different folds, so don't be deceived that it's only those who have acquired higher academic certificates that have arrived. Many are those colleagues of mine, whom we played together as children doing better in their chosen fields of endeavours, be it business, farming, skill learnt, and the rest. Maybe if some of us knew, we would have learnt "handwork" whi
