Nostalgically

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by an online radio station…..I answered most questions without the slightest hint of uncertainty, until the one question I would linger on for more than what seemed like an eon was asked.

They asked me what my most memorable moment in my music career was. Well, that seems like an easy one for most people, but being the melchol that I am (a sanmel if you ask my family), a hard to please perfectionist, I paused, searching for anything grand in the archives of my mind. Finally a light bulb went on and voila an idea struck hard like lightning. I went back to the year 2010 December, where for more than a month, every Saturday I taught a group of hungry- for-music teenagers at an NGO called Stadi za Maisha. 

Teaching music is what I do all day long…in fact once to illustrate a term used in music performance, “staccato”, to my mentee, I was forced to apply the brakes of my car at specific interludes to drive the point homeJ .That said, my experience at the NGO would become the platform for my love of music in community work. You would think that having studied Community Development at the University level would give me the much needed desire to go and work in any community, but it did not. True learning I believe happens out of class, when we are tested with real life situations.

They say you cannot have your cake and eat it, but I ate my cake with a very big spoon (licked my plate and went for more) There began my journey of a thousand steps and beautiful memories, of falling in love again and again, of cheating life out of its best and then starting all over again. Every weekend morning was literally the stuff dreams are made of, but from this dream I never awoke. 

There was the answer the interviewer needed but now to put it in a language he could understand (everyone knows the heart speaks gibberishJ) ….but lucky for me, being the sanmel my family says I am, I was able to come up with something coherent and just like that the interview was over.

Passion can never be bought. You either have it or you don’t. Unfortunately, we have bought into the lie that we can substitute passion for money and live as underachievers, as long as we are paid large sums. This has left many people disgruntled and eventually reverting back to what they should have done in the first place. I also believe that you can earn from your passion, you can perfect an art or science so well that your value goes up. Till this day my students from Stadi za Maisha call me for life and music advice. I must have done something right while teaching there. I hope that it’s that I injected hope in their hearts. That is the legacy I want to leave in my community- HOPE and PASSION.