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.
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