Teachers are Mentors

The other thing I did not want to become besides a 'stay-at-home' housewife was a teacher. I often wondered where they found motivation to get up every day and follow the routine of preparing their students to be greater than them. School for me was just a place I needed to breeze through on my way to the real world and I felt rather sorry for teachers who had to keep going to school for the rest of their working life. Looking back I marvel at their patience as they prepared us for the future. Many of them served until retirement, content with an unglamorous, low paying job and simply happy with imparting skills so that others might have a successful life. I could not shake off what one teacher advised my class before releasing us into the world. "Try not to make your first home in a 'boys-quarters' because if you get comfortable in a one-room home you are likely to think that you have reached your full potential when you move into quarters with only two rooms." He was simply telling us to reach for the stars, to aim as high as possible and not to put undue limits on our potential. I understood that he used the one-room home as a metaphor, but once I finally had my own income and went house hunting, studio apartments were not an option.

At 50 I know that sometimes role models and mentors enter and leave our lives unannounced. They capture our imagination and influence our dreams whilst going about their modest jobs - without even trying.

— feeling grateful.

Read & Learn

Advances in information technology over the last few decades are amazing particularly for those of us born before a computer became a household item. Kids today cannot fathom how we managed even elementary research without an Internet search engine. I sometimes wonder too. Carlill vs. Carbolic Smokeball Co. the first contract case I needed to study in order to complete an assignment, was missing from the University library! Someone had selfishly plucked out the pages from the large case book and thus started my journey into the world of 'xeroxing.' You sought out someone who had a copy of the case you were studying and photocopied, or more than likely, wrote down every word in a notebook because photocopies cost money and we were broke. Somehow we stumbled through law school and graduated without the help of the World Wide Web. Now with Google, Yahoo, Maps, Wiki this and Wiki that, I get baffled when kids can't spell a word or find a place on a map.

At 50 I know that all the advances in information and communication technology still haven't figured out a way to imprint knowledge on your mind without your participation. So no matter how fast the Internet, we still learn the good old fashioned way: Read and study - hard !

— feeling accomplished.

Raising Activists

Growing up in a household with five brothers, patriarchy was not just an abstract concept and I became conscious of differing gender roles early in life. My father made all the important decisions and mother always complied even when she grumbled about the decision. My brothers stepped out of their beds and left their shorts literally squatting in the place they walked out of them leaving mother and I to make their beds and tidy their rooms. In academics my father expected me to perform as well as any boy, but outside school I was not to climb trees or get into fights, instead I was to complete my homework and help my mother in the kitchen where the boys were not allowed in to 'disturb us!' She never spoke up but I grew up 'feeling' my mother's dissatisfaction with the status quo. Naturally, I rebelled, whenever I could. Today am a female head of household and still rebelling against the 'traditional' upbringing of the girl child - and I think am doing a good job. My younger daughter recently told me she can do anything a boy can do 'and do it in heels.' I smiled with satisfaction, happy that I have contributed to a new generation of activists to challenge gender inequality and all injustice the way I did in my childhood, youth and adult life.

At 50 I know that our upbringing shapes our values and who we become in life. My mother may not have been a role model for defending her own rights but her quiet grumbling unwittingly laid the foundation for my loud activism against many forms of injustice later in life.

— feeling proud.

Frenemies

If you have heard of BFFs then you most likely have heard of 'Frenemies,' They seek you out for friendship and cling like leeches waiting for opportunities to poison your thoughts and to watch you fail. The childhood friend who let you play with her toys when you visited her home but laughed the hardest when boys bullied you at school. The teenage 'partner in crime' who helped you sneak out of your home for a disco and then smirks with glee when she hears you were caught trying to get back in. The bombshell whose looks attract serious stares from all the guys yet she will do anything to ruin the relationship with your one true love. The one who brings the most expensive gift to your baby shower and spends the evening talking about the high mortality rate in your country's labor wards. Oh, they also come crying louder than the bereaved when they hear you have been laid off at work or that your spouse is cheating with a mutual friend. They will of course be on hand to tell you when your kids are hanging out with the wrong crowd. All in the name of friendship!

At 50 I know that 'Frenemies' may come into our lives by chance but we keep them there by choice.  Don't wait another day before you cut them out of your life ...for good.

— feeling relieved.

Friends Forever

They wear pendants shaped in half the heart and the other half is gifted to their BFF. The deal is sealed - Best Friends Forever! Three months later the pendant is no longer a favorite but now your daughter is wearing bracelets of the same bright color as the neighbor's niece and they are all emblazoned with the magic letters: 'BFF.' So you ask discreetly, 'whatever happened to so and so?' The answer is not as ominous as you thought: New school = New BFF! A look at the list of BFFs over the years is like a kaleidoscopic tour of who your daughter is and how she has become who she now is: A little bit of Monica in her hair, a little bit of Jessica in her walk, a little bit of Erika in her talk, a little bit of Sandra in her mood...

At 50 I know that forever is a very, very long time and a close look at past BFFs will help you understand your values over the years. If you want to know which of those values you really treasured, the ones that have survived the test of time, then look at your friends now.

— feeling loved.

Humble Pie

When things come easily in life we start getting cocky. Take this girl for example. At four she is taken to school to pass time long before kindergartens and pre-schools were invented in her land. She passes P.1 and by age 11 she finds herself in secondary school. Before her 18th birthday she has completed High School and goes to University as the best Arts student in the country. Then the real lessons in life begin but she chooses to ignore them. Before she graduates she is a teenage mother. At age 23 she has a Bachelors and Masters degrees, plus two postgraduate diplomas. So she is academically astute but is flunking really badly at motherhood - not that you would notice! She focuses on her success and expects more good things in life. And they come -a good job, a nice car and what appears like a good life. She moves from job to job and can't understand why people complain about unemployment. It all seems so easy. She quits working for others and tries going it alone in business. Flunks! She knows she was born to succeed and if business is not her thing she can always do other things. She tries politics and flunks! Wait a minute, what happened to Lady Luck? There must be a lesson in all this flunking but Missy is too cocky to acknowledge it because you see, she is not and never was a loser. The problem is not her: it's the business environment and the political environment because all things being equal she should be winning at anything and never losing. Right? Nope: wrong. After deep reflection she finally acknowledges the nagging truth that life is not all about her. That there are other in the equation. Kids, Family, Friends - and she needs to take time off from tooting her own horn and look at the people she has shoved aside to prove her worth. She struggles with admitting that she may be wrong about being 'The Lucky One.'

Life gives you many opportunities to learn humility but each time I have encountered a lesson in humility it still feels like a smack across the face.

At 50 I know that one of the hardest lessons to learn, even for the brightest of them all, is humility. Do yourself a favor and learn something each time you eat humble pie.

— feeling bummed.

The Golden Years

The golden years are not a period that we consciously live through and celebrate as they happen. The problems of the day occupy our minds as we go about our mundane tasks and dream of a brighter future. I remember a happy childhood when I walked to school through a green lush valley that today is unrecognizable because it is a built-up city suburb. My biggest worry was stepping on a snake in the tall grass or being late for the first bell. During my youth we enjoyed visiting cinemas that were accessible for a paltry price and discos that blared loud music during the day avoiding night time when a dictator's wolves hounded innocent citizens. As college students we crawled the bars at night enjoying our first taste of freedom from parental rules and only worried about finding a clean, working toilet during a water crisis. Then we became adults and could finally pay our bills at proper restaurants. We traveled abroad and returned to tell tales of far away places but we also spent a lot of time planning friends' funerals and wary of navigating a love life without catching HIV/AIDS. One day, maybe, I will look at these years when am working in a war-torn country and think, 'Yeah! Those were the days!

At 50 I know that nostalgia comes after surviving imminent threats long enough to remember the good times that were blurred by the dangers of a particular time and place. So perhaps these are your golden years, embrace them!

— feeling nostalgic.