Loud and Proud

Loud and Proud

I am the first born child in a family of four. However, this was only the official family. I later learned that my father had five other unofficial children that were much older than the official children (children from wedlock). Those children hated the official children with so much venom and went to great lengths to make my mother and her children’s life miserable and difficult. Why is this relevant to my journey, you must be asking. Hold your horses, my story is just beginning.
Well right from an early age, when I learnt of the existence of the ‘siblings who did not like us’ and looked at my mother’s expressionless face as she went about raising her children and preparing them for the ‘big bad world’ I decided there and then that I would be a lawyer. I wanted to speak out for the rights of abused and disgraced women, women who had to look after the children of their husbands and yet day after day were insulted and debased by the husbands and their relatives. I must say that my father was not a violent man but he passively or ‘maningly’ ignored the taunts and abuse that were heaped on his wife.
The fire to be a lawyer burnt strong within me and I sought career guidance that would lead me to that path. However, destiny has a way of ensuring that you walk the right path, the path where you will sow and reap the most fruit, the path that destinies one for bigger things. Alas I was not to become a lawyer. Upon my entry to the university, I was allocated to the mass communication class and begrudgingly took my first steps as a journalist. Distraught with misery, I remember very little else from my first few lectures, apart from the resounding words ‘the power of the pen must never be underestimated’. I later came to love the profession with a passion and have learn't so much from the words and images that are espoused by the media and through the media.
Indeed it is by the power of the pen, stroke of the key board, word of mouth (oh the so many guises of the powerful word) that I came to learn of World Pulse and the amazing journey and rich experiences that are shaping the lives of so many women the world over. I was so inspired to join World Pulse by a colleague of mine, known as Grace Ikirimat, with whom we share a passion to uplift the lives of women around us that are being trampled on by society, by culture, by the legal system and even by their own governments.
I pledge to use my association, inspiration and learning from World Pulse to brighten and improve the lives of women around me, by listening to their stories, sharing their experiences, exploring untapped potential and together learn how to celebrate full womanhood every day of our lives