One Winter evening, as I was sited at my corner desk in the new engineering building, I suddenly felt a wind rush in and immediately stood up to fix the window blinds. The blinds had two strings to use; one was for allowing and blocking the light, and the other one was for pulling the blinds up and down — as most of you have figured by now (well — not me! Atleast, not at the time that is).
I tried pulling the strings that I believed to be for the later function to no avail. I, then, immediately felt that there might be an issue with the strings — hence why it was not working, and so I tried to do the same for the neighbouring window.
When the neighbouring window didn’t give me the response I needed, I asked for help to my fellow sited across me, and humour is that by evening all of us are pretty much tired from our research work that even he couldn’t solve my issue. Although I think because the window wasn’t so close to him, I’m guessing he didn’t feel the need to solve that problem as urgently as I did. So, finally, I concluded that it might be that it was the little folds in the strings that needed to be untied for the strings to pull up and down. And so, I wasted half an hour unfolding these ties to no avail. Ultimately, I thought well, I did my entire best, and nothing worked.
In my head, I thought (How can I, a whole engineer not be able to pull up and down window blinds?)
After a calm session on my desktop it dawned on me that “Oh, you are living in the 21st century — Google it” and so ladies and gentlemen, I did what anyone in this century does when they are stuck. I googled it. Now, please tell me they are more people out there that feel so insignificant like I did when answers are situated right on their faces.
The very first video I googled, highlighted the importance of having a different perspective on things/situations. The blinds could be moved up and down by positioning the strings and yourself in a 45 degrees angle. How much more could be done by just positioning ourselves in a different direction and not letting our common beliefs and stances weigh us down?
A narrower perspective is that of an African girl child. Positioning ourselves in the belief of a girl and not the opinions of the society about the girl, and maybe all we need to do is to position ourselves in a 45-degree angle and impact a more remarkable change in their lives. We are currently pulling up and down the society like the blinds that refused to move. At the same time, we sternly keep standing at a 90-degree perspective or the common perspective — reminding ourselves that not everything will work defined by what we see as the obvious reasons.
An African child is to be fed illustrations of the diversity story and how that idea can bring variety into her rounded everyday picture and impact her thought process. Step by step enforcing the 45- degree angle perspective to achieve a more significant impact in the deterrent African society.
My personal, diverse story started very early as I was growing up. My mother first put me in a bus to visit my aunt in the suburbs of Iringa region, Tanzania; just for me to learn Kiswahili, I probably didn’t understand it then but, her 45-degree angle perspective was on multi-languages. She took me to international schools (still not sure if that worked — Lol) and invested all her wealth into my diversity in the multiple languages to bring a more significant impact in a society that limited that diversity for her.
A young girl in modern-day; and sad to say, urban Tanzania studying in a school so public and well known like the Jangwani secondary school is still astonished to see a young female engineer working and being aware of the engineering industry work. The little and limited knowledge they have about professions, the less they aspire to be in these professions. Similar to the quote that says “What you don’t know, or haven’t heard about; you can’t dream about.”
A very bubbly friend of mine who stands for my why’s once sent me this quote and it said “Girls need role models because imagining she can be anything is just the beginning but seeing that she CAN make all the difference
Let our 45-degree perspective be about diversifying ourselves from our chairs and workplaces to our societies and making a difference for the future.
Thank you for taking this journey with me as I uncover different ways of storytelling from everyday life events — Neema.
