STARTING…

Good morning, afternoon, evening from wherever on this great big world you are right now. I changed my Medium user name because of today, the day when I finally started. Last week on Tuesday, I sat in an event launching a report on leadership programs in Africa. And as every good and seemingly interactive forum, they opened the floor to questions and I put up my hand. My question was received as they do, but the responses came back heavy with pity and that well meant ‘you can still do it’ , ‘ not getting in doesn’t mean you cant do it still’, ‘ its far more inspirational to just do something and be found there charting your own course’. I remember burning with rage and mouthing the fact that I was not bitter, not with the programs. I just had a proposal for the thousands that apply and do not get in because of the curriculum design and resources of these programs. I came home that evening and took a note book and planned out what would be a month worth of articles. It has taken me six days to get here. More if for some reason I do not post this today, a statement I will not edit because thats not what my mission is about.

So what am I about?

I am a twenty-something year old African girl who is volunteering to uncover the unglamorous process of becoming a leader. I am writing because I am not a young leader, according to all the programs and leadership schools I did not get into, since I do not have a venture up and running, an initiative or a charity of my own geared towards social justice in some shape or form. There may very well be some truth in that, in the need to have proved that you can lead because you have gone some place many have not gone and have stayed doing that thing. But I am also writing because I am in the genuine pursuit of the how and the why of leadership. I am writing because the bulk of us twenty somethings, who on my continent are constantly hearing about being the leaders of tomorrow, want a truthful and clear account of how to become those leaders so that tomorrow, or today as the more passionate ones put it, is covered. I am writing because I don’ t have expert knowledge or a working formula which has left me only with a true pursuit of the process and as much as it wont mean the same prescription for all of us, the common thread that holds us together tells me that something somewhere is common for us all, process.

What am I hoping for with this?

I chose medium because it is made up of truly curious people. People trying to chart the way in such diverse fields and because of that, i think that when they do, diverse people will have process conscious people to follow. I hope to be a diary of processes, not because they have worked but because in the process is space for things that haven’t worked yet. I think all the things that do not work deserve their dignity as points of learning for those who learn. I hope to reinforce what I have come to believe that even the one in the process is a leader, not in waiting but in that moment. I hope to get access to interesting perspectives from across the world on what to look for, how to search and what to do with those findings, on cultural relativity and global principle. I hope to encounter critics and pessimists, who may attempt to crush my spirits and to use their words and actions for advancing process and discovering what is popularly the ‘when life gives you lemon make lemonade’ principle.

But more so I am hoping that all we who still have not seemingly become leaders in the more popular sense of the word, can send our energies where they belong, the process…the becoming. That the process can be dignified and re framed so that this process can be enjoyed and known for all that it will produce from within us.

Okay. Its started.