This past May, I had my first-ever real vacation.As in, the reason on my visa application was written out clearly as VACATION/TOURISM. There was no conference or work trip I was going for and I would then benefit from for some extra days of visiting… this was deliberately planned enjoyment! Such a win for the Year of No and doing less! I must say getting a visa with the reason being ‘vacation’ felt like a huge win; although there was a small “chakara” (pidgin for upheaval) during the interview and a minute where it seemed like family history would affect the decision, the final decision was positive and made me feel like “finally, these people know I don’t want to go and stay in their country sef!” Previous academic travel history and tendency to return home finally counted for something. Anyway, I got the visa, took all my annual leave days and planned to deliberately enjoy for a month in the U.S. As with any life event, there were lessons to be drawn from this U.S. Trip I thought to share. Unlearning is required for rest. We should all aspire to have American Audacity Choosing Home As I write these lessons from vacation, I think the last line of the above point is the real takeaway. Rest and travel are such a privilege that must be appreciated; you can only really “choose home” when you’ve had an option. You can only truly rest when you’re not actively being oppressed. In honour of those who can’t live fully, whose life was taken from them too soon, whose access has been denied, who are trapped. Please live. Don’t cut off your own wings, don’t limit yourself.
Jan 2024: Let’s Talk Social Media
I’m 34 and like most people in my age group, social media has had me in a chokehold. I admit I didn’t know how bad it was till last year when my distraction with my phone came up during a quarterly review meeting. But it got me thinking. How did I get to this level of weakness when it came to social media usage, how is this unhealthy preoccupation sustained and how can I stop it? The first part was pretty easy to answer. Life and adulting being what they are most of us are forced to live away from family/friends. I think the resulting loneliness that comes with the hustle, first and foremost, births social media addiction. We’re not addicted to phones- or rarely, because some people are hooked on the next breaking news, trends or gossip. But for the most part, what we’re addicted to is the connection with others, which the fast-paced and often isolating capitalist lifestyle has robbed us of. Well, in the spirit of my “Year of No”, I’m saying no to myself first. And this addiction is the first thing I want to deny myself. In the video below I explain how I’m doing some self-discipline with AppsBlock and StayFree
2024 My Year Of No? (Dec 2023 Blog)
It has become a tradition of mine to have a theme for the year; a word or phrase that speaks of my intention for the new chapter. It is not a resolution but a word that captures what I hope will be an undercurrent of my actions throughout the year. Still, I think this past year was my first ‘successful’ realization of a ‘thematic year’. Not because I ‘achieved a lot’ but because it was the most intentional I have been with a theme. See when I declared 2023 my Year of Self-Love, I outlined how I would take steps to finally love the body I’m in, to truly love myself. E.g. 1- Loving myself by doing things the self loves e.g taking swimming lessons. 2- Loving self by investing in mental health treatments more than ever. 3- Loving self by giving away all the clothes that no longer fit and getting new clothes that do. 4- Loving self by gifting myself the way I gift others, by asking for help and delegating what t I cannot do. 5- Loving self by getting to know the one who made me – God – and drawing myself worth from Him etc. The above are just a few ways I intentionally sought to live out the theme I declared, and to an extent, the year of self-love worked. I became better at the swimming I loved doing- even swan in the deep end for the first time, I entered a New Covenant with Yahweh last year, I bought myself a brand new phone for the first time last year, I even dared to remove the enlargement of my Boudoir shoot photo it’s in my bedroom but at least no longer hidden… Yet some things remain the same. At the junctures of my year of self-love, I hated myself as ever before or more than ever before. As much as I was proud of loving myself enough to openly ask for help, I still hated that I needed to keep asking for help. Another way my thematic practice was different this past year lies in the fact that this was the first year that I assessed the theme. I intentionally looked back at what I had been doing towards that theme and whether I could see changes or not. And perhaps because I did that reflection, I could appreciate that working on self-love as someone who struggles with that area cannot be limited to a year or any timeframe for that matter. The greatest success of the year of self-love therefore was coming to accept that this struggle might be never-ending; it took 30 years to internalize the reasons and ways I dishonor myself, and it won’t be healed in a year, no matter how much I do differently. It is also as a result of the above reflection that I can go into making a theme for this year more intentionally than ever. As we usher in a New Year and I declare a new theme for 2024, I am aware that the old theme has not been “done and dusted”. My declaration of this year as “my Year of No” is, in fact, an extension of last year’s theme of Year of Self-love. How so? This year, with this theme, I am declaring an intention to love myself better and more by doing less so I can heal. One thing that has come through clearly in the past years has been how burn-out, depression and years of pent-up issues all came ahead to break me between 2020 and 2022. However, I kept thinking I could just push through it, and try harder. So I have shamed myself for not being as I was before; as committed to goals, as disciplined, as attractive as talented etc. But shaming does nothing but fuel the depressive episodes. I think what finally got me to think differently was trying on the idea of a Year of No; when I first considered it everything in my being protested. Do I deserve a year of NO when the last 2-3 years have been my most unproductive? Shouldn’t I be trying to achieve goals, and check off to-do list items that have been languishing on my Google Keep for ages? But then I saw this quote: “You’ve been beating up yourself for years and it hasn’t worked, try giving yourself grace and see what happens”. As I have nothing to lose at this point, I think I’ll try the reverse psychology. I’m permitting myself to fail at doing and being it all. In fact, you can’t fail at what you were never meant to do: so this year I want to try having as little to nothing on the to-do list to shame myself for ‘failing’ at. I give myself permission to do nothing but hibernate. I want to rediscover reading for fun. What does a Year of No entail you might wonder? Well, in 2017, when I declared my Year of Yes, I said yes to every opportunity that came my way. I said yes to trying over and over again. I stopped limiting myself to what I wanted (e.g a distance learning PhD) and said yes to whatever I was offered. That was the season for that. This season is different and I must acknowledge that even if I don’t like it. So in this season, I’ll say more no’s or respond with not now, maybe later. I will avoid taking up any additional tasks; no more signing up for things and then asking God for the strength to do them. No more asking for more strength when the body has made it clear it wants to rest. This article gives a great idea of what declaring A Year of No may entail for others… This might sound counterintuitive. And I admit it reeks of privilege. Yet, I am willing to live out this privilege with gratitude. I have found I must question the desire
A Conversation with Nayah Ndefru
A few months back, I had a conversation with Nayah Ndefru on her Podcast “Breaking the Code” where she gathers her networking to discuss breaking the variety of toxic cycles plaguing us individually and socially for a better quality of life and fulfilment. Watch/listen to our conversation below.
How do you Identify?
A vlog inspired by a self-reflection exercise… Join me?
Thriving as a Cameroonian Child almost always requires rebelling… Let’s talk about why & how
One would likely get dismissed for suggesting that African parents ‘spoil their kids’ as much if not more than their Western counterparts. I’ve said as much on occasion and gotten reactions like: “How can you even think that? No, we are very strict; our kids don’t talk back and won’t engage is bold displays of PDA etc. Of course we don’t spoil kids”. To us, what make kids spoiled is their “laziness”. As an uncle tried to illustrate how spoiled American kids are he said “they’ve never had to carry water on their heads nor do they know how to cook… only take out here and there… those ones don’t even know how to wash their clothes? They’re spoiled”.That’s how I grew up understanding what being spoiled is. Basically someone who had every basic need supplied and someone who can’t handle/won’t do menial work.I would like to note that this definition of spoiled is straight out of “suffer mentality”. A by-product of colonialism and unhealed trauma. Because why else would we herald the doing of menial workthe as epitome of being hardworking when the reason we do those things on our own is born more out of lack than choice? But we’ll discuss that on a different day. Let’s stick to how African parents are spoiling their own kids, because there’s more than one way to spoil a child. If you know me, you know youth work is my heart-work. I work with young people regularly and regard youth development- the changing of young minds and investing in their capacities as the most sustainable form of development. My experience as a youth-worker and teacher have inspired me to write time and time again about how the way we are raising and educating young Cameroonians is at the root of many of our problems. But it’s worth repeating in a different manner, so in this piece, I want to argue that the way we are raising children sets them up for failure and that the only way to survive and thrive in the same society requires rebelling at some point of your life. To support this argument, I’m using examples from my work with young people and my own life. Recently, in a group, I’m a part of, the discussion turned to the laziness of young Cameroonians. This person who used ‘laziness’ in the way my uncle had once used ‘laziness’ to refer to American kids said of our own: “They can’t do google searches, they want to be spoon-fed all info, why would a university graduate not be able to put a CV together. Why don’t they know how to use their email? They are lazy…”I contradicted them in the group. I said not quite. Young Cameroonians aren’t lazy. They are often hardworking at what you valued while raising them; such as whether or not they know how to cook Koki well and how they serve as their parents’ assistants with most of them babysitting their younger siblings since the age of seven (7). They bend down, unlike the Aje-butta children. So, I insisted, they are hardworking- hard being the operative word. And I continued; acknowledging that what the complainer is criticizing is how our youth lack intuitive soft skills, why they lack individuality, creativity and the capacity to think out of the box. Well, I said, that is because you raised them to fit into the box, to aspire after the belonging in the box and remote possibility of at some point being at the top but in the box. We were raised not to question; it was rude to ask why I was to call someone I am not related to “uncle” or “aunty”. For young women, it was unladylike to fraternize with men and we came to associate being outgoing with being “cheap”. We were to be home immediately after school, no extracurricular activities- except the extracurricular activities were picking stones from rice to be cooked in the evening or learning how to bake and braid hair like a good girl; the boys maybe got to play football. We were raised in houses that have ‘adult parlours’ and children parlours’ – a generational gap obvious within our own homes; yet, now as a graduate networking skills are valued and the majority of those raised as such can barely engage in constructive conversations with senior colleagues and partners in professional spaces. We can bemoan the fact that our young people are not enterprising and proactive enough, that they require direction for everything and have gone through school just memorizing without applying what they learned; but in doing so we likewise must acknowledge the role of how we raised them- with a lack of freedom of expression, restriction on their authentic being and more which led to this dependency. We must acknowledge how our thinking kids should listen but not be heard contributes to their current inability to self-lead… We must ask ourselves: how many kids know the details of their parents’ jobs, how often did kids see their parents read or hear them talk about their work to understand what they do?” And what did we really expect when kids go on school holidays only to be shuffled to ‘holiday classes’ to prepare for the next academic year? No extracurricular even on vacation, just preparing them to be better conformists. An example… In 2021 I led the organizing of a workshop for adolescent activists (though their ages ranged from 16-22) in Yaoundé. Participants were to come from all over the country and have their parents sign consent forms. Several couldn’t make it to the fully-funded opportunity because how dare I think of having a 16-year-old take the bus from Bamenda to come lodge at a Catholic rest house in Yaoundé for 3 days and it would mean missing a day of school. Those who could make it are those who could already advocate for themselves or those who had no strict parents or those who lied/omitted the
Of Poems & My Writing Journey…
Today, I’m thinking of the fact that writing no longer comes easy to me. I no longer feel as excited about penning down my thoughts as I once did. I published my first book in 2010- a poetry collection- and I thought I would be writing steadily since then. I imagined I would have published more fiction and poetry collections by now. But over a decade later, I have written a great deal- more what I have to than what I want to… and the next book is going to likely be an academic monograph. I’ve changed as a writer. The wounds I have felt as a person have healed but left scars on my writing hand that make it hard to write; experiences have both sharpened my writing voice as well as left me less driven to share it. Today as I struggle to think of what to write, and who I am as a writer, I think of my poetry. The very first things I wrote were poems. Poetry- the exercise of expressing the most feeling/thought in the least amount of words possible… using imagery-infused words to paint the canvas of the readers’ heart with empathy… it is poetry that has best evidenced my being a writer over the years, and it is with poetry that I attempt to explain why I am struggling to write, struggling to believe in my writing again today.
An Antithesis of Popular “Inspirational” adages
One of my vivid childhood memories is of the day I learned the importance of knowing and understanding what you’re saying/singing. I was roughly ten years old and singing the infamous chorus of Lady Marmalade (remix with Missy, Mya, Pink, etc. of course) when my uncle nearly knocked down the bathroom door demanding I come outside and sing those raunchy lyrics to his face. As I did, I realized I didn’t quite know what I was singing. The song just sounded nice. Since then, I’ve been a stickler for comprehending and appreciating the lyrics as much – if not more- than the melody.Years later, I’m beginning to apply that same idea to the seemingly ‘motivational’ or ‘didactic’ quotes we were raised with and continue to throw around these days – especially framed in graphics and shared on social media. I have found that too many of these statements that ‘sound nice’ are products of bias, instruments of harmful socialization that reinforce unhealthy thinking and lie at the root of a lot of toxic behaviour.In this post, I’ll be flipping the script on five common adages and offering an antithesis of them. It’s fine if you cannot say something nice, but do be honest.If you’re like me, you were raised on the adage, “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”. This indoctrination may sound like a good one on the surface, but as we grow older we realize just how hypocritical forced and momentary niceness really is. Please note, as others have, the difference between niceness and kindness. While being ‘nice’ [which is defined as “pleasing, agreeable, delightful”] may require one to be silent in if one cannot be polite and agreeable; being kind [which comes from the heart] will require that one be honest rather than silent. Niceness is something we’ve been taught we owe society with the indoctrination of such an adage; adhering to such indoctrination speaks of a level of social conformity, and people-pleasing. As we grow to understand that temporarily pleasing people, acting agreeable, going against ourselves and being dishonest about what we think and feel is not ‘moral’ at all, such statements are exposed as harmful. Do not be addicted to bettering yourselfSome year ago, I came across one of those ‘inspirational’ memes that said “Be addicted to bettering yourself”. I loved it. I made it my header on Facebook. It reflected what I believed; that I should be striving to know better, do better, be better… because in so many ways I am not enough. And therein lies the problem with this adage. The perpetual question for improvement is rooted in discontent. This is not to say, we shouldn’t strive for better versions of ourselves- of course, we should. But “addicted”? Addiction refers to control, something else controlling you. Your idealized version- the idea you have of what “a better you” would be; that is what is controlling you when you’re addicted to bettering yourself. Your fear of not being enough, your inability to love yourself in a ‘less than ideal’ state. That is what ‘being addicted to bettering yourself’ speaks of. It has taken me therapy and a lot of self-work to recognize this, it’s not an adage which can be rejected as harmful socialization easily, because ‘bettering’ oneself is a good thing right? Yet, we must ask: what exactly is the ‘better version’ we’re addicted to achieving, and for what reason is it ‘better’ who declared it so? We must ask this to be sure that we’re not addicted to a version of us we feel will be more acceptable, welcomed and pleasing to others… See how this phrase ends up feeding behaviour that is toxic to ourselves? What doesn’t kill you can weaken your spirit?If you’re a fan of Kelly Clarkson’s music, you’ve most definitely sang along to the popular adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” from her hit song Stronger. I tend to hear this phrase used in response to someone narrating how they barely survived something, or how they are not sure they will survive what is to come. The phrase comes from an aphorism of the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and is generally used as an affirmation of resilience. So why do we need to drop it? Because resilience doesn’t always equate to strength. Having survived doesn’t always mean you won, survival is not living and we want to live. Fully live. What doesn’t kill us and what we survive often takes a piece of us, such as; our innocence and/or faith, our immunity to further infection, and even our capacity to feel/care. What doesn’t kill you, can still kill a vital part of your being. In fact, the strongest people are killed by the constant survival of what is thrown at them, they die by the process of weathering- whittled down with every battle survived. Let us not gloss over and abet their slow death with affirmations of resilience. Who they are at their worse is not more valid than who they are at their best.I only recently came to understand how problematic it is when we believe that who/what our friends and loved ones are/do under the worst circumstances represents who they really are. The idea that the version of people you see in the worst of circumstances is their ‘true self’ is passed on through adages like “a drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts” or another that goes “what is said in anger is truth”. These statements make sense at first thought. After all, a drunk person is less inhibited as a result of alcohol and thus drunk people do tend to speak their minds more liberally whether that means being more vulnerably or with less indoctrinated ‘niceness’.Yet, what people fail to factor in is that we humans can lie to ourselves as well; under the influence of alcohol and anger not only are our inhibitions lifted but also our ability for rational thinking is also affected.
Want to have a successful year? How are you defining success?
What if I told you, there’s a way to guarantee you have a successful 2022? Well, I can; because a successful year all depends on how you define success. Here’s a definition I recommend.
Christmas Reflections for Those Who are not Merry…
Season’s Greetings to you dear reader! I truly hope the holidays are a happy time for you. Yet, I am aware that this is not the case for everyone, and today I decided to share why this is not necessarily the case for me. I never thought of myself as someone who dislikes the holidays. Even now, I can’t say *dislike* is the word for it… I love the break from work which gives me time to rest and plan and do…other work lol! Still, when a friend replied to my Christmas card on the 24th and began a conversation it led me to do some overdue reflecting. See, this friend asked me what I was doing for Christmas and I replied saying: “nothing much, just going to try and avoid binge eating, crying, and hope for productivity”. I’m Christian so for Christmas I do believe in praying and praising in ode to the birth of Christ… but not any more than I do on any given day I pray and praise. Not only because of the debates on if this specific date is his accurate birthday but just because I rarely feel extraordinarily praise-y on the day. So, what is the problem? Why am I not merry? The easy answer would be depression. But nah, that’s not quite it. Many people detest the holidays – for what it has become due to capitalism, or because they are lonely, or because it reminds them of someone they lost (like a dear friend of mine who died in 2018 on Christmas Eve)… There are many reasons, and it is so accepted that the holidays can be a triggering period that I had never really thought about it why this period is not simply joyful for me any longer and what exactly about it may trigger depression. This is the first time someone asked me so pointedly that I was forced to find the words for it. And in finding the words, I discovered something about myself. It seems some years ago (I don’t know when exactly but I think it was 2016, perhaps earlier) holidays began losing their luster for me because I was no longer content with being a makeshift family member. Holidays are for family and home. I have family, lots of family, especially friends who have become family. I am not short of loved ones to spend the holidays with; at least 3 of my loved ones near me made it clear that I was to join their families to celebrate the day (and I eventually did spend a bit of time with each of them and their families on Christmas Day). But as I have come to do in recent years, I made sure I spent as little time as possible at each home. Playing either the role of helping in the kitchen, visiting aunty, or just plain guest. Because it’s still not the same. Because my family has their own family. So ‘going home’ often means going to a place where you’re reminded that you’re not exactly family. Or that your family is not like this family. Or that what you call family, is a collage of a variety of individuals belonging to other families. I wasn’t always aware of this, not in such clear terms at least. This realization is coming this year following the conversation on the 24th. It was fine at first, or rather, it was unnoticeable. I did not notice that with every holiday spent with another family, I was trying to create something. Either creating some family holiday tradition with those who had adopted me as theirs, or create my place in another family… In one house I tried to create the tradition of having Christmas gifts put under a Christmas tree to be opened on the day. I was an undergrad student and broke so I wonder how I did it, but I managed to get everyone in the family I was with at the time gifts. But, when the day came all the gifts under the tree were the ones I put there lol! They received in gratitude, but it wasn’t something they would think of, so not something that continued. In later years, I tried to join the traditions of the other families. And I loved it, for a while. One of my families has a beautiful tradition of gift exchange (Secret Santa) which is elaborately planned for a month before… it is so entertaining how well we hide whose name we picked and the coy ways we go about trying to find the gift they would like… I recall praying in 2016 that I would want to emulate that tradition in my own home in the future… That should have been a warning. I didn’t consider myself at home. But still, I have spent Christmas Eve with that family and enjoyed that tradition for over 5 years. And another of my families has the tradition of going to the beach on New Year’s day with colleagues… I have loved that tradition too. Let me tell you, everyone should ring in the New Year by having the waves wash over you as if carrying the dirt of the previous year away. It is unspeakably refreshing. Still, I did not recognize that these traditions were family heirlooms I was trying to inherit, nor that my participation was an attempt to make family memories for myself. So when I no longer wanted to spend holidays with others I also could not recognize that it was because a part of me had realized that I could not create what I needed in that way. Spending holidays in this way meant felt akin to living as someone else for a short while. Spending the day enjoying my nieces and cousins and sharing food and joy, but then going home to my space. And my own home sometimes feels lonelier when returning to it after that, with memories of the baby you carried, or thoughts