Growing up in a 3rd world country can either make you break you. You could become strong beyond all measure or you be stranded by omnipresent air of failure. It is all around you like a bad smell that won’t go away. It haunts you. While you are still growing up and enjoying the protection of your parents you hear of it from Brothers, uncles and Aunts who have been plagued by it.
I am not sure what created by immense hope in me but that thing seems to be renewed daily. A couple of years back I watched a documentary on the lives of some street urchins in the war torn Rwanda. The documentary studied the kids for over a decade and as I watched, I could feel that thing in me drive them to survive. Despite the daily brushes with death these kids still sort to lead honest lives. They woke up each morning completely at a loss about how their next meal would come and year in year out they survived. Sadly some of them died in their teens and the rest made it enough to have their own families but till today I still stand in awe of the tough spirit of the African.
I live in Nigeria, the country where the happiest people on earth are found. Halt that thought!, this is no beautiful paradise with idyllic beaches and Sunshine, well for the sunshine you are right , but perfect would not describe Nigeria in most positive ways. It is plain counter-intuitive to find joy in chaos and uncertainty but somehow the strength of the Nigerian is their hope and with that alone they survive the hardship which comes with every dawn, and even fair better than the rest of the world, they fair enough to be called the happiest people on earth . That something inside us reassures us through thick and thin, and it makes us face the morrow with confidence. We are the perfect recipe for a Renaissance.
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