Benefactor

Long before civilization, men with great authority and much depth in knowledge had already began talking about success and the works. Dating far into the chivalric era, the likes of Niccolo Machiavelli had already mastered the skill and began the decryption process for the rest. They say success is a function of one’s servanthood to others. In other words, successful people tend to strive in helping others more, it’s also a reward of hard work and many other impeccable attributes. But you already knew that, didn’t you? So I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to tell you about me.

At age six we had to move due of unforeseeable alterations to life as I had come to know it. This meant a lot of things. First and probably the worst, I was to start on a new school. There’s no fun in being the new kid in school. I remember I cried stupidly as I was left behind in that strange place with all those strange people. I couldn’t take it. Situations made me abandon all my friend in another dimension and had to somehow make new ones here. Now that’s hard, even for grown-ups. I was in a new environment, in a new school and somehow normalcy denied me acquaintance. It was hard and overwhelming. This of cause impacted negatively in my performance, both academic and social. I became THAT kid.

In my class, we were always grouped according to previous academic performance and George had the first seat next to the teacher. I was fourth in front of the last person in the last row. Being brown in complexion and with a big nose I kind of stood out and somehow the teacher would point at me to answer only the difficult questions. Which, without disappointing, I always got wrong. It was as if she engineered, planned and executed my misery of a life. I ended up hating her. You don’t want to hate your teacher for whatever reason no matter how valid, because that won’t work in your favor. She got transferred.

Then one day a new teacher walked in. she was always flamboyantly dressed and had a warm smile. She didn’t know me, this was the perfect start over moment for me. It was like the heavens were working for me once again. I strived to impress my new teacher so much but you know, this things take time. I almost gave up and even thought at one point to claim comfort in my situation. I was hopeless.

In an English class, couple of days after I made a resolve to give up, she asked a question and the whole class didn’t know the answer. I wasn’t concentrating so didn’t even hear the question. “Yes, Bildad…” she called. I was so confused and she knew it, so she repeated the question. I didn’t want to look even more of a nitwit than I was so I mumbled something (I don’t remember what but I know I was so bloody wrong). She smiled, paused for a second and called me bright. Déjà vu right? But I’m no Ben Carson so relax.

She then made the whole class clap for me (they didn’t want to). She told us the correct answer and the class went on as usual. But not me, not my life. My spirit had changed in that instance. Everybody noticed me that day, even May talked to me that day (I still don’t know why). Long story short, on the next class arrangement, I was sitting on the first row directly behind George with two pupils in front of me.

The end.

So what happened? I’ll tell you what, Madam Faith happened. Her simple gesture made me overcome my shit. Her move to make the class appreciate me for being wrong made me want to be right henceforth. I looked forward to impress her and at least get a compliment from her. This of cause made me read more and with that my performance improved. Suddenly I was among the best pupils and that made sense. She made me. I’ve not seen her since primary three. I doubt I will. But God Bless you Ma’am.

Success might be all that you’ve heard and read or even more, but you need someone to achieve it. You always do. There’s this song that goes, no man is an island…no man stands alone… it speaks. See everybody has someone out there, a benefactor of some sought. Someone to either put them in the right path or hold their hand all the way. Mine back then was madam Faith. She made me embrace books and love it. Your greatness is tied to someone else out there, and it’s your duty to find them.

Without Merlin to forge the Excalibur for the great King Arthur, we wouldn’t have known about him. He would have just been one king who lived.

Without John Piermont Morgan to fund Thomas Edison’s project I doubt very much we would be where we are now.

Without Goliath to slay, David would be just another short person herding his father’s flock.

Some people are lucky to have their ‘someone’ double up as their life partners. Hence the say, behind every successful man theirs a woman. That’s why the first man was made for a companion.

Then here’s the twist. You are also someone’s someone in this big universe. You have a duty (I believe) to assist someone in their path of success. It might be a word you have to say to them, maybe a smile or just few coins. So you can be as stoic as you so desire but truth is there is no fun in that. You need help, everyone does so go out there, get yourself helped and in return carry it forward. The world would be a better place.

Incase all this is confusing, here’s a summary: – you cannot succeed alone, you shouldn’t brook with failure, you shouldn’t deny others help.

 

 

Make that CV shine

Couple of months ago I was to apply for Andela Fellowship, but that needed me to have a curriculum vitae. So I went back to my communication skills classes and whipped up a two page summary of myself and went ahead. Apart from the Andela application, I used the same document to try score some jobs but that also didn’t quite work out as most tries didn’t even come back with responses. I knew something was wrong, so I sought for some assistance from my lovely cousin Rosie. [Asking is free, don’t suffer alone]. She not only helped me come up with an awesome vita but also schooled me on its importance. See your CV has only one job and that is to get you THAT job. (You gonna have to read that slowly. Sounds cooler). I promised myself I wouldn’t do a how to article but, been breaking lots of promises lately so I figured why not add to the pile. Here’s how to make your CV the bomb!

1. Be clear and Organized

Every job market is flooded this days, competition is too high which means you are definitely not the only one looking for a job and most certainly not the only qualified candidate. Employers are not going to go through all the applications and even if one would they will only consider the ones that are catchy, and that is your goal. Most will run a scan on your CV from top down in a quick second and only read it in depth if something catches their eyes. The appearance that is. It’s like marking a composition of a primary school kid. If they have good handwriting you will read with joy, otherwise you’ll just award some cooked up marks. You want yours to be well structured with clear headings and good spacing. Make use of the whitespaces.

 

2. Be neat and concise

Your vita is not a novel so don’t go telling people about that trophy you won in kindergarten for singing baba black ship. Summary is a skill and if you can encapsulate your whole life in a three page document, bravo! This is why we love (d) twitter 140 characters before yesterday. Twitter teaches people to be make sense without making noise with unnecessary long text. So join twitter and learn. You have to be neat as well. First don’t use Times New Roman to write a CV, that’s just wrong and unprofessional in many levels. Second, don’t underline or bold or capitalize your subheadings.

 

 

3. Do not be to embellish

Remember I said it has to stand out? For that, you will have to give it life. Give your headings a color, maybe blue or grey. Under no circumstance should you use red or yellow or orange or any other shouting color. That be just sad and too far. No one will take you serious with something like that.

4. Follow a particular chronology

People like order, so try as much as possible to flow with the details. You wanna make the person reading your document easy time. Things like work experience, education, you wanna list them in order of precedence.

 

5. Give priority to your contacts and experience

Your contact information should be on top of your document. Easy to read, easy to find just in case lady luck decides you need to contacted. Also you want to emphasize more on your experiences. If its attachments, state clearly what your duties were and if at all there was an achievement earned. Your experience is what interest the recruiter more than anything else.

 

6. Avoid unnecessary information

Totally desist from putting curriculum vitae at the top of the document. You’re not fooling anybody. Do not put name in front of your name

Like this …

NAME: Person X

AGE: Age X

It’s immature.

 

7. Precise

You’re trying to sell yourself so try as much as possible to lay down your skills and prowess. You want to mention that which you think they need and should be willing to pay for. But in doing so, also remember to be relevant. Try and horn particular skill sets that are required for the job in pursuit. You can’t go telling the recruiter that you are a great cook when you want to work in the IT department! Focus!

Parting shot!

Since I’m not really good at this, I’ll stop there. I think this few tips will make your CV scream your name in obedience to you wherever you send it. And it may probably not end up in the trash can or the trash folder on someone’s desktop machine. A reminder though, I’m not a professional CV writer (if there’s such a thing) and neither am I an expert in all this. I don’t even know if I’m making sense here at all but just in case it helps, you’re welcome.

Oh, and there are lots of CV layouts in the internet that would do you good too. It won’t also hurt to say if you feel your CV need a touch up or something, email me and at a small fee we can work something out. Ama namna gani?

frozen yogurt

My phone rang. On the other end was a lady. So I fixed my voice and awoke the deep bass voice, tried to be normal about it. She had a calm-confident voice like Oprah Winfrey. I haven’t heard Oprah speak off camera to actually know her calm-confidence voice but its where my mind takes me when I think of confident women. We exchange salutations then she, after few awkward talks says she was just saying hi. I wanted to play the ‘who gave you my number’ card on her but I figured that would be me pushing my luck too far. Someone on their own volition took their time, called me and just to say hi, it doesn’t get any luckier, besides, what more can a man ask for? So I hung up.

I was really pumped up by the strange call and the mystery lady, so the following day I decided to after a long ponder on what and how to text her. I ended up saying ‘hi’ because what else was I going to say? She replied almost immediately as if she was expecting it. We talk a little bit too much and before long we were planning world domination. Ok that was too far. We didn’t actually get there. Not until our third chat where she said “I really like you”. Am single no more, I thought. We scheduled a meet at the mall and had frozen yogurt. I paid for that shit, I also got her uber later on. Myself I haven’t ever done uber. I wanted to cry when she tapped too much but hey, what’s a gentleman if not cool calm and collected right?

See clever people say that we always see our nose but our brain chooses to ignore it. This has been used in many occasions to advice and encourage people on many spheres of life’s challenges. Other times it’s just thrown around to show guys that you know something about the nose and the brain, like now. But unfortunately, I don’t know about the brain, I’ve never seen it, I only believe I have one. The human body is a big mystery. Scientist have tried to make sense of it all but not fully I reckon. Science can says we have a brain but doesn’t explain how the brain came to being, it says we have a heart but how? You cannot understand the ways of God let alone explain it. But hey, because of science we know we have a brain, that’s gotta count, right?

Like brain, the heart is unexplainable. One organ that pumps blood all day everyday (unless your body is subjected to cryogenics which is still practically impossible and you’d die!). They say you love with the heart too. How? Who knows man, it just happens. The heart also chooses to interpret reality as it suits it. That’s why he will beat her up every day but she will always defend him saying he’s a good man and such. It’s the heart. The heart chooses to see the good and ignore the beatings. I realized after the party that my heart was operating in the same angle. But to fair, she led me on.

She invited me to a party hosted by her friend. I arrived late because that’s the right thing to do. Why the hell would you go early to someone’s party anyway? Everyone was already there apart from the ones who were not. She ushered me in and squeezed me a spot next to her. We drank water, ate lots of food and talked. We talked and laughed a lot. And every time she laughed she’d lean on me or slap my shoulders. I thought, how is she finding me funny? Is she pretending or it’s the water (it’s actually water we drank, don’t go putting alcohol near this story). Then it clicked! They say if she laughs at every one of your jokes then she’s the one. So I figured I found her.

She held my plate as I went to receive a call. Mama Dearest wanted to check on her adorable son (me) because she missed me. Ha-ha, hell no! Mama wanted the keys to the digs because Jemo had stepped out and was not picking his calls. I was not ready to leave so I texted Mama that I was on my way home, then switched off the phone. I lied. I went back in and picked up the conversation somewhere close to where we had left it. Soon people started leaving and we remained fewer in the room. I thought to myself, “This is it”. Sometimes fate works in our wind and those times you pull down your sails and let it ride along. I was about to do just that when her phone rung. I thought, maybe it’s the folks or one of the Bff’s. She picked it

Hello babe,

Then the shock happened. The one people keep saying. A sharp chill ran down my spine? That shit happened to me man and it wasn’t pretty. Couple of seconds later I calmed myself. When she said the previous day that she liked me, I felt that thing. My heart saw a lady who likes me, my mind was already planning a future and now this? What was this…

“I love you too”, then she hang up!

The rest of the conversation wasn’t so easy. I kept trying to figure out if the person on call was her boyfriend or just a friend. Because girls have this habit of using the words babe and I love you too quite loosely. I was in doubt and I was starting to miss my mama so I switched my phone back on, no calls. We eventually left after she got a text. We walked holding each other to the main road. I had had enough talks for the day and resorted to doing what men never do, listen to women talk! We got to the road and a red vits packed up ahead. She rushed a hug and said bye. I thought, why is she in a hurry? Then it downed on me, the man driving the vits was her ride. I was left by the roadside man. Later that evening she texted me

Hey, I had a good time. You’re really fun. Paul says hi…I think you two would make good friends.

Who’s Paul?

My boyfriend…

I didn’t text her back man. I wish I knew who gave her my number, they’d have some questions to answer. Hey bill, did you give anyone my number?

***********************************************

At this point of the story I was laughing so hard my left lung hurt. I know, I’m a terrible person but wouldn’t you laugh too? I later told him to take it easy and life wasn’t over yet (me trying to be supportive). Funnily I was a certified counselor and was an official in the guidance and counselling team back in Kisumu Boys. Apparently, people were supposed to come to me with their life troubles and suicidal thoughts and I would in turn listen and tell them nothing other than suck it up. No one ever came to me if you are worried. Have you met boys in that school?

Sometimes ladies don’t like like like you, they just like you! Don’t try make sense of that….