Lost but hopeful...

“Everyone finds their soul mate, Brida…”

But do we really? And if yes, do we recognize that person? Or value that person? Do we really? For those whose hand has been left, the answer might be a yes but for those who leave the hand, can we say they don’t? It so happens that one leaves someone for another one, then how do we justify who is whose soul mate? Many at times, we love someone so deeply that we become incapable of loving anyone else no matter how hard we try or how long it has been; our love for that one person always over powers our will to love again. My favorite poet wrote:

 “you can love someone after loving someone else, but to love someone beyond loving yourself only happens once”. 

I for one, from the core of my heart, agree and believe this!

I really don’t know what I want to write or perhaps I know but I am unable to put it to words…umm you know that feeling? When you want to express but you just can’t find the appropriate words; yeah that feeling! Words have been perhaps my best friend so far because they have helped me a lot. I started writing when I was still in primary school and when we were told to write an essay, I would so easily put one down when my friends used to be eish-eish. I remember when I went to Pakistan when I was very young, I did my cousin-sister’s English homework and she aced it in class; that was a happy moment. I just made my name back home amongst my family. Growing up in a foreign country and returning home every 2 years is certainly one of the fond memories of my childhood I have. And this is how it always is when I sit down to write something…I jump from topic to topic with ease and without realizing it.

We really have no clue about why are where we are until we are able to have a picture of the entire story. We don’t always get what we want, we lose things and people we have, we make choices and regret them later; all of which is planned by He who is above all else. Yes my faith in Him is very strong but the fact that I am human and looking at my past, I get saddened by what or who I wasn’t able to get. None-the-less let me conclude on a positive quote I read today on one of the Facebook pages:

“When you meet the other half of your soul, you will understand why all the other lovers let you go. When you meet the one who deserves your heart, you’ll understand why things didn’t work with everyone else.”

I would like to wait and believe in this. For now, a picture that speaks volumes of the time then, and today, now, right now although with a completely different set of emotions!!

Peace!

Champ!

8 Golden Months - Part 4

The scariest step of a journey is the first whereas the hardest is the last; I thought to myself now as I start the last bit of the journey.

After exams, it was time to say goodbye. A couple of events; MISAM awards and MDX end of year party was what held me back for a week or so. During that week, we went to a couple of places and the most memorable one was Casella Nature Park where we touched a lion. It was one of those moments you keep stored for a long long time come. I was the official photographer for the awards night. I attended the end of year party and had a nice calm evening. I was awarded with the MDX badminton player award which was a surprise and I felt so honored. I said the goodbyes to everyone and thought that was the end and that I wasn’t going to come back for my graduation because that was the plan then. I flew the next day after the end of year party. The next afternoon I went to the airport all excited to head back home but I had a tiny little sad feeling somewhere of leaving such a wonderful country. I had chosen the 6:30 pm flight for the type of aircraft which was the A380. I am such a huge “planiac”. I just adore travelling to the extreme bits. I could spend my life on a plane; really I can! So I spent about 7 hours at Dubai airport and then flew home. It was tiring but I made it. My dad, mom and all my cousins came to the airport to pick me up and that was special because I usually just come home by myself but this time my family insisted they come. My dad was the first to see me and welcome me. He hugged me and had tears in his eyes which was special but ever since a kid, I am not used to seeing him cry but as a strong individual. I met everyone else then and we headed home. It was special to be back with everyone…really special!

When you live alone for a period of time, it is scary to be back with family and to be honest, to an extent you don’t even wish that because you lose the one thing or the only good thing about being alone; freedom. The ability to make a decision without consulting or taking an opinion is what you lose. When I was returning, I had a couple of fears of my own; losing my freedom and what will I do now? There is no doubt in my mind that ‘He who is above all else’ has everything planned for us but as a human, you are meant to doubt and fear the future otherwise what would separate you from Him? I had a few thoughts in my mind about what I would do next but none was certain hence the insecurity but I was certain that my faith would lead me like always to the path I was meant to walk. J

Besides my classmates and the few I have already mentioned, I made a lot of friends on campus through my photography, badminton and table tennis and active participation in the university activities. As I said, I have a nag of being famous and it always happens without any relevant effort. I really can’t imagine my journey without all these people I met and interacted with. I learnt from them, I shared with them a bit of what I had to offer and in the end, I think I got their respect and I shall always be grateful to them for allowing me that. A special thank you to Sundeep & Arbaaz for the badminton award and to Royal for the tips in photography.
I explored almost the entire island and as a photographer, it was paradise for me. I loved taking photos and giving them captions to put on my page. A lot of my page likes are from people who reside in Mauritius. All I can say is that I am grateful.

When I returned from Mauritius, I was contacted by the features editor for New Vision and he asked me to come in for an interview because of my success in badminton on campus. I gave the interview on Friday and it was published the Saturday after that. Once again as I said, a nag of becoming famous. A couple of things I said in the interview that weren’t published the same way in the paper but nothing controversial but it taught me a lesson about how you say something but something else is put out there. Coming back to the main point, one of my all-time favorite friend, Kalgi was really proud of me and I was humbled to hear that. I am sure my parents and family were happy/proud and a lot of people who really have a good thought for me felt the same. I personally had a dream come true. I have always wanted to give an interview and when I was giving it that afternoon and a photographer was snapping photos, I felt so happy and blessed. I truly feel I am very blessed by the Almighty, Masha’Allah!

To end my wonderful journey of MDX, I was surprised by Him yet again. I never thought I’d return to Mauritius for my graduation but I got the chance. I want to thank dad for this. I travelled to Mauritius and then to Dubai and returned. It was a week’s travel. To be honest, I felt awkward to travel so far just for a week but then I felt I am being prepared for the future, ameen. You know how these entrepreneurs go to cities for just a meeting or a conference and return; I had that kind of a feeling and it was a good one. I flew from Uganda on Monday and reached Mauritius on Tuesday, had my graduation on Wednesday as well as a dinner with my classmates, the alumni event on Thursday and flew that very night to Dubai…quite fantastic isn’t it? I spent two days in Dubai and fell in love with the city. Besides the weather, it is a good place to live. Today as I look back though, I don’t think I’d want to live there. Once again, He has better plans for me than my thought can for myself. I returned on Sunday where my friends came to the airport to pick me up. Yes that was one hell of a week! J

To finally conclude this, I want to say again how blessed I am to have met such wonderful people. I have had a lot of memories in just 8 months and I wonder how much more nostalgic I’d feel had I started from year 1. To everyone out there, life is very precious as is every moment of it. Make sure you enjoy it, live it and love it.

I hope you have had a good time reading the articles on my journey.
I would appreciate feedback through email or whatever you have to say. Also if you want me to write on a particular topic, please let me know.

I hope you continue to follow the blog and my page on Facebook.

Appreciate it a lot.

Cheers!
Peace!

Champ!

8 Golden Months - Part 3

Whenever I travel somewhere, I always write something in my journal. It is mostly about my trip and also about the recent past. It was during my flight from Entebbe to Dubai that I noted down 4 goals in my journal for my Mauritius trip; one of them was to be the badminton and table tennis champion of the university. During the sports week, I accomplished that by winning badminton and getting a silver in table tennis. Badminton has always been more than just a hobby for me because it was introduced to me by Shiraz and it is like I have a lot of love for the sport itself while I always took table tennis as a hobby but during one of the community tournaments I took part in, a referee who was also Uganda number 1 at some point in time told me ‘you know more table tennis than you know badminton and you know you can be the best amongst all these guys.’ The amount of motivation his words brought me that day have stayed forever and I went ahead to become number 3 in the universiade in Mauritius and number 2 in the all communities open in Kampala, Uganda. I have concentrated on my game ever since that day and I have developed a love for it especially for my backhand. Today, I have two backhand shots named ‘trademark’ and ‘sexy’. I know the name sexy sounds very awkward or funny but well, that is the name and it is a very special shot for me. One of the most happy-go dudes I have ever met, Kiki always laughed when I hit the shot and said ‘sexy’.

I have been privileged to have some outstanding teachers and professors during my educational journey. In primary school, I had this amazing English teacher; Mr. Gregory who used to summarize Shakespeare like no big deal and to be honest, I haven’t met someone more talented as a language teacher than him. In high school, I had two favorite teachers; one who used to teach us geography and the other; math and physics. Mrs. Kibirige’s classes were also marvelous because she used to make us laugh a lot and I looked forward to them. Mr. Julius was a knowledgeable teacher who made physics look so simple and was humorous as well. The stories and the jokes all made those physics and math’s lessons worth it. During my diploma’s, I studied under two great gentlemen. Mr. Joseph taught me business environment and also made me fall in love with economics for the way he taught it which says it all, doesn’t it? Mr. Francis taught me quantitative methods and made me understand a concept that I couldn’t throughout high school. And then my university final year, I got guidance from Mr. Ashley. I could not have the honor of having him as a professor but I always went to him for guidance and assistance. A true professor is not one who has all these degrees and honors but one who is loved and respected by students. Mr. Ashley has both the degrees and honors and the respect which says everything. The one thing I have learnt from him is that ‘never stop in life. Keep learning and keep educating yourself. Have those plans in your mind and keep asking yourself “what after this?”.’

When you have a celebrity in your class, a student council member, the AIESEC university president and a mix of characters and personalities, you are bound to have an interesting time. The one thing I am really happy about it the way I was welcomed and accepted by everyone. It isn’t easy to accept someone who directly comes in third year when you have been working your ass off for the past 2 years, but I was humbled again by this. I and Nur became intellectual buddies, Sanjeet and I were musical buddies, I found a great books-lover in the form of Anjali, Doreen and I had this little Swahili connection as we are neighbors in terms of home countries, IC as always was the cheerful and smiling buddy and of course he is a music star (so I felt wow, I am friends with a celeb) and someone who called me ‘bhai’, Tania. I had a very interesting batch of classmates with whom there was everything from laughter to seriousness, tension to light moments to criticism of the system; practically everything. The two things that I can think of that will always make me laugh is how Nur used to mimic someone’s way of saying my name and Mr. Ramdin’s lessons and Sanjeet’s singing in them; haha amazing moments!!

I love exams to bits. That is one thing that a lot of people get surprised at but the reality is, I love exams. I do not feel stressed or tensed about them. Several times in the past, I have had people ask me ‘don’t you have an exam tomorrow?’ This is because of the way I am even a day before the exam. I was playing badminton during my diploma exams and a day before my coursework submission on campus, I was playing cricket. I remember Doreen complaining to me about that. Others on campus too were like ‘he is so relaxed’. For my strategic exam, there was confusion and a mess up and it frightened all of us. The only reason I did not panic a lot was because of my perception of exams. I think life has tested me so much so far that I have gotten used to it. This reminds me of two lines written by one of my favorite poets, Ahmed Faraz. He wrote: Ab toh dard sehne ki itni aadat si hogayi hai Faraz, kay jab dard nahin milta toh dard hota hai! Meaning: ‘I have gotten so used to enduring pain in life Faraz, that if I do not get pain now, I feel hurt’.

My leadership thesis was made of 36,120 words. WOW! It included research on authentic leadership, feedback questionnaires from people who know me, two life stories; both written from different perspectives, my mother’s account of me as a person and personality test results. I was so excited about this since the start of the year because I love writing and I wanted to write about my life. One of my long lost desires is to write a novel on my life but I can’t manage to get a start for it. And even when I started, I can’t continue it. Anyways, the thesis showed me a lot especially what people thought of me. That was the most interesting part about it. I really realized a number of things. I am so glad about that! I even names my thesis the title I long thought for my book "The best weapon is the spoken word"

So I just have one more article to write in this series. The next article will be about my travel back home, my explorations, my friends on campus, the newspaper article and then the travelling back for my graduation to Mauritius again.

One more to go!!

Peace!

Cheers!

Champ!

8 Golden Months - Part 2

Life in Mauritius was nothing like that back home. Noise, traffic, people; everything was less compared to home but then the amount of peace the country had to offer was a lot and I really mean a lot. Adding to this, the beautiful sunsets and the gifted scenery of the country just amazed me throughout my time there. You know there are countries you live for ages and you don’t feel like you’re at home despite how developed they are and then there are those countries that you feel you belong to regardless of how little time you have spent there. For me, Mombasa is a city that I feel at home and love with all my heart despite my time there which is only a mere 5 months. After Mombasa, Mauritius made me feel that way, and this I got to know when I went back for just 3 days (can you believe that? Only 3 days? If I wasn’t working, I’d stay more for sure) for my graduation. When I was about to land in Mauritius, I felt ‘yes I am back home’. That was a special feeling! I keep wandering away from the main theme but then that is what happens when you just write what your heart is whispering. So back to my time, I took part in the Universiade in October. I was very disappointed to have lost in badminton but very glad to have won 2 bronze medals in table tennis. It was my fault that we did not get the chance to fight for a gold in team events and I hated that back then. Today I see it as a lesson I learnt and also an accomplishment because I came back the next day to play individual events and fought the disappointment of the day before. To have fought it mentally, I feel I did well.

The first semester, as long as it looked, said goodbye and holidays came. All my cousins were travelling to Pakistan for a re-union and I wanted to go too but a couple of reasons held me back. One of them was the cost of course and secondly, their dates of travel were a week before my final semester. I felt very bad of course but that is life and we learn. 3 weeks of holidays to many looked short but to me, they were longggggg. I wanted them to end quickly. During the holidays, we as a group went around the island and just enjoyed and relaxed. The one thing I did in Mauritius and I wish to mention is reading a new author. I have been a Paulo fan from the moment I was given ‘The Alchemist’ to read and I hadn’t changed the author. For the first time, I read another author and fell in love with his writing so much that I read all his 3 books in a row. The author was Khaled Hosseini and the book I read first, and the book that became my favorite book was ‘The Kite Runner’. No book has touched my heart and soul like this one did.

On Valentine’s Day, I sang a song at Jumbo during a karaoke session. This was the second time I sang and I feel this was one of the things I am very happy about (I can’t say proud because pride is not a good word in Islam but that is what I wish to convey here). The first time I sang was when we had begun going Jumbo. In fact I remember the day so well because it was the first time we met Timothy and he had arrived in the country that very day. 2 Kenyans and 2 Ugandans was what our group was made of that day. Of course today, it has one of my most special buddies made in Mauritius who is a Nigerian and the dude who got me addicted to selfies. He is a brother from another mother. Very few of us are privileged enough to meet people who are truly true and good to us. He is one of those for me. Jerome!

I took part in several university events and mostly as a photographer. I was privileged to be the official photographer for the second annual MISAM awards, the MDX Mauritius sports week, karaoke night and the mooting competition. I sincerely hope from the core of my heart that people liked the photos and they will remember me whenever they take a look at them. One of my photos came in the newspaper taken at AIESEC’s global village; a certain accomplishment moment for me. I was also part of MISAM’s inaugural newsletter and it doesn’t surprise me to have written the features section. I am an explorer and a traveler and the section seems to have been made for me or let me exaggerate and say named after me :p. I truly feel very blessed for all this. Everything I accomplished is just due to the mercy of the Al-mighty on me and the prayers and love of my parents. I am so thankful and I feel gratitude.

So I will stop here for now. The next post, I will talk about badminton & table tennis, my professors and class mates, my leadership thesis and exams. A lot more to come.

Thank you for your time.

Cheers!
Peace!
Champ! 

8 Golden Months - Part 1

The present moment never communicates to us why it is with us but when time finally passes and we sit down to reflect on it, we connect the dots and realize what we had and what can never come back. At times, this is in the form of a person, at times an event, at times a moment of truth and at times a feeling or an emotion.

‘Campus life’…I never thought until August last year that I will ever be able to attend a university. I hadn’t planned it and I never saw it coming, but well He who is above all else did write it in my destiny and I flew to Mauritius to attend a final year at Middlesex University. My best friend told me the week before I flew something that I carried all along in my heart throughout my time on campus. He said “this time of your life shall never come back so make the most of it. Don’t be afraid to live your life because it is your life”. Till today, this statement echoes in my heart. I looked at the date yesterday and realized how last year this very date, I was submitting applications and searching Mauritius on Google looking at images and saying to myself “WOW”. I remember showing those images to my mother who had a similar reaction about the place, but her eyes, well they were full of tears for her only son was going far away from her for a long period of time. I was a bit sad leaving my friends and my dearest cousins, too sad leaving my parents but I held myself strongly, I was very determined to do my best not for myself but for those who expected me to do well especially my parents because failure was no longer an option; the cost of failure was too high for me to pay, and yes, I was very excited because I was told by someone that I am going to Paradise. I remember I wrote a Facebook status from the airport as I looked at the plane “A bit sad, a bit more excited and super focused…Bye Uganda...You will always be part of me!!” I still remember the feeling I had that day. I was very focused about my studies; more than I had ever been.

The only regret I have perhaps of my year on campus is that I could not make it for the induction. I would have known more people had I attended it. I am an introvert to a great extent and it takes time for me to get to know people. Not bragging as such but the one thing about me also is the nag of becoming famous, of course for the good reasons. Coming back to my journey, I landed in Mauritius and as Yassin drove me home, I looked at the landscape and clicked photos with my Sony cyber shot, I thought to myself I really have come to a gifted location. I went to hostel, dropped my bags and went to campus which was barely 5 minutes of a walk away. That moment is stored forever with me. Most people will think I sound kid dish but you know when you don’t expect to have something and it comes to you, the gratitude your heart feels is immense and unexplainable. The first best thing that happened to me was my best friend gifted me a DSLR on my birthday which was 11 days after I arrived in to Mauritius. Having a DSLR was one of my dreams and when it came, all I could do was feel the mercy of the Al-mighty for me. I have always known that Shiraz is my truest friend on this planet but last year, he showed it by this act of selfless love. Don’t get me wrong but even if he hadn’t gifted me the DSLR, he would still remain that precious for me.

I began classes and I realized that because I hadn’t done statistics in the past like my classmates, I would have to work double. I used to read at night because it was so calm, quiet, cold and amazing. I will never forget the tea-breaks I used to take at 1 am at the terrace under the moonlight. Those are moments, I as a writer and photographer, just cannot capture or explain. The wind of Mauritius left me in a trance always and I was simply mesmerized. Soon, we began a routine; me, Moses and Nihir of going to a shopping center close by called Jumbo. We were even termed as the ‘Jumbo boys’ by the guys at the hostel. We used to go eat and just chill. After a long day on campus, the walk to Jumbo and back, the teasing of dogs especially the chubby one our neighbor had and the German-shepherd, the road poses, the jokes and laughter, ‘ratings’, and upon return, a few rounds of matatu just made up the day complete. On weekends, we would have the house parties and have an outing or so to round up the week.

So I realize I have written quite a bit. I will continue this article very soon this week as I still have a lot more to say. I hope you enjoyed it thus far and will read the next part of it.

Cheers!

Peace!

Champ!