WABC 21 Creatives #3 Life is what you make it

So I began blogging in 2014. At the time I cared less about things like followers and likes.Basically blogging was for reflections on emerging views and political commentary. I found Facebook a better place to publish than WordPress site(I am wordy). I have actually realized that I can convert a Facebook post to a blog post and just extrapolate it and have a post. Those are the reasons why I was a lazy blogger , those days people were interactive on Facebook unlike today,where we have become visual minded where for everypost, you accompany it with a photo. If it were meals, Facebook is my daily bread and Twitter/IG are my rare croissants so it explains my time on socials. But guess fatigue is setting in. Twitter at the time (2011) was for the literati or the so called people who had reached. These people would never follow you back or even reply to you. Last time in a platform conversation, Valentine (Zim) said he had posted a link and there were 200 impressions but only one soul yes one clicked on the link. Heaven has a place for you comrade that read the post.

Now in perfect health I used to write in the academic context and right now if not for the illness, I would be writing an LLD(PhD) So as I have written before,was waiting for a fully funded LLM(masters) which had been offered by the Center for Human Rights, University of Pretoria so everything seemed to be on course or so I thought. The stroke came in November and acceptance for the masters came in December 2016.

To understand the stroke, it took away movement and speech so it basically babied me.Iam learning to walk and talk again so understand the babied context. I had to deal with the grief and as they say, acceptance is the last stage, I knew that I had to work towards my recovery. Now it is an irony banking on the mind to recover when you have had a brain attack that takes all your dreams and aspirations away. I said to myself,’Look, your speech is impaired, you can speak with the keyboard to different friends who have been a pillar of support in yourjourney to recovery’. Rather than sit down and cry,I began blogging mainly to reflect on recovery. My first blog post post stroke was titled, ‘Amazing grace Indeed’ https://yongyera.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/amazing-grace-indeed/ infact, I was a guest blogger on Docta GG’s blog, I remember the series were called,’Going through it series’ . Writing for me is like being on a date, I want the reader to hear me speak throughout the whole date and see the vulnerability and strength therein. And the response has been amazing,if you told me five years ago that I would inspire people with my life story, I would laugh at you. Fast forward, Iam inspired by Wahome Mutahi , I believe that perhaps,we can write the ills of society. I write to disturb the comforted not to comfort the disturbed. So in October last year, I wrote a post about how Uganda is the peril of Africa, sometimes word play is good in satire and communication. Originally Winston Churchill called Uganda the pearl of Africa (I know not whether other countries were asked, Annie of a thousand hills would say no,Udeh would say,’Anambra is the real Pearl’) so calling us the peril(instead of Pearl) of Africa would drive the point home. Benjamin (muyudaaya) reads it off a WhatsApp status, how many do that? and I am discovered by Afrobloggers. Bruce and Uncle Beaton have given me the order of Comrade CDE title because of my commentary on Africa.

Writing gives me clarity and the Winter Challenge is doing that. As a result of my content, kind friends have written about me (https://yongyera.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/i-know-of-a-great-man/) and more recently https://amandatwebaze.blogspot.com/2021/05/no-use-for-excuse.html (Dear reader, you will forgive me, Iam in the dot com error generation and I am yet to figure out hyperlinks. We are old men and you will have to bear with me. Day 3 down. To Afrobloggers, the art is posted after we have published so that is why it is missing.So basically let’s write on.