ECONOMY OF STRENGTHS!

There is something they call SWOT, it is an analysis based tool, just as in business so it is with socials and politics "i.e. ECONOMY OF STRENGTHS'

I learnt this lesson through the experience my mother went through when she came to Nigeria with us after finishing university in 1981." She left a very strong country to find herself in a seemingly stable but weak environment. No water, roads, health care etc everything basic that she had been used to from birth. She had a cultural and economic shock.

This is something every person both man and woman go through when they grow up in a different system. She had to survive and live with what she had for she loved her husband and kids but she wasnt prepared for it. Those who marry women from outside be it in the same environment please hold the responsibility of managing the emotions that it would evoke in a woman that has never seen poverty and it isnt in her build to comprehend where to even start from. Women who are foreign ie "never experienced a different environment before" be ware that where you are the other world isnt the same.

As a mixed kid i have lived too many lives, ie experienced too many cultural and economic extremes that now difficulties dont scare me, hence i consider myself and same mixed kids as me the Obamas of the world, same it is with same cultural kids who are thrown in on situations or cultures they have not known before. OBAMAS are stronger than anyone, we have developed strengths, a mix of which is uncomprehendable to any local cultures. We can be just as good and bad. We have both and we also posses the ability to control or release it. We are the Israelites. If you have survived a situation of extreme influence you are an Israelite, regardless of if you pure or mixed ethnic. A culture means strength and posses weaknesses as well. Good and bad are strengths and weaknesses, they determine your treats and opportunities, not every good is right and not every bad is wrong. Your ability to differentiate is what translates the dicipline of thought into deeds.

There was a situation my mother went through every day in OHORO where they used to stay at the time. My dad was going through mandatory NYSC, they didnt have much and me dad was sent through scholarship to go study medicine. He was a son of a farmer so not much support financially could come from there but they needed to make it work. She didnt know english so she couldn't work as a doctor, she was home with 2 kids, reading fairy tales and keeping us busy with activities of the then Russian society club.

Now every 12midnight she would fetch the buckets full; in the morning she would bath us with that water, the water gathered in a big basin she would use to wash the clothes, then she would use that water and mop the floor and after use to flush the toilet. One would ask why wouldn't she just hire a nanny to do everything? Well white women especially the Russian women are hard on themselves, plus when you give a resource to a stranger they are likely to squander it because they often dont have the same mindset "DISCIPLINE/VALUE" and we Nigerians know what that means.

Economy of strengths is in waste management and change is in recycling. Complaining of not having everything to make a dish is where the risk is. You risk not getting anything done when you wait for options.

My family had humble beginnings just as most in Nigeria, nothing special and no glory can be taken away by those who presume that we were silver spoon bread because there is oyinbo blood in the mist. We just harnessed our strengths against the environment to reduce the threats and that increased our opportunities. If you don't know who you are and dream of where you want to be, that little will be taken from you and given to the other. Your lessons are your gifts. Get cracking, oyinbo no mean anything for colour na im mind.