A few super short stories about “showing up”

In 2019, my friend who lectures at a nearby university asked if I could host some African American students for a short tour of our corporate campus.

After some back and forth we were eventually able to find time to make it work and the date was set.

As I made my way after a meeting on the appointed day to the building on our campus where the tour was to take place , I couldn’t help but wonder to myself what I would say to these young students when I received them. I am Nigerian and had only moved to the United States about 3 years ago and so did not attend elementary, college or high school in the United States meaning that I could not relate to them on that level. It also did not help that it had been a taxing week that left me drained and not feeling sure if giving a tour was what I needed to be doing at that time. So as I walked into reception to see my friend and the fine group of students with him, I was still asking myself what I could do to make the visit worthwhile for them.

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Tech and Innovation In the Time of COVID-19, A Few Thoughts

“Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching.”

— Igbo Proverb

The above proverb popularized by Chinua Achebe , the late literary giant sums up my thoughts on the situation we currently face.

The global pandemic caused by a new strain of the CoronaVirus COVID-19 created a challenge the likes of which has not been seen in the last 100 years. At the time I typed this, there have been more than 423K confirmed cases globally with almost 19K fatalities. This virus has proved to be a leveller in every way imaginable by cutting across national, social, economic and racial boundaries. It has combined with a number of other factors to create a perfect storm that has humanity fighting on the same side for the first time in living memory.

I shared a few thoughts about this in a medium post . You can read the full thing here