Thank You My Friend

01.05.2018 — Personal — 4 min read

This article was originally posted on Medium

A friend of mine recently reminded me to “find time to reflect on your day, week, month and year”. It immediately struck me that I had been so focused on gaining ground, that I hadn’t even stopped to look back and appreciate how far I have come. So I paused for a minute and looked back (I heard someone say “Forward ever, backward never”, so you might not want to do any of this). Turns out I have had some really awesome friends, and I just want to appreciate you all.

My journey, for the past 8 months has been so tremendous — I have learnt more in life than I have in the past 22 years (This sounds like an exaggeration even to me, but try to let it sink in, you might be surprised!). I have witnessed myself transformed into a techie, extrovert and some other fancy titles that I’d rather keep to myself for the moment, and it all began with a friend!

She is not your typical kind of girl, and I almost never seem to have a way to describe her, but often find myself selling her. For some weird reason, so many guys used to find her quite hard to approach, and would ask me to help out. Sorry guys, I never had the guts to do that. For as long as I’ve known her, she has been surprisingly selfless, humble, authentic and smart, while still keeping it cool. Ooh, and a beacon of honesty, a trait I always try to emulate!

So thank you Hazel Apondi, yes, you!

A month in to my current position and I met this other group of intellectually, physically, and socially endowed individuals — still feels like a gross understatement, but for the sake of the article, I’ll let it slide. Its from these guys that I’ve learnt a bunch of things that I didn’t even know I didn’t know. I remember my first day at MEST Africa someone mentioned something in the line of MVP, and the juvenile me almost asked what “Most Valuable Player” had to do with Tech-preneurship. Turns out it was just a “Minimum Viable Product”! I wish I could list down every single name here, and appreciate their value addition to my life.

So thank you guys, yes, you!

Of all these really amazing people, someone really stands out for me. He is a writer, Software Developer, and Data Analyst — The kind that does the 2018-ish things - build and train AI, ML, Blockchain, Serverless, Decoupled etc … models. We’ll for the rest of us lets just say he’s really good at what he does. As far as leadership goes, I know we keep saying we’re the leaders of tomorrow, but this friend here, is the best leader I’ve ever met. He has helped me keep challenging myself to outperform myself, and I must admit, that is never a small feat. He’s the kind of guy you never have to worry about when you go to battle because he’s always got your back.

So thank you Derrick Mwiti, yes you!

Some of us, or at least just me, have this one friend, whom we feel calling just a friend will be inadequate, so we stay away from labeling them. Yes, I have one of those too, and she is a female Mike Ross, who looks like Rachel Zane, and loves Dr. Paula Agard! Occasionally when I feel the need to persist some data beyond my brain, I just run it by her, for later usage, and yes, she is that amazing!

So thank you Purple. (She is a very private individual)

One of my wise friends said, “Friends are friends everywhere. Be kind and gentle to them. The person you ignore on your way up may be the same person you meet on your way down”, so that’s exactly what am going to do, I urge you to do the same.

So thank you all, yes you!