Sunday, January 24, 2010

Don't sit with her. She's from Africa.

Ms. Olamide (on the left) with her sister

I think I'm going to start a series on people (Naija, African, and maybe others) who are doing things I think are great/inspire me/ I admire/ so on and so forth..... The first intallment will be: Ms. Olamide.

This weekend (Saturday January 23, to be exact) the African Student Association of Michigan had and excellent leadership conference. Click here to read a great post about it.

At the conference, Ms. Olamide of olamildentertainment.com gave a short little talk and told about her first day in high school, fresh outta Naija. But there was one thing she said that really stood out to me. Kinda made me drop my jaw a little and gasp....Ok, maybe my reaction wasn't that dramatic, but I definitely did feel a bit of indignation. Hahahaha......

She said that on her first day, she walked into the class room after class had started, kids giving her strange looks. Another student walked in a little after she did and was about to sit next to Olamide, when another classmate suggested that make a different choice.

"Dont sit with her; She's from Africa," is what Olamide told us the fellow student said. I wanted to go back in time and give the person a good slap.

This cold reception would have been enough to make anyone hide in their shell and count the days until graduation, but not this chick. "My own confidence in myslef was way up there,"she said.

It wasn't long before she started getting recognition for excelling in classes. She also began to join all kinds of school school clubs: swim team (without knowing how to swim; she learned on the team. lol) track, badminton, drama, dance tennis....In short she didn't let the initially intimidating situation stop her from shining.

Right now she's doing a lot: she's involved with the Yoruba Youth Corporation, her website olamildentertainment.com, another website speakup9ja.com, writing poems, skits, songs, designing websites for others, and so much more. And she's humble too. I gots ta give props where props are due. You're going places girl. Keep on!

2 comments:

  1. Kudos to Ms. Olamide and thanks for featuring her, Chidinma! I really admire that she's such a great example of where self confidence and hard work can take you.

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  2. Definitely! I just really liked her "I don't care what you say. I know who I am" attitude towards her high school classmates who made fun of her. In the end, most of them were befriending her. And now she's doing so much, but she's very humble. I feel that! :)

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