TALENTS. DO WE REALLY
TAP THEM IN KENYA AND AFRICA?
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a)
***talents***
Talent is innate/
inborn; we all have it, individualized by our maker. The diversity we
experience has been designed to keep us dependent of each other, be intertwined
so as we appreciate the work done by others to us. Consider a situation when
all of us are doctors? Who would treat who? We may be healthy, advance research
in health, live longer probably, only to forget that we would die in the lab
due to hunger within the first week. My fellow doctor would die holding a pair
of scissors almost to do a throat surgery to me. Funny! We may survive but die
out of malnutrition since we lack a full grown diet from our gardens – I mean the
forest. After all, there is no cultivated land. By who? We are all in referral
and Level4 or 5 hospitals treating ourselves and doing a historical research
for cancer.
We could be engineers. Every one of us building a road or
even generating electricity. To whom would we sell to? Perhaps we could be all
kings. A question now comes, who could be the subject. Who is the driver, a
bodyguard, a chef or even the king’s wife? Diversity and talent comes in.
talent is what makes us do things with ease, it energizes, delights us and make
us do things with or with near perfection.
Talents have seen people move far. Be it in music
composition, discoveries, inventions and innovations among others. Discovering
a talent might be a simple task or even the most difficult thing in one’s life.
It may also require higher education and specialized skills or even no formal
skills at all. Compare a today’s medicine course and traditional herb medicine
which required an old man’s time to venture in to the forest with a basket and
an attentive mind of the learner.
What amazes me is the
perfection that is attached with talent. If you do what you are talented
for, you will do is with gusto, passion, energy, motivation and even if you may
be far from excellence for the first time, something inward will keep telling
you; try more time. This time round,
you will do better because you have learnt a lesson where you went wrong. When
Edison tried 10 000 times to create a light bulb, every time he tried, he was
better and near perfection than the presiding time. To him, it was not 9 999
times failure, but he said that he learned 9 999 ways of creating a bulb that
does not work. He added that ‘the
greatest failure lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try
one more time.’ That’s why perfection is not instant; it is a process and
many trials that leave the person nearer the gates of success. Bill Gates didn’t learn programming
instantly. It is said that he forgo class work and home chores just to be in
the computer lab with Allen. He spent
more time here and his curiosity and love for the machine helped him to go
deeper and learn more of it. He started programming at the age of 13. At 19 he
built the 1st PC OS for MITS, which it is told that even if it
worked, it was far from perfection.
b)
***
Talent vs knowledge & skills vs destiny***
Do they relate? Talent is innate, it’s a seed. But talent alone is not enough.
Every person has that talent, the individuality that makes us unique. But don’t
forget that every child is born empty only that seed of talent. It has to be
nurtured, cultivated and prepared to reach the next level; destiny. The preparation involves acquitting the relevant skills to
be able to tackle the challenge at hand. Someone said that ‘a talent with no education is like gold in the mine.’ True, we
need skills to utilize the talent. Was Gates a born programmer? Absolutely no. yes, we may say he had a
big task at hand. His long friend and a future president of Microsoft, SteveBallmer said that Gates had something disturbing his mind at Harvard. He could
leave the class, go straight to the dormitory, and sleep with shoes and door
open. After a few hours, he could wake up and walk out without a word. (See Bill Gates documentary in you Tube).
Well, we may say that he had a real task, somehow
God-factored. But Gates spent a couple of years training and learning coding
(from age 13-19) so that he could be well prepared to write the OS. He needed
skills, and good Lord he got it. The good thing is that he discovered his
talent early. He pursued his dreams and passion to a point of even being the
best in class, he had to leave Harvard to follow his future; his destiny.
Here’s the pattern,
discover your talent, know the right skills to dig out your gold mine –your
talent of course – and with the duo, and probably some believe and karma, you
are ushered to your divine destiny with first-class flight.
c)
***talents in history***
Talents may also be
discovered early in life or even when one is now an old man or woman. Consider
the life of Thomas Alva Edison who
grew interest in science at a very young age and by around 12, he had read so
many books that many of our scientists may not even reach in their lifetime.
Remember, there were all self-learned. He is termed in history as the father of
light bulbs. It is true. But the amazing part is that by the time of his death,
aged 84 in 1931, he had patented 1093
works, light bulb being just one of many. Well, I don’t know how many
patents a Kenyan can make in lifetime. Remember that, he had only around 2-3
years of formal education. All the rest was self-made.
Life of people like Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell,
Marie Curie, Henry Ford among others spent their life making discoveries and
inventions. It was because they developed interest and passion in their work
that even if their work didn’t even pay financially, they would not feel
discouraged or even move to the state of despondency. Their work energized them. It was a talent. We
may say anyone could have developed the bulb, but nobody else did except Edison. Someone could have discovered
radioactivity, but no one did except Marie.
We have all at one time or another, used telephone before cell phone emerged. Bell
made it to happen of which no one else had done it or even tried it earlier and
if there was one tried, never succeeded, or even gave up before making it
happen. Ford had little formal
knowledge. He may not have invented a car but he was the first to make mass
cars, Vehicles that could be sold in and outside US. He did it.
Lots of stories have been told of people who left a trail in
history. We may not believe all of them or simply all, but even today we have
seen the technological advancements, at least in our lifetime. We are bound to
believe.
The above historical stories revolve around US and Europe.
We may not have heard about Asia and Australia but today, we have seen what
China could do. South Korea, once a poor country, has been transformed in our era.
We may not know much about her, but if any of us have not owned a Samsung smart phone, at least we have
seen it in shop windows while passing along the city streets. Toyota has lived to rule Kenya, dubbed ‘the car in front is Toyota.’ But today, Hyundai and KIA motors have stormed in
with thud. South Korea!
d)
***Talent in Africa***
Now, what about Kenya and Africa? Sometimes I wondered
whether God, or whatever your Supreme Deity you think of, hated Africa in a way
that we could live to be followers. Conformists! That He never blessed us with
imagination. Is it that we could not produce inventors? And here is where James
Mwangi of Equity Bank said that Africa is “a
resource-rich but poor” continent. (see
the Equity News Sep 2012 LET AFRICA ARISE page 3, ‘The power of Entrepreneurship’ )We may
not be inventors, but about 70% of arable land globally comes from our
continent. And what follows? We have not been able to have a stable food security. Don’t you see a
tremendous inconsistency here? What do we lack? Water, we have perennial
rivers. Labor, we have the highest percentage of energetic men and women (about
70% of our population) who always cry for employment. Plans, yes plans. We lack
plans.
Africa is a great continent, but we are greater and if we
stay idle, we will live to say –long live Africa – yet, we diminish slowly by
slowly. We are greater that it and we can transform it. In 2014, Bill Gates, founder Microsoft said that
African challenges can only be solved by Africans. I agree with him.
e)
***Talent at work in Kenya***
Sorry guys to take you in a long walk. Let’s not lose the
point. Do we really tap talents in Kenya
and Africa? Not fully. Let me give a
Kenyan scenario. In 2014, there was a shamba-boy in Murang’a County, a std 6
drop out, who had tried to create an airplane. He said that he had spent about
KES 60 000 on his project, which he funded form his pay savings. Sometimes he
could borrow some from his employer, an elderly lady who seemed generous and
supportive. Indeed she was. The plane engine was a motorcycle one (is my
English making sense) I mean, it was a motorcycle engine. This boy had tried fly a few times to a point
where the area chief stopped him because it seemed precarious.
Let’s reason here. I don’t want to know whether the boy had
the capacity to make a flying plane
that could one time carry me. I will not judge his education level (a primary school skills) or even the
work he was by then doing - garden-boy.
But I know something for sure. The boy risked his life trying to fly something
he wasn’t sure of. I hardly believe that he had carried out some maths
regarding aerodynamics, Bernoulli principle among others; he doesn’t know them.
Secondly, he risked his meager money to invest in something that -to me- was
beyond his scope. He could have spent
his lovely evenings drinking with friends the little he earned. He perhaps
could use it to take his girlfriend out on weekends or even keep for dowry. BUT HE DIDN’T!
How many aviation schools do we have in Kenya? How many
students that have been taken to such schools yet, they didn’t have interest in
air? How much could he spend if he were taken to one of such schools and mingle
with lecturers and professors who could help him reach his goals? Here, we could have done match-making - mix TALENT and SKILLS. It could have been, what do books say? – to professors. And
what does instinct, imagination and talent tell us? – to the boy. These are talents that could probably educate
us about how Godly things work.
Cases of extra-ordinary talents and potential have been
spotted here and there but we assume them. Another boy, still from the same
county, had generated electricity that he was supplying in the
neighborhood.
f)
***talent treatment example***
If someone have watched a new 2014 series entitles ‘Scorpion’ which revolves around one Irish
gentleman, Walter O’Brien who is
said that at the age of 11 he had hacked NASA systems to get blueprints of his
wardrobe, gets my idea right. It is inspired by a true story. The US government
later picked him gave him E11 passport to become a government asset. With his Scorpion Computer Services, O’Brien is
said to have done a lot to save the country lots of massive damages. You can
see how US respects and value talents. SiliconValley was developed out of talents and ideas, nothing more.
Now, from now henceforth, will we tap such talents? Will we
nurture this scarce treasure? I hope so.
Remember, as has been
prof. Kachieng’a’s anthem, ‘Any country
that will invest in human intelligence will emerge to be the best economy in
history’. And so is why US has remained to be in power. Not because of
army, unity, progressive research or even development. All these are funded by funds. They need
wealth to write a big pay-cheque for their esteemed security apparatus. Funds
are gotten from investment from the intelligent guys and companies – power of human intelligence.
Well, that’s fine and well spoken for now but don’t forget
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