Accepting change is hard at times but change is inevitable
and whether we like it or not, change will always occur as long as we breathe.
Everything goes through change, even seasons, there are hot and cold seasons, dry and wet
ones. Even our emotions change too, I mean when I get honest I become a bundle of paradoxes,
I believe and I doubt, I hope and I get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel
bad about something good, I feel guilty of not getting guilty, I feel like
success and other times I feel like failure. I am trusting and suspicious. I am
honest and I still play games. See then, we all are prone to change but change is
difficult. I once read a story of a merchant who was so afraid of change. He was
so used to the way things were, he’s daily routine and never did anything
differently for the thirty years that he ran his crystal shop; a shop at
the top of a hilly street where few customers passed. He had dreams and
ambitions but he still was afraid and every morning he woke up feeling the same
anxiety over and over again. And despite the principle of favorability or the
beginners luck since life wanted him to achieve his destiny, he still was
afraid to achieve that one dream he always wanted to because he was afraid of change.
But I want to speak of my change, a slightly different change. As I lay on the bed in that dark room I felt something I had never felt before. Something foreign that my body and emotions did not know of, I couldn’t explain it. It felt confusing, it felt frightening. I could hear the sounds, the crickets chirping, the dogs barking, loud music coming from one of the flats, I couldn't quite figure from which flat the music was coming from, whether the flat above me or whether it came from a different block, and as much as I tried to figure out where it came from, just as a means to desturct myself and to avoid what I felt at that particular moment, I realised it really didn't matter and what really mattered was what I was feeling. All I knew was that I was aware of my surrounding, aware of the sounds that came from it, aware of the dark room I was in and of the bed my body lay on. I felt alive than I had ever felt before. I felt alive as much as I didn’t want to. It was being alive beyond my breathing or my waking.
It felt as if I was trapped in some box, a coffin you might say, dark and nailed really hard. Unable to break it open, it was suffocating. I doubted myself, my actions, my choices and even what I felt at that particular moment. All I knew was that that coffin I was in was fear and the impossible was happening. I had nowhere to go to, even the ground underneath couldn't swallow me in. Mayhem and confusion surrounded me and there was no one to come to my rescue. Not even my God who I firmly believed in and his love for me. I felt stuck for the first time in my life and it was scary. I was scared about that which I hadn't seen yet or known and whether what felt had become a constant in my life. I was afraid of that change.'You brought this to yourself', I would see pictures of loved ones in my head telling me austerely while pointing fingers at me. Karma! That b*tch! (And what's up with the majority American rap artists
using that word in all their songs?)
I felt like I needed to fight the emotion, the fear, I kept thinking of what my African community would tell me, ' 'Panic attacks! Pshht!'White people' problems, it's Unafrican! Just like homosexuality and the many other things we still want to to assume do not happen in our society. Mental illness in the African society is seen as something foreign, to traditionalists it might be seen as a curse, as being possessed and to my peers its seen as a 'white man's problem' which I call out bluntly a stupid myth! So here are the facts. There are more than 200 classified forms of mental illness. Some of the more common disorders are: clinical depression, bipolar disorder, dementia, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders. Depression is the leading cause of disability throughout the world and is especially prevalent among low-income African countries, where 75 percent of the people who suffer from mental illness do not have easy access to the mental health care they need. Besides the high unmet need for mental health services, low-income countries allocate 0.5 percent of their health expenditures to mental health, compared to more than 5 percent for high-income countries. Africa today isn't what it used to be a few years back, We are growing and becoming more industrialized as each year goes by. thus the so called 'white people's' problems are catching up with us. And fact be told where there is war, famine, corruption, displacement, it is the most vulnerable that suffer the greatest.
I love Africa, I love telling African tales and today I’d like to tell you African tales of young Africans who are trying there luck in the African struggle trying to achieve their dream, the African success. The African youth thirst for change and yearn for success, stability and for equity and equality. The African youth also have dreams, they have goals and targets. I’m trying to imagine the 18th century African youth, I bet they had pressure of their own. I mean they had to own livestock or land to make ends meet. They all had to prove themselves once they got to maturity which of course was determined by their culture just like today. And today's African youth face something similar. They want to own cars- and not just any kind, property, businesses, they want proper education, they want wealth and families. They also want to see the world, and some yearn for fame while others just want to express themselves. They're pressured from every corner by society, family, their bosses and to some even friends. Kenya’s unemployment rate rose to a staggering 40% in 2013 compared to a mere 12% in 2006. As of 2013, 16 million Kenyans had no formal employment and 70% of those who are employed are underpaid (United Nations Development Program , 2013). A new World Bank report says that corruption is costing the economy more than 300,000 jobs, enough to absorb the mass of unemployed youth aged between 15 and 34. There are poor policies that encourage entrepreneurship, arts, sciences and music in Kenya despite the current generation of youth having put their faith in business, with 48 per cent preferring to venture into entrepreneurship and just 26 per cent keen on employment and careers. Nepotism, tribalism, demands for bribes and sexual harassment are major barriers to success, it is this that drives young people into crime and drugs, and into a general state of hopelessness and despair and later depression and mental illness. And this is not only in my country but in my continent as a whole.
I love Africa, I love telling African tales and today I’d like to tell you African tales of young Africans who are trying there luck in the African struggle trying to achieve their dream, the African success. The African youth thirst for change and yearn for success, stability and for equity and equality. The African youth also have dreams, they have goals and targets. I’m trying to imagine the 18th century African youth, I bet they had pressure of their own. I mean they had to own livestock or land to make ends meet. They all had to prove themselves once they got to maturity which of course was determined by their culture just like today. And today's African youth face something similar. They want to own cars- and not just any kind, property, businesses, they want proper education, they want wealth and families. They also want to see the world, and some yearn for fame while others just want to express themselves. They're pressured from every corner by society, family, their bosses and to some even friends. Kenya’s unemployment rate rose to a staggering 40% in 2013 compared to a mere 12% in 2006. As of 2013, 16 million Kenyans had no formal employment and 70% of those who are employed are underpaid (United Nations Development Program , 2013). A new World Bank report says that corruption is costing the economy more than 300,000 jobs, enough to absorb the mass of unemployed youth aged between 15 and 34. There are poor policies that encourage entrepreneurship, arts, sciences and music in Kenya despite the current generation of youth having put their faith in business, with 48 per cent preferring to venture into entrepreneurship and just 26 per cent keen on employment and careers. Nepotism, tribalism, demands for bribes and sexual harassment are major barriers to success, it is this that drives young people into crime and drugs, and into a general state of hopelessness and despair and later depression and mental illness. And this is not only in my country but in my continent as a whole.
It is seriously expensive to treat mental illness in Africa and policies need to be put in place on how to take care of this, just the way HIV/AIDS has been taken care of with antiretroviral drugs being provided for, which has chipped in and made it so much affordable to curb. Mental illness might be not as much disastrous as how HIV/AIDS is, but it is on the rise. Expenses related to treating mental disorders and lost worker productivity are currently estimated to cost low- and middle-income nations $870 billion a year. This is projected to soar to $2.1 trillion by 2030. Mental illness in Africa is real and it's looked down upon, stereotyped and stigmatised. It is ignored and has been forced into silence despite the majority being the youth who suffer from it. We all go through different struggles. I mean today the African youth is growing through drastic changes and with industrialization clumped with technology, this does not make things any easier. But emotions are really strong. There are time I am happy and I can always feel that energy, a totally different energy from that which suspicion oozes or that which comes from doubt, anger and confusion. I've learnt that each emotion is different and they make us feel different things. They make us hope, they make us weak and they also make us strong. Emotions silence us at time and at times they make us talk. This was the change I experience. And my panic attacks have made me appreciate all this
To those who probably experience panic attacks and are probably afraid to share this due to the stigmatisation around it, the only way through Panic Attacks is to go through Panic Attacks. I mean, you have to get right into them like you would a dive from a diving board. I get them at times and their times I think I'm going to die or go mad, but then I've learnt to tell myself "well go on and drop dead then .. it'd be better than getting this sh*t all the time" and while I wait for the impossible, thinking that this is it, I'm dead or I've lost my mind, I always get this real feeling of bliss. I've realised it is okay if I dropped dead and that everyone I loved knew I loved them and I think this is the key point. Maybe the panic was the idea of dropping dead incomplete with people, but I realised at that moment that I was complete. I also realised that death wasn't such a bad thing and I lost my fear of it. I am really grateful to myself for not getting 'treated'. Drugs would have just masked it. I'm grateful I had the courage to dive headlong into the terror (those who have had these understand why I use the word terror) and I am grateful I had these attacks because it led me to a great insight and real peace. Turns out they were my friend and ally. And because of this I know that karma does not mean suffering or punishment, I am here to learn and not to suffer and that karma is the result of my past actions, allowing me to learn and grow.
