Awakening to Our True Identity

You know what’s strange? I grew up convinced that school was the one true road

to success. Teachers warned us: If you don’t go to school, you’ll be nothing.

So we carried heavy bags, repeated lines from textbooks, and recited answers

like machines. Now I speak English with ease, but I struggle to write in my own

mother tongue. I can quote Shakespeare, yet I can’t recite the poets of my own people.

I can convert foreign currencies without thinking, but I can’t name the kings and queens

who ruled this land before strangers arrived. I know the names of European explorers,

but not the African warriors who fought them. That’s the hidden design: they gave