My Father - My Inspiration

I have many bad days. Days where it seems like getting out of bed is a struggle, leaving the house is nigh on impossible and enjoying my-self… well that is impossible. I get into my head and end up overthinking the situation like any body else would do. This just leads to more and more bad days. I end up thinking that I’m the only person in this situation and everyone else in the world is fine. ‘Why? Why am I the only person that this stuff happens to,’ my over dramatic brain always seems to say. Its about that point that I remind myself that I don’t have to look too far to see someone who has been through ten times what I have been through.

My dad didn’t grow up with nearly the same privilege that he has afforded my siblings and I. See I was born in Kenya, and I spent a good deal of my first four years without my father, he had already moved abroad and was setting the foundation for the life I live now.

My earliest memory of my father is arriving at the airport after leaving Kenya for the first time and seeing him. The memory is very vague, and my child memory has distorted what happened for the rest of the day, but I will always remember seeing him at the airport waiting for us and me jumping into his arms.

Ever since then I’ve been protected and looked after by both my parents in Harlow, England, growing up to the point where my siblings and I have all attended University.

My father however struggled until the age of 27 to be able to come to England, 3 years before I was born. Struggle because at the age of 14 my father became the head of the house along with his elder brother, taking care of the rest of my uncles and aunties and my grandfather’s wives. All this while attending school, always striving for his goals to be working in health care. In fact, the struggle didn’t end there, at the age of 27 when he finally arrived in England, he still had to attend university full time, while taking care of his children and wife in Kenya and working full time. God only knows how he was able to achieve all of this, however seeing as he still sleeps 4 hours a day its not hard to realise what he sacrificed for all of us. My father has told me how he worked different jobs, refused to buy things he didn’t find essential, like a bed frame, (because a mattress will suffice) all because he had to send money to make sure that we were taken care of, and the foundations were set for when we finally arrived.

All this during a truly testing time for black people in England, the prevalence of skin head culture and far right beliefs, along with casual and outward racism not fully being condemned. This story is already difficult enough to comprehend without thinking about the hurdles that he had to jump through as a black man in England in the 90’s. I know that his house and car window saw many bricks thrown through them, all these I’m sure stressful and expensive.

This is why my father is my inspiration, especially for those particularly difficult days. When you work all your life and then must grow up quickly when you turn 14 and provide for your family in a country where this is difficult enough as an adult, how could you not be? I’ve watched my dad become successful enough that he now runs a business in Kenya and earns a good living. I have never wanted for anything, because of his hard work and sacrifices. There is so much I don’t even know about him, the proud African father will never let the kids know when he is struggling and will never fully let you know about his past.

My father always told me that I must be better than him, I must succeed in life. I have a long way to go, to succeed in my eyes as much as my father did. I have to do the equivalent of being born with nothing in a impoverished country to becoming a middle-class man in one of the richest countries in the world. This may sound close to impossible, but if my father taught me anything, its that the impossible truly is possible. Then my days don’t seem to be too bad.