ANWULI OBIAGA........Influence Without A Touch

I recall that day. It might not be the most dramatic day in my life but I owe who I am now to a great degree on my experience on that day.

It was the year 2000 at a weekend long Christian youth conference which I attended grudgingly to please my mum. I couldn’t wait to get back with my friends. This was in my teen years, just fresh from secondary school, clueless and directionless.

I heard nothing of all that the speaker said all through the first two days of the three day conference. But on the last evening, the speaker decided to talk less Bible and creepy stuff and challenge his audience instead. His tool was a young lady, her name – Awuli Obiaga. She answered some tough questions with calm ranging from history to the capitals of the nations of the world and then at a point she read excerpts from a book. I didn’t hear one line in all she read, but I was enthralled by ‘how’ she read. Needless to say Anwuli challenged me. But that is the small part; she changed the course of my life as well. She made a mighty great impression on me that day. She gave me a peek into the me I could become if I took the time to learn, she provoked me to know that I was more than I was living and thinking I was. I left that camp willing to explore who I could become. It is a journey I have always been grateful I made.

It became hard to keep talking about girls and football with my two friends. I invited them on the journey to explore our possibilities; I told them to join me so we build ourselves up intellectually and engage in activities that add value to us so that someday we can be a positive influence to younger generations. They couldn’t make sense of it, so we parted ways.

That was twelve years ago and I am so proud of the young man I became. And even more delighted when I look ahead and see the stupendous prospects in my future, I’m delighted to see the lives I have impacted and still impacting.

I am glad mum forced me to attend that conference. I am grateful that I made the change. I have never had a personal encounter with Anwuli Obiaga since that one experience of her, we never exchanged as much as a word but she affected me just by being herself, she changed my life without even knowing it and I’m immensely grateful she did. And somehow I have doing the same since. I dedicate this weeks blogpost to ANWULI OBIAGA [sure she’s dropped that name for her husband’s], a young lady who changed my life without a touch. In my next blogpost I’ll discuss the lessons from this post. Cheerio!