Greening with smiles: Public holiday memories and other technology stories

I recently got myself a camera and then proceeded to garner as much knowledge as possible on the subject of photography. In the course of snatching several moments out of my extremely busy weekday schedule to learn and effectively using my weekends to embrace various forms of street photography, I can actually say that this is a hobby that might not go away anytime soon. I am looking forward to when this hobby will begin to pick some of my daily bills.

The last couple of days were quite restful with the public holidays in commemoration of the Eid-El-Fitr Celebration. Armed with my camera, lens and flash, I took to the streets of Abuja, Nigeria to capture memorable photos of Nigerians as they laughed and laughed and laughed. In a photo session themed “Greening with Smiles” to effectively reflect our national colors that predominantly have green in it as seen in both the National Flag and Coat of Arms of Nigeria, I captured more than memories. I captured children in their most exciting element; full of love, full of joy, unquestioning and full of trust. On a slightly worrisome not, I observed that the parents of most of the children I captured their smiles did not really care that a total stranger was capturing images of their children. Even when I went out of my way to seek their permission, there was that faint hint of disinterest that communicated that they don’t really care hence the ready approval. Now, that is a great development as it made my work easy but I had that nagging thought that truly questioned why they did not care.

The holiday season is fast approaching and I believe that the ready question in the mind of several parents would be what to do with their children during the holidays. When I first began my career, I always ensured to take my annual leave in the months of July and August. This was in part to spend the long vacation with my children and also partly to take a most deserved rest from the long hours spent on the job. As the children grew older, I have come to realize that it is high time they obtained some form of market place experience. We are at an advanced stage of applying for some internship opportunities that we discovered of recent. I have since gotten them to put their resume together and I was quite impressed with the level of understanding they embraced as they carried out an online research on how to write a curriculum vitae. I ensured that I played a mere observatory role as each question I was asked in the cause of the 2-day project was briskly followed by a ‘Google it’ response from me.

That reminds me of when my son was in Primary 5 and I got a slot to teach his class during their parent teaching day. In the cause of the teaching which centered on the Internet of things, I got to ask each child what they would want to become when they become adults. I was shockingly impressed when my son readily responded that he would want to dump his schooling, head straight to Silicon Valley and become a Personal Assistant to Mark Zuckerberg. I was slightly worried at why he would want to drop out of school that early but mightily impressed at the size of his dream at such a young age. We have subsequently resolved that schooling is key and equally non-negotiable. He intends to become a software developer and we are steadily working towards realizing this dream. We hope that the array of internship opportunities that he can embrace will get him ready for this combined with the formal education he is still receiving.

About Blossom Ozurumba:

Blossom is a writer, compère and public servant. She co-founded, Digital Media Development Initiative, a non-profit that contributes to sustainable development of Nigeria’s individuals and organizations through the innovative use of Digital Media. She has increasingly become known as a gender equity advocate with her core messaging that demands non-compromise in valuing competence, capacity and character. She currently works as the Technical Assistant, New Media to the Honorable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu. To relax, she plays golf, dabbles with candid photography and reads African Literature. She hopes to write a book one day while sharpening her writing skills on her blog, www.blossomozurumba.com.