Nostalgia

Nostalgia, the word that I've heard so many a times but have not in any way experienced the feeling in any faintest way.
Often times I felt it was only for people that had it good while growing up or those that never knew what life entailed at a younger age.
Little did I know that I had misinterpreted the meaning as explained by the Oxford dictionary (growing up in Nigeria, my Father made us read the dictionary occasionally so as to acquaint ourselves with new vocabularies).

The year was 1985, I was a young lad with great hopes ahead of me, seeing the changing times in the country due to political instability and economic austerity measures meted out to the populace by the political elite who were in governance.

Average homes like ours were knitted together by our religious beliefs and a hope for a better tomorrow for the children whence they grow up to become career men and women like Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, chartered accountants..actually take off chartered accountants, the top three careers were basically the aforementioned and anything aside those meant you're a failure. That was the typical Nigerian upbringing.

I remembered my primary school fondly and the little innocent experiences I had while in that early stage of life, one that stood out most vividly was our class presentation when we sang the theme song for 'USA FOR AFRICA' with the title "We Are The World".
This song (We Are the World) was a super star studded charity album recording for famine relief efforts targeted at Ethiopia( A country in the Eastern part of Africa).

We did a rendition of the song, obvious everyone loved Michael Jackson's part, Stevie Wonder was wonderful, Ray Charles was sensational, cyndi lauper was zesty, Kenny Rogers had that country charisma, James Ingram was legendary, Bruce Springsteen, Dionne Warwick, Tina Turner and others I can't really remember their names were all awesome.

Ok, not to deviate.

We did the rendition with grace and joy, we felt that joy of being part of something humanitarian. Being able to sing and hope that our little innocent God fearing voices would move those in the helms of Government affair to give to our fellow humans.

Life then was simple.

The year 2017, November 23rd precisely. Yes 32 years later, my little girl came back from school and was trying to sing a song from school as she normally does. I noticed that she couldn't make out the lyrics so I joined in and to her surprise she asked me "Daddy do you know the song?" as her face lit up... "We are having a rendition for the schools end of year presentation" She said- smiling from ear to ear.
At this point I got the song to play on the television as we sang together, tears of joy streamed down my eyes as I experienced what i couldn't describe with words. it's was simply nostalgic.

To the men and women giving a helping hand to the downtrodden and the have-nots, To those that invested time and energy to aid our fellow humans in distress, I say God richly bless you.

Enjoy the song that brought my childhood memories back.

Merci