Member-only story
Disappoint Your Parents Today, They’ll Still Love You
As an African, I can tell you this safely: if you want to live your life on your terms, you will first have to fight to get it from your parents.
I know that’s not what you want to hear. I just couldn’t find a gentler way to say it.
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If you're a Nigerian youth who wants to do big things, you'll meet opposition in three places: your background, your parents, and your country.
And before I go on, let me say it clearly: I love my parents, and I always will. This is not a vendetta. It's a conversation I wish someone had had with me.
The triangle
I grew up in a triangle: school, church, home. And that was all I knew.
I went to boarding school all through secondary school, and we had no midterm breaks, only end-of-session holidays. My friends came from two places, church and school. The school friends lived in other states, so once we went home for holidays, communication died. I didn't even have a phone until I was seventeen.
I'll always be grateful to the guy who lent me his phone so I could create a Facebook account in JSS3. My parents still don't know. If they had, I would have lost touch with friends who relocated or left my school.
