Talents Are Tomatoes.

I like how this year is going so far. My goal in life remains to maximise my gift for impact (and some income too). How am I doing that? by working on being where my feet are (present) and avoiding negative banter at almost every corner. Kenyans whine a lot about the economy, Trump and everything in between. And for good reason because siasa mbaya maisha mbaya (bad politics leads to a bad life) as our past president Daniel Arap Moi used to say. Fellow Kenyans (pun intended) We should apply the serenity prayer when things seem overwhelming. Ask Sir God to help us accept the things we can’t change and take charge of what’s within our control.

We all have gifts/assets buried within us that if activated would colour our lives nicely. Myles Munroe once said that the graveyard is the place where most talent is buried. Folks who passed through life without unleashing their superpower and ended up getting buried with it. That’s a double tragedy. We need to find a way of putting ourselves out there and activating our gifts. I remember an article by Sunny Bindra challenging us to show our gifts to the universe. It may feel awkward at first and imposter syndrome may be working on overdrive but we have to go through that wall and shine our light.

There are no guarantees that our gifts will be celebrated by others, but that’s still no reason to hide them. You will never know until you try. I find life to be like a huge soko (market). Reminds me of many years ago when my siblings and I used to run a restaurant in Langata. We would go to the vegetable market (marikiti) very early in the morning to buy supplies. We’d find a line of tomatoes followed by another section of potatoes and so on. I would wonder how these traders differentiate themselves and yet they are selling the same things and often at the same price. For some reason, everyone went home daily with some sales made. For us we ended up buying from sellers we struck a rapport with and that made selection easier.

Folks, maybe we just need to display our wares (talent) in the market of life consistently and we will never know who will see our nyanyas (tomatoes) and like them enough to buy them. Showing up is a key ingredient to success.

Back in 2019, I decided to revive my childhood passion for photography. I wanted to do it well this time so I enrolled for photography school and bought a digital camera and some second-hand lenses. Since then I’ve done a few photo safaris and have been lucky to live in the only capital city in the world with a national park in it. I have plenty of space to practice my animal spotting and photography skills. I’ve sold several prints since then and entered a few competitions. My motivation has been to use this skill for tourism and conservation. Again, we get gifted by Sir God to gift others.

I bumped into a photo contest last month run by the Kenya Tourism Board. They aimed to showcase our magical Kenya. There were 8 categories and one of them was wildlife. I decided to enter an image into the contest. I remembered Sunny Bindra’s advice and that helped me overcome my feeling of inadequacy. I often find that I’m competing with pros who have invested a lot of time and money to refine their craft. That leads to some self-doubt. Nevertheless, we threw in our photo of a smiling hyena I captured in my last photo safari at the Mara.

Early this month I saw my competition on the Magical Kenya handle on IG. It was steep and I wasn’t too confident my photo would go very far. To my delight, I got shortlisted as a finalist. About two weeks ago I got an email inviting me to the gala award ceremony where the top winners of each category would be unveiled. The dinner was on Tuesday this week from 6 pm. I was replaying how that evening would go the entire day as I went about my errands. I got home at about 4 pm to wash off the Nairobi sweat and dust in preparation for the event. After freshening up I was all set to go. As I left home my son laid hands on me and said a victory prayer. That boy is my personal prophet. He prayed that our photo may win and I cherish his intercession for me and our family.

With that anointing (felt like it hehe) I drove to Radisson Blu Upper Hill. I parked in the basement and went to the Kilimanjaro ballroom where the event was. I walked through an amazing display of the photos printed on canvas. We have mad talent in Kenya. If these folks didn’t put out their talents we would never have appreciated the country we live in. Our talents are not ours alone. We owe it to enrich others too with them.

The program began when the cabinet minister of tourism arrived and after the usual speeches we got to the exciting part. The MC did a great job and kept the show alive. When he got to the wildlife category my stomach was in knots. I was excited when my photo was mentioned in the top three. Now I wanted to be the winner. The second runner-up was called and she got her trophy and certificate. When the first runner-up was called out our smiling fisi (hyena) appeared on the screen. I was excited to have come this far. I went up and received my trophy and certificate proudly. I just wished my kijana (son) was with me. Next time I’m not leaving him behind.

It was a special evening. As I drove home overwhelmed with gratitude, I wondered how many times we hold back from showing and sharing our gifts and talents. How much better would the world (and our lives) be if we put ourselves out there more? It would be sad to die with the gifts we were born with. They are useless in the next life. Put out your tomatoes folks and you will find your buyer with time. Some like red ripe ones, others like green raw ones. But you will never know or find your buyer if you don’t show up and display what you have kwa soko (in the market). I hope by sharing our hyena’s photo it brought a smile to someone.