Intro to "Africa Arise!"

Introduction: My Story

Freshman year- Studying in my room in FT :-)

Hello UCSB Black Student Union (and everyone else) :-) I know most of you may know my face but you don't know me so allow me to introduce myself to you (you can skip this part and go to the next post for the main message if you don't care for introductions) ... So I'm about to but in the 4.75 years at UCSB I wasn't that much involved with the black community on campus and then in my last quarter I started going for all the BSU events all of a sudden. Why is that?... I remember during one of the ABC meetings Alexis Ariel mentioned that sometimes she runs into some black people on campus that she's never seen before and she wonders why they don't care to be a part of the black community; she wondered whether those people thought they were too good for them. Well I was one of those people so I can speak on behalf of some of them. So it's basically issues with Identity. Due to some past experiences in Kenya I became insecure in my identity so I became passive and I stopped initiating that much due to fear of rejection (posts: Self-Esteem  and Advocacy). And I remained that way for a long time and it was depressing... yeah I became depressed. I'm from Kenya and one thing I like about our culture is hospitality so coming to America while being insecure I was hard-hit by the individualistic culture. And because I was insecure I took the lack of hospitality as rejection. (This introduction is getting too long lol. I'll share more of my story in an upcoming post called: "Coming to America") So yeah, I lived in ft my freshmen year and so I was isolated from the black community coz I wasn't on the black floor. And later when I'd go to BSU everyone knew each other and no one was welcoming and because I was insecure I didn't initiate due to fear of rejection. So it was a dead end: I wanted to be part of the community but it was all up to me and since it was too costly for me (I was too broken to have the courage to face my insecurities) I just gave up after a while (early on in my junior year).

Sophomore year- Tabling at the African American Social :-)

A community I became involved with in my freshman year was InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They were tabling at the African American social at Santa Rosa and I signed up. I joined in towards the end of Fall quarter... so once again I was joining in at a time when everyone else already had their friends and the reason I stayed was because of individuals who made me feel welcome- a girl called Jamie and my Bible study leaders Nathan and Ademir. I heard about BAM (Born Again Ministries) later but the reason  I didn't check it out was the same: my insecurities and later I couldn't coz of schedule conflict. Anyway, looking back, if I was welcomed by BSU or if BAM had reached out to me before InterVarsity I would have probably never joined InterVarsity because I'd feel at home. So it was God who allowed things to happen they way they did so that I could join InterVarsity, a multi-ethnic fellowship. There were things He wanted to teach me through it. So yeah, I became a faithful member. I went with them on a mission trip to Bosnia the summer of my Freshman year and in my sophomore year I was co-leading a Bible Study in Santa Rosa that's how I got to meet people on the black hall. I was also a leader of InterVarsity's African Diasporic CSAME (Cultural Solidarity Amidst Multi-ethnicity) group with Thaddeus and that year I organized an event called, "Culture Fest: The Black Church Experience" which some of you attended. So yeah, I really cared about the black community though my insecurities still prevented me from being a part of it.

So up to this point I was really involved with InterVarsity- I was even on leadership but I was just as insecure as before, if not more. You see issues with identity really run deep and ultimately it's a spiritual issue since God is the giver of our identity. So God started calling me out of the routine I had formed coz I was not doing well spiritually (my relationship with God and with myself) and my relationship with others was also shallow (posts: The Desert and Remember). And then in the post: Pre-Fall Leader's Retreat I shared how right before the Fall of my senior year God set me free from that depression that had held me back for so long and He gave me back My Voice - The freedom to speak my mind and to be myself. And that whole year I faced tons of opposition from the Staff leaders because of the things I had to say. So when God told me that I was free to use my voice He was telling me to call out the systems of oppression and injustice that I was seeing happen before my eyes and to speak on behalf those who are suffering. So I did and that resulted in many meetings with the Staff leaders who heard us (me, Thaddeus and Wisdom) but at the end of the day no changes were being implemented... Ok I'm tired of writing now haha. You can go back to the main post.