Have you ever had to leave your entire country, family and friends to journey into a strange land to start your life afresh? How scary was that? I have and boy was it scary yet exciting! Indeed, it really is the immigrant story and an all too common one across the globe.
Now, imagine you are settled in your new country, have a practice, business, or you are a working professional and now you have to make that same move, yet again, this time to the very land you exited over two decades ago? Worse, in returning to the country you exited, you basically have to start from scratch, yet again. Moving at such later age in life is not for the faint hearted, regardless if you hail from the country you are returning to.
For Nollywood filmmaker Mildred Okwo, she indeed has experienced both ends of the spectrum and I recall meeting her, for the first time, at the crossroad of her making the decision to finally relocate permanently to Nigeria about eight years ago. While there have been many successful stories we hear of persons who relocated back to Nigeria and now helm successful fashion and entertainment companies, there are more that we do not hear about that simply failed at such attempts.
Therefore, it would be remiss of me not to pay particular attention to Mildred Okwo in both congratulating her for such a successful move; and equally as important, impacting an entire nation with her film ‘The Meeting’ which was co-produced by Nollywood Actress Rita Dominic.
I shared the fact that ‘The Meeting’ had been nominated at the Nollywood Movie Awards in 11 categories. As a follow up to that story, the award event which was held last week, saw ‘The Meeting’ take home three awards; two of which included Okwo winning ‘Best Director’ and Dominic winning ‘Best Actress.’
Indeed, especially for some of you who are caught in situations where you have to begin life afresh be it an emotional, physical or psychological move, this should inspire you to know that anything is possible. You have to believe in yourself, never stay on the ground when you fall, never give up and keep chopping away at your obstacles to get to your dreams. Eventually, all the wonderful things that are meant to be yours, will be. It is only a matter of time. Really, na turn by turn.
A warm and happy Friday to you all. I hope you have great plans for the weekend or at the very least, can rest up from all of your AML bossmaking moves.
By the way, can I just say, honestly, the AML community of readers are so cool. I keep wanting to just set up a meet up of some kind to have everyone meet and really network and rub minds. It would be mind blowing what we can do all working together given the caliber of persons both on the US, UK and African end of things that read AML.
Also, I was at an event this week and was greeted by a prominent VC whose friend forwards AML links to him to read. He recognized me and had this priceless smile on his face.:) Very cool to have such diverse go getter community of readers. I hail you all.
I will catch you all sometime next week.
Cheers,
Uduak
