Yesterday was not just another ordinary day. Our baby girl was following in the footsteps of her elder sibling and joining university a culmination of her 17 and a half years 13 of which were spent in one form of basic education or secondary school or another. It was also parents orientation day and we had to attend it as new parents in the campus she was being admitted to because if we had attended orientation for her sister Sam we had to do it for Shan also!!
From her joining nursery school at the tender age of 4 to yesterday has been a journey fraught with worry, excitement, sleepless nights, anxiety, suspense and joy for us based on which point of her educational experiences we were at. She has gone on school trips, been in trouble with the school authorities, rebelled from parental control, sneaked out with her friends at night, extended her curfew, been sick in hospital, visited her relatives in other parts of the world, been conned off her phone and money and lost a grandfather. She had also recently worked in a therapy centre and attended a course in mobile phone application development after her 4th Form just to keep her busy.
She has lived a life and had experiences way beyond that experienced by many people twice her age and now it was time to move on into the great unknown of university life and the doors and opportunities it opens for one in the hereafter! It was time for us to let go and watch her soar as she makes the difficult transition to becoming an adult, unsupervised and alone in a hostile world where it is your own judgement and wits that help you along and where peer pressure is waiting in the wings to pounce on the weak in spirit and then take them down the beaten path to destructive tendencies.
Thankfully the campus she is joining is a private campus situated not too far from Nairobi and which has a strong discipline and high standards. Part of the discipline involves attendance in christian activities be it chapel, christian groups etc so as to lay a strong moral foundation for all the students. It is one of those campuses that prides itself on being a campus free from the physical vices that bedevil the youth of today, who free to roam unfettered in the blogosphere and internet discover and know things that those in the earlier generations learnt about a scant 5 to 10 years ago.
We as her parents have done all that we could for her and her sister and it is time for them to chart their own course and destiny going forward, free to decide and free to choose our hopes and prayers being that they should make the right choices. One thing that this adventure of bringing up children has taught us is that there is no manual that will enable you raise a child because all of them are different individuals with varying temparaments, dispositions, abilities, nuances, foibles, characters and associations.
We can only pray that God guides them on the path of the straight and narrow and gives them blinkers and ear muffs so that they avoid the wide and winding road well travelled that often leads to addictions, distractions and dangerous life styles.
The countdown to an 'empty nest' has began in earnest for me and my wife because as sure as the sun sets every day our girls are all grown up and looking to start their own lives in the not to distant future.
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