Afam's Notes

This Article is in response to the post  "You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!" A Compelling Read -"  Please read it first. I read the “transcript” of your conversation with my compatriot with much intrigue. Your view of the “third world” is not only dated in nomenclature, it is also dated in reality. When was the last time you were in Zambia? The Zambia of the 1980s is not the Zambia of 2012! Zambians are far from sleepy and lethargic (though I do not see sleep or dreaming as a bad thing). Perhaps it is because I subscribe to Rabindranath Tagore’s words, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I woke and saw that life was duty. I acted and behold, duty was joy.”

From "Mind of Malaka".  A bracing must read for everyone who cares about Africa:   “ That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”

My mates are getting married. My mates are getting good jobs. My mates are succeeding. My mates are living overseas. My mates are buying cars. ... My mates are building houses. My mates are this......my mates are that......

1. My character is more important than my talent 2. Failure is nature’s plan to prepare me for great responsibility 3. Failing is not the worst thing in the world, quitting is 4. It is better to more reliable than brilliant 5. Only a life lived for others is worth living 6. The best thing I can do for my fellow human beings is to love them 7. Opportunity does not stay too long, so I should make the best use of each day 8. The value I place on others is largely a function of the value I place on myself 9. Being successful is not necessarily being first or the best at something, when I give all I’ve got and I’m satisfied with what I got at the end, then I am successful 10. If I must succeed, I should give extra effort and push myself beyond my normal limit 11. A very cheap way to make friends is to be interested in what concerns them 12. If I risk nothing and do nothing; I will eventually have nothing and become nothing 13. Until I respect my own time, I can never respect ot...

-Note the world’s best computer Gurus in number 1, 2 & 6 and the newly added 11 (1) Bill Gates The Harvard Crimson called him "Harvard's most successful dropout" — the rest of the world just calls him ridiculously rich. For more than a decade, Bill Gates has been one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, men in the world. The son of an attorney and a schoolteacher, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973, only to drop out two years later to found Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen. In 2007, more than thirty years after he left Harvard, the co-founder of Microsoft