Towards 60!: A Long Walk in Uncertain Paths
Early in life, I got used to being wrongly profiled. There was always this idea that I was privileged, that I got things because of birth and proximity to certain leads. I also learned not to react to them quite early in life, not because anyone told me to ignore such unfair assumptions, but because they get repeated so often that I knew not to pay attention. My parents were teachers. Although I had been exposed to some learning earlier than some children of my age, because books were always around me, I was not formally registered in school until I reached the age of six in 1972. It gave me an initial edge; I already knew what some other kids in higher classes knew that the primary one I was registered in did not. But that was going to have its downside, which my parents never knew and which I wasn’t conscious of until I worked briefly as a teacher. It was going to affect my concentration in the classroom, a burden I carried throughout my undergraduate years. Having covere...