PHENOMENAL YEAR, PHENOMENAL WOMEN

It's only been a few days into 2007 and women are already making me proud...
My god-mother Miss Oprah opened her state of the art, world class school for underprivileged young girls in South Africa on Tuesday.
What a blessed year it will be for those little girls and their families.
There was a special report on CNN by Jeff Koinange on one of the little girls who lived with her mother in a one room shack. They do everything in that room (for lack of a better word because it hardly qualifies as a room- more like a closet) , they take baths, cook, sleep, study, work, store clothes in this tiny space. They have no running water, no electricity, they share a toilet with the other shacks.
Oprah is such an inspiration and when she talks about this school and what she is trying to achieve I am overwhelmed at how exemplary her life is and how she has come full circle from growing up in a shack with no water and electricity to helping young girls in the same predicament have the very best life has to offer.
She has promised to help her girls through university and sponsor them to any university in the world.

This truly humbles me and puts into more perspective the fact that over 90% of the time, the things that we worry about are nothing compared to what others have to go through. It especially hits home harder when everyday around me, I encounter this abject poverty first hand. Who protects the little girl sent out to beg by her mother? Who looks out for the little girl roaming the streets hawking goods? Who guarantees her safety when she is loaded onto the back of a truck and taken miles away into the big city to become a maid? We see the results of poverty and illiteracy in our communities. Why now more than ever are we allowing that to happen in ten fold with the little ones today. How are we ever going to move forward as a country if we cannot correct our past mistakes?
If only they could be blessed with the chances that have been given to these girls.
Do Nigerian girls not deserve a chance just like these South African girls have been given?


Secondly, 66 year old Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, a grandmother of six, made history by becoming speaker of the house. This is HUGE for women the world over. Second in line to the US president! WOW! Someday a woman will become the leader of the free world. It may not be Ms. Pelosi but she sure has opened those doors.
It is great to remember the women in our past who dreamed a bigger dream for their children and their children's children and fought for the realization of that dream but we also must honor those women who have chosen to keep that dream alive and have worked hard to break these barriers that have been set up by a male dominated world.
I have a good feeling about this year the Democrats have taken Congress back!
Maybe our troops can come home now!(YEAAAH) YES OUR ( I may be Nigerian but a part of me will always be American)
Also the LADIES are rockin' the hell outta 2007 and it's only been 5 days!
ROCK ON LADIES, ROCK ON!!!