A True Inspiration: Dream your dream and it turn's into a reality

Any time anyone tells you that a dream is impossible, any time you’re discouraged by impossible challenges, just mutter this mantra: Tererai Trent.

Of all the people earning university degrees this year, perhaps the most remarkable story belongs to Tererai (pronounced TEH-reh-rye), a middle-aged woman who is one of my heroes. She is celebrating a personal triumph, but she’s also a monument to the aid organizations and individuals who helped her. When you hear that foreign-aid groups just squander money or build dependency, remember that by all odds Tererai should be an illiterate, battered cattle-herd in Zimbabwe and instead — ah, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

Tererai was born in a village in rural Zimbabwe, probably sometime in 1965, and attended elementary school for less than one year. Her father married her off when she was about 11 to a man who beat her regularly. She seemed destined to be one more squandered African asset.

A dozen years passed. Jo Luck, the head of an aid group called Heifer International, passed through the village and told the women there that they should stand up, nurture dreams, change their lives. Inspired, Tererai scribbled down four absurd goals based on accomplishments she had vaguely heard of among famous Africans. She wrote that she wanted to study abroad, and to earn a B.A., a master’s and a doctorate.

Tererai began to work for Heifer and several Christian organizations as a community organizer. She used the income to take correspondence courses, while saving every penny she could. In 1998 she was accepted to Oklahoma State University, but she insisted on taking all five of her children with her rather than leave them with her husband. “I couldn’t abandon my kids,” she recalled. “I knew that they might end up getting married off.”

Tererai’s husband eventually agreed that she could take the children to America — as long as he went too. Heifer helped with the plane tickets, Tererai’s mother sold a cow, and neighbors sold goats to help raise money. With $4,000 in cash wrapped in a stocking and tied around her waist, Tererai set off for Oklahoma.

An impossible dream had come true, but it soon looked like a nightmare. Tererai and her family had little money and lived in a ramshackle trailer, shivering and hungry. Her husband refused to do any housework — he was a man! — and coped by beating her.

“There was very little food,” she said. “The kids would come home from school, and they would be hungry.” Tererai found herself eating from trash cans, and she thought about quitting — but felt that doing so would let down other African women. “I knew that I was getting an opportunity that other women were dying to get,” she recalled. So she struggled on, holding several jobs, taking every class she could, washing and scrubbing, enduring beatings, barely sleeping.

At one point the university tried to expel Tererai for falling behind on tuition payments. A university official, Ron Beer, intervened on her behalf and rallied the faculty and community behind her with donations and support. “I saw that she had enormous talent,” Dr. Beer said. His church helped with food, Habitat for Humanity provided housing, and a friend at Wal-Mart carefully put expired fruits and vegetables in boxes beside the Dumpster and tipped her off.

Soon afterward, Tererai had her husband deported back to Zimbabwe for beating her, and she earned her B.A. — and started on her M.A. Then her husband returned, now frail and sick with a disease that turned out to be AIDS. Tererai tested negative for H.I.V., and then — feeling sorry for her husband — she took in her former tormentor and nursed him as he grew sicker and eventually died.

Through all this blur of pressures, Tererai excelled at school, pursuing a Ph.D at Western Michigan University and writing a dissertation on AIDS prevention in Africa even as she began working for Heifer as a program evaluator. On top of all that, she was remarried, to Mark Trent, a plant pathologist she had met at Oklahoma State.

Tererai is a reminder of the adage that talent is universal, while opportunity is not. There are still 75 million children who are not attending primary school around the world. We could educate them all for far less than the cost of the proposed military “surge” in Afghanistan.

Each time Tererai accomplished one of those goals that she had written long ago, she checked it off on that old, worn paper. Last month, she ticked off the very last goal, after successfully defending her dissertation. She’ll receive her Ph.D next month, and so a one-time impoverished cattle-herd from Zimbabwe with less than a year of elementary school education will don academic robes and become Dr. Tererai Trent.

The Real Truth

This story is in continuation with “A true incident”, please read that before going on to this….

All my doubts were still on the dishwasher maintenance guy and I kept on convincing the landlord but due to lack of concrete evidences I couldn’t really prove it. I also called Dell and told them about the incident and as the product was registered with them they agreed to inform me if they notice any activities on my account. At first I had little hope of getting my belongings back but with time and as months passed the unpleasant incident started fading off my mind. I was also upset because there was a lot of personal data on my laptop and losing that meant losing all my previous years’ works. I lived in that studio for few months before moving out of the city due to professional reasons.

It had almost been nine months since the burglary incident happened. Now, I was working someplace else away from family and friends but I had made some new friends and got adjusted to the new place. My sister lived in another city and I visited her often. One time when I visited her she handed me a small package from Dell. I thought it was a laptop battery as one of those battery replacements Schemes by Dell were going on at that time; I was surprised because I never ordered one myself. I un-wrapped the package and found a laptop hard drive. It wasn’t of any use for me as I didn't want to replace my hard drive as my current hard drive was working just fine and moreover I had a lot of data stored on it, which I didn’t want to switch. I thought of selling it on EBay.

At home, as I was going through the package I noticed something very strange, I saw an unfamiliar name and phone no., below my name and address on the packaging slip. At first I thought it must be a glitch but the phone no. appeared to be the area code of the place I previously stayed, I was stunned. I immediately started linking all the pieces and figured out that this could be the person who has my laptop. I also noticed the asset tag number which is unique for each laptop and this one matched with my old laptop no.

I was thrilled that this could be the person who stole my laptop and might have ordered the hard drive and since Dell had the laptop registered under my name they sent it to my address instead. I was also angry at dell as I had reported the theft to them still they were communicating without verifying any details with me, the real owner. At first, I thought of calling the person but was a little scared, after making a decision to report this to the police and let them investigate, I called the local police station and provided them with all the details, to my surprise they claimed that they can’t take any actions or help me in this matter even though I have all the evidences. I was dumbstruck as if lightening has crossed over me, I thought police was here to protect you and help you out. I then called the detective agency but according to them the report had been archived and my case was closed as this was just a small theft. I was helpless, a little ray of hope I had of getting my precious laptop back was being darkened by the eclipses of immoral and unjust behaviors of the law authorities.

This is when I decided to take matters into my own hands even if it meant going against the law. Although I was a scared and didn’t know how to proceed, I decided to call the phone no. on the packaging slip. As the phone was ringing my mind was clouded with numerous negative thoughts, I thought that I might be dealing with a gang or mafia or a criminal as I had never ever communicated with any such people before. A boy answered my call. I asked him if I can talk to the person whose name was listed on the package. The boy told me that it was his mom and that she was at work at that moment. I then asked him if they own a dell laptop and whether they had ordered a hard drive replacement from dell. He thought that I was someone inquiring from Dell and answered all my questions. As soon as I got confirmed that they have my laptop, I told him that I am the original owner of the laptop they had stolen from my apartment. I threatened him that I will report this to the police if they didn’t return it back to me. The boy got scared and told me that he is just a high school kid and don’t do such things and his mom didn’t steal it, she bought the laptop from someone, he sounded very innocent but I was on fire and had no mercy for the kid or for his mother. I then told him that I will call up later to speak to his mom.

I called up later that night, this time the lady herself picked up the phone. I got her aware of the whole situation and told her that she has my laptop and if they don’t return it, they would go to jail, even though i knew that the police already refused to help me in this matter. She appealed that she didn’t steal the laptop instead she bought it for $250 from someone on the street. I told her to return my laptop as early as possible; otherwise she would be behind bars. She started pleading, for mercy, explaining that she has a family and a respectable job and that I should not report her to the police. She said that she will mail the laptop back to me in a package. First I agreed to it but then I thought she might break it and send it to me and blame the postal service for the damage. I immediately analyzed the situation and instructed her to deliver the laptop in-person. She herself got terrified by this and started insisting repeatedly to not to inform the police or get any cops along with me. We decided to meet at a crowded public place in the city. The time was fixed at around nine in the morning. I couldn't sleep the night before, may be because of the anticipation to get my laptop or fear or agony she might cause to me.

At 7 am I got a call from that lady, I was still in bed. I thought she might be cancelling the plans or maybe refusing to give back my laptop. Instead she had called to confirm the place and asked me again to not to get any cops I assured her that if she returned my laptop I will not take any actions. I got ready and went on to get my prized possession, almost nine months after it was taken away from me. I myself couldn’t believe that this was happening. Lot of mixed thoughts were going on in my mind I was scared, excited, angry and delighted all at the same time.

She called me again sharp at nine to let me know that she has reached the designated place. By now it was confirmed that she was more scared then me and she wanted to get done with this burden too. There was a lot of traffic and an hour fifteen minutes journey took me almost two hours, on my way i had a fear that she might have left the place as I was late by an hour. Finally I reached the spot, the only identification she gave me was that she will be standing near the subway gate and wearing a green outfit. I didn’t provide her with any identifications of mine and she didn’t ask for any.

As I was walking I saw an African American lady with green scrubs holding a small bag on her thin shoulders, she looked short and timid. She was nothing like the image of a person a thief would have. Well I approached her cautiously and pronounced her name very politely; I was not scared anymore and sounded confident. She hesitated a bit and responded shyly handing me the laptop, I grabbed it quickly without even looking if it was the right one or opening to see if it still works. I again asked how she got the laptop. She told me that she bought the laptop from someone on the street and that she paid for it in cash. I was surprised to hear that and thought she was making up stories to cover up for the thief maybe a gang, she didn’t seem like a affluent person carrying $200 in cash and paying for it on the road without even finding out if the laptop ever worked. She was wearing a scrub, so inquisitively I asked her where she worked she said that she is an assistant nurse in a hospital. We then parted our own ways. I just ran off from the scene to the nearest shop.

I immediately went to a café to check if it was working, everything was intact accept all my old data had been deleted, well I was content that at least I had my laptop on me. I came home all happy and triumphed as if I had won a long lost battle.

I have been fortunate throughout in a lot of situations where I have lost possessions and have got them back as twice I got my lost cell phone back, once I lost my wallet full of credit cards and cash and I got it after almost three weeks, with everything intact but that’s another story.

The person who stole my laptop is still a mystery, maybe the burglar was known to her and she was trying to cover up for him. She had no idea about my microwave oven. I still wonder why police refused bluntly to help me. I had already filed a report for my stolen laptop with Dell, they actually encourage you to call if you loose any items as with asset tags its easy to locate the laptops but she was communicating with Dell constantly. When the detective had the hand prints and the name and telephone no. he could have easily done a investigation and catch the real culprit, but I guess they were lazy. This is the best Law and order department and the most reputed brand of the world. I still can't figure these out.

The chances of getting back my laptop were almost one in a million, and I still think this was an impossible situation, rather a miracle. I will call it destiny or luck or may be a desire of hope. This incident made me realize that one should never give up and always keep trying. This also taught me to deal with a tough situation. It has been three years since this incident took place but being my real true story, it is still fresh in my THOUGHTS and whenever I think of this incident I always believe that “When you really want something the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it”

I am just not Lucky Enough

“I didn’t get a job, because I am not lucky”

“I am not lucky enough to earn a raise”

“I am not lucky to win this game”

“I am not lucky to win a lottery”-may be true

We often say these words and blame our luck for every situation, but we never realize the real facts that has lead us to that unpleasent situation. We blame our luck if something adverse happens with us. I myself blame destiny and bad luck, sometimes. Blaming others, somehow gives us a kind of consolation to cover up our actions and wrongdoings which lead to that undesirable happening and then instead of blaming ourselves we just say “it’s my bad luck” and then instead of taking any actions to counteract and improve upon it we just sit back and wait for the luck to get better. This is how we become victims of destiny and life.

On the contrary, when Good things happen, it’s just only about us, our skills that lead to success, we like to praise us, self-reinforcing our own pride and arrogance. It’s rarely ever, "am I lucky” and it’s never "thank God". It’s only "thank God" when a disaster is avoided, not when un-instigated good things happen.

It’s always good to think of reasons, but rather than blaming our luck we must take the responsibility of everything that happens to us and if we do this we will feel immense power which will turn us from a helpless victim to a sure shot winner. Although, It takes a lot of efforts and courage to take the blame on us and taking the responsibility but once we do it the rest of the task to accomplish something gets easy. We have the complete control on how we react to things ( in this case our luck) and we must use it to our advantage.

Taking the responsibility makes us action oriented. We know it’s us who has to do something about it instead of waiting for situation or luck to change and once we take that action we will see our mind working toward the solution and finally towards making us a winner. There is no such thing as a foreseeable future however; we can set ourselves up to make sound decisions.

Remember, no one can be blamed for luck, good or bad. So next time if something bad happens to you, just don’t blame your luck and be called a victim of destiny, rather gather your positive THOUGHTS and put those Thoughts into good actions, it’s in your hands to change your luck the way you want it as “Luck favors the prepared, not the beaten”.