Tech communities guided me…
As promised in my previous blog, I am finally sharing my journey in tech with the rest of the world. My next articles are going to be technical and I genuinely can’t wait.
My journey is that of finding love where I found myself, it wasn’t an option initially. More of learning to love my condition and situation. I had always wanted to be a doctor but after high school, I did not qualify and my father being a tech enthusiast pushed me to pursue Computer Science. It wasn’t easy at all since anything tech-related had never sparked my interest. I had my first phone at sixteen after high school, not because my parents couldn’t afford to get me one earlier, I simply never saw the need for one. Before then, the only thing connecting me to technology was our tv and my big brother’s laptop, both of which I used to watch animations and news, sad but true.
I am going to try and summarise my entire four-year experience in this article so maybe it would help someone in the same situation as I was. I will point out the challenges I experienced and what I did every step of the way until I got myself to this point. I hope you enjoy it.
Vuyanzi in her first year.
I had a hard time and ended up wasting an entire year trying to understand and gain interest in tech. My study in school was ok, but at an individual level, I wasn’t doing much to grow myself in the tech space.
I was a Computer Science Student by title and during the day I would spend my time going around school hawking donuts and at night we would have meetings with my girlfriends to discuss what went wrong and right and how to improve our services to our clients. During class time, I associated myself with those I felt knew “a lot” about tech so that by “default” I would “know” at least something little to survive by simply listening in on their conversations.
The importance of friends that add value.
Genuine friends have played a big role in my life. Yes, it’s hard and close to impossible to find real genuine friends but I am sure at one point or another someone has played a role in your life and at that particular point, it would be right to call them your heroes. During my lost state, I had a classmate, who used to send me tech-related articles every single morning and saved coding tutorials on my laptop for me to view during my free time. I have come to learn that, there’s never free time and if one is serious about something then they free up their time for that particular thing. I wasn’t serious, I rarely read the articles and used the videos to put me to sleep at night. Every time I switched on my laptop ready to code and follow a tutorial through to the end, I found them boring and never watched any past five minutes. The videos “knocked me out” so badly.
Towards the end of my first year, one of my close friends, made me realize that I was wasting my time complaining about Computer Science not being my choice. He made it clear that as much as it wasn’t my choice, I was wasting my life. That hit me and I finally approached my parents about what I had been going through and we agreed that I would give tech one last serious chance to grow in me or I would shift to medicine and begin with nursing from diploma level.
Approaching my parents, I had no idea how they were supposed to help. I just knew they were the right people to approach, however, I wasn’t pleased with the options they gave me. I felt that I had tried an entire year to love tech but somehow, it simply didn’t “love me back”, between you and me though, we both know that I was the one not putting in the work. Starting afresh in a totally new field didn’t seem like an option I was ready to try out because I was scared that maybe things would be hard on the other side as well.
My second year.
Devfests have played a big role in me discovering myself and I would advise beginners to attend them. Yes, there have been talks about how Devfests are all about free food and tech swags, but if we think about it, there are those whose interest in tech has been sparked from attending such events. So why rule out the importance of such events simply because a minority doesn’t see the need for them. It all boils down to attitude, I guess. If someone decides that they will leave their houses just to get free food and t-shirts then the loss is on them. Devfests to me provide the opportunity to increase one’s network or basically just learn from mentors you have been following on social media. Then again, this is totally my opinion.
Let’s wind this up, shall we, below are a list of tech events that I believe have played a role in the person I am today;
- The very first Devfest event I attended, Miss Dorcas was one of the speakers and she mentioned technovation and I did my research and thanks to my friend I have been volunteering as a technovation mentor for three consecutive years now. Mr. Aniedi also happened to have been a speaker at this event and he mentioned the DSC Program. At this time, I knew for a fact I wasn’t ready to lead and therefore I waited for an entire year before applying for the opportunity. I would like to point out that I wasn’t just waiting, I was improving my skills while waiting for the applications to open again.
- During last year’s DevFest Nairobi, a friend of mine mentioned the MSP Program and I applied and got accepted to join the community. This has granted me access to amazing learning materials that have helped me grow as a developer.
- I got the opportunity to participate in a hackathon for the very first time. Mr. Jusper Ondulo, my lecturer, invited me and later on one of my mentors, Mr. Moses Njatha, sent me a link to apply and be among the lucky 30 students from all over the country to be selected to attend a Health Informatics Bootcamp organized by USAID at the University of Nairobi. I got in! In a nutshell, the Bootcamp was intense and every challenge tossed was a huge milestone that I had no idea how to achieve. I remember forcing myself out of bed most of the days because I felt like a fraud in a group of really talented fellow students who seemed to have it all figured out. My self-esteem was so low at that time that I was once asked to give a simple vote of thanks to one of our guests and guess what, I simply couldn’t.
- I volunteered during the openMRS and Helina Conferences and learnt a lot about open source contributions. I have since participated in hacktoberfest for the past two years and this year I attended the very first open-source festival in Africa and can’t wait to make my first contributions to an open-source community.
For beginners out there, I hope you find people that believe in you so much that they hold your hand through the process. They don’t need to be influential to impact your life. These people can be your best friend or anyone in your community that takes their time away from busy schedules to teach you a skill or two. To be honest, though, it all starts with you!
In the end, I have grown to love the tech community and can’t see myself anywhere else. It has given me a sense of belonging and has shown me that I am part of something bigger than myself and fears. I’ve had plans, shattered and broken in the past, things I’ve hoped in, slip through my hands. I have won and I have lost, I got it right sometimes but sometimes I did not and that’s the fun of it. My end goal is to someday build software that can make life earlier for deaf people.
Existing, continuously learning and leveling up one day at a time.
There we go if you reached this far let’s have a toast! Cheers, to getting lost and finding ourselves. Before we leave, a big shout out to Allela who encouraged me to write this article.
Happy coding everyone.
