The thin fingers that were keeping the pencil inside the compass box, were shivering hard. A classmate who observed this and , added to the scarlet me, and the memory stayed through the years. As a little girl in school, my language writing skills were good. I liked my national language, Hindi. I also loved English language, which was the medium of my education in my country, India. Teachers loved to read what I wrote, but sadly when it came to speaking in front of a crowd, I felt my world breaking. I would sweat, my hands would shiver, my feet went numb, and yet the worse was still to come. After a few lines I would end up breathless. My words would shiver. People around me would hear my shivering words and laugh. It was the same case everytime, infront of my class, a crowd or even a group of five friends. I grew to higher classes and my stage fear grew manifold. A few in the teachers knew about my situation. But everytime a new teacher asked me to stand up and read few lines, I would be in the same dark space, alone. At one instance a teacher asked me to surrender a beautiful essay I had written on happiness to another student as this student was a confident speaker and went on to read out my essay in a competition. She won it. She came and read out my essay in front of the whole school, beaming with joy and confidence. I stood in the assembly and heard every word I had written from her. For the first time I was not hungry that day at the lunch hours. I slowly progressed to higher grades, my shivering hands received awards for both English and hindi literature. Teachers would be astonished at my writing skills. And yet I looked back longingly at the kids hosting on mike, so comfortable as if they were speaking at home. The monster was there in my mind. Looking even more fiercely into my eyes. Sometimes I would blame myself, other times I felt it was my karma. I graduated, shying away from limelight, stage, people. It was time to do my MBA. The fear monster, was now a comfortable resident of my mind. My degree entailed giving presentations in front of class. I dodged my turn as far as I could. My nervousness made my classmates make fun of me behind me. I felt helpless. I had few admirers of my youth too in the class by now. It felt worse to speak nervous in front of them. A thoughtful friend in class understood my predicament and he advised me to practice hearing my own recorded speech. I practiced. It did help me in recognizing the words I was eating in my speech, but speaking confident was still far off. I spent on public speaking books. Strangely I knew the small nuances now in speaking, and yet feared stage. I opted for finance stream, as I knew marketing stream would mean more public speaking. This was it. The monster had won. It made me take a decision I didn't want. I hated desk jobs. Wanted to be the star, but … Done with MBA, I finally landed up a job at a small financing firm. Too much travel and work, I was in a happy space. The fear lived in me. Then there was an event at my workplace. All prospective buyers were the audience. A crowd of around sixty people. My team had four marketing guys and me. Being the only Female member, it was now my job to explain our scheme. My boss looked upon me to present. This was it. Back into the monsters battlefield. All those meditation techniques, all practice sessions felt faint. Can anything calm a thudding heart in fear? And then, I decided, something very small. This small decision which was going to effect the rest of my living. I decided that day that I woudn't bother at all. I will give my presentation the way I can. I was wary of the monster. Only I knew the words in my mind? So I woudn't let people laughing on me or looking at me bother me. I was feeling fine and anxious too in my crimson dress. When it was the turn of my company to present, I stepped forward and spoke about our schemes. I was tired and overwhelmed and just wanted to get done with the thing. I went slowly, was aware of what I was speaking, even enjoyed saying the last few lines. The audience clapped for me. I was on sweat but smiling. My team members felt I was good. My boss was less in words, but appreciative. I felt I had tasted something for the first time. The taste of a mild confidence. I was smiling all the way back home. That day and moment changed me a lot. Speaking now came easy to me. My world was changed. The stage felt friendly. The mike felt inviting. I thanked my gods and all those who helped me in their way. Public speaking became my strength. I knew the audience I wanted to boast in front of, my school and college class, was long gone. It came late. But I was happy. Today I get invited to speak at events. My perspective changed too. I now want my audience to listen to everything I say. Understand everything I have to say. I am not fearful anymore. And for me nothing in the world is as precious as this feeling.

The moment I was brought into this world, I was instantly branded developmentally-stunted, narcissistic and lazy. Apart from being a lethargic preemie (who forced doctors to take him out weeks early), my other crime was being born in the 80's. While newer evidence from psychology (mercifully) defends my generation as suffering from the dual struggles of discovering identity while enduring growing pains of the most rapidly-changing socioeconomic environment in human history, impulsive prejudice built up against Millennials towers over us like Mount Olympus (which, ironically, few detractors would ever climb such pre-conceptual heights to find out whether we fit their expectations). To our elders, strangers (elder strangers or was it strange elders?), we would instinctually be graced as “Generation Me”. Deep in my bones, I knew I wasn't this kind of person. Much of the joy in my youth, for instance, came from volunteering at the hospital or performing songs to soothe weary audiences of their troubles. Partying was a worthless social obligation (starting with boredom and ending with anxiety for the time I wasted). Whether my young mind knew it or not, I was determined to be something other than the selfish, entitled brats Gen Me were destined (by society) to be. It's probably why, at 24, I faced a quarter-life crisis. Days before my 25th birthday, I was unstoppable. Fresh off of earning my black belt in Shorin Ryu karate (a feat some believed beyond me), I raced to the wall in my room, placing the half-English, half-Japanese certificate above my ARCT in piano performance and my medical science degree. I gazed up at my trinity gleefully, only for my pride to vaporize instantly. I had accomplished nothing. Emptiness welled up inside me as I questioned the truth behind those certified proclamations. For all the blood, sweat, tears, time and effort I had poured into those milestones, my patient friend, Walter, from my hospital days (who always blessed me as a ‘good man' whenever we parted) was still dead. My musical performances were little more than transient pleasures. But shaking me most was that a tech at school (I had just finished my 3rd year of pharmacy) died suddenly from cancer. Surrounded by medical practitioners - and all we could offer were our sincerest condolences. Her death was the last straw: fueling me to choose cancer to cure since there's not a single person whose life hasn't been touched by the disease. Unfortunately, continuing to champion destructive treatments (yes, even Nobel Prize-winning immune therapies) in this civil war against our distorted cells (or selves, as it were) will still claim 1/4 of all Canadian cancer patients. With the impending arrival of the largest cancer patient population in history (due to aging baby boomers), 1.2 million baby boomers will die while the luckier 3.5 million boomer survivors will be forever cursed by a myriad of progressive chronic diseases. Three guesses whose generation bears this other impossible burden. Einstein once wrote: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels”. To me, the answer was easy: non-destructive cures. If cancer isn't threatened, it won't desperately evolve against treatment. Sadly, humans have been killing cancer for centuries. Researching otherwise would be like growing a third head (a second being normal by contrast). Witnessing my (supposedly superior) assessor degrade patients with outdated data for her ego proved that my field also wasn't a solution. This left me one avenue to convey my theories somewhat seriously. Sci-Fi. The sting of incredible backlash still ails me to this day. My parents called me crazy. My colleagues shied away from my radical logic. Even my girlfriend dumped me, thinking I'd choose writing over pharmacy. All they saw was another selfish dreamer enticed by fame and fortune. All I could dream about were a hundred thousand terminal Canadian cancer patients pleading for euthanasia each year. What else could I have done? I shut out my heartache: setting out alone to show people that non-destructive cancer cures can solve this imminent medical genocide. At times I wonder whether publishing Destructive Salvation was worth it. I struggled through rejection, isolation and dark times when I believed my passing might be better on my parents. But in my waking nightmares, I uncovered strength within me: pushing me through crippling anxiety and fatigue I once thought unconquerable. Regardless of my gains or losses, my fire burns brighter than ever to make non-destructive cancer cures a reality. Whether my novel makes a difference is not just up to me anymore, (though I have faith good people will agree with me and want to help). In the meantime, my promise to all cancer patients past, present and future still stands: I'll never stop fighting to cure this disease properly. Not a bad calling for defying one's (preordained) destiny.

It was still the beginning of the academic year and my friends wanted us to study together. One of us offered to host us at his place, as he had a black board that we could use to do mathematics. I wasn't a good student, I hadn't been one for a very long time, but I tried to pass, so I welcomed the idea and decided to be apart of it. It didn't last for very long. I don't think I have ever known why we only had a few sessions. But we really worked, I mean, they really worked as most of the time I didn't do much. For some reason, my interest in school had grown weak over the year. I often felt like I was in a cage where I wasn't allowed to express myself and do my best. I was actually repeating the class, the four of us, Thiam, Yannick, Gabin, who was hosting us, and me where all in the same class the previous year. One day, we were working on some maths exercises. A student from a literary class of our high school came to us and asked to help him solve a few exercises. We hadn't covered the chapter yet, but we had instructions in the book, so we proceeded to help him. I was sitting and watching my friends doing the work most of the time. But then came a problem that we didn't know how to solve. That caught my attention. No one had a clue of what method or formula we could use to solve it. But looking at it, I thought I might be able to figure out the answer. I could remember that I attempted the previous year to do the same unsuccessfully. But I thought that maybe this time I could. I was hungry so I went out to the shop nearby, bought some biscuits and went back. I sat back and looking at the problem on the board, I thought deeply. As I got close to finding the answer, I stood up and went towards the board. I found it and wrote it on the board. What I did after was pretty unexpected. I told my friend, “This is the answer that was asked. Now how do we get here from the given data?”. Gabin protested, “Is that really the kind of answer that was asked?!” Thiam initially thought it was but they had to argue for a little while until they agreed. I let them talk among themselves, and when they were done, I asked again how we could get there. Thiam asked me, “But how did you come up with that answer?” and I just replied, “I thought about it.” I knew I could do things most people could not, but even though back then they called me Genius, they didn't really know what I had in my toolbox. We had to wait for a while before Thiam finally found in the book the method we needed to use to solve the problem. He applied it and to their great surprise, he found the same answer as what I had written on the board. I didn't get praised of it, they were shocked! Thiam asked, “How did you manage to get that answer?!” I told him again that I had thought about it and added that I could do this kind of things. He started suggesting that I should be a very “spiritual” person, that I had done something mystical when I went out to get the biscuits. I didn't like it. I never liked to hear my classmates attributing what they didn't understand to spiritual phenomenon. In the past I would object whenever some of them would say that the scientists who discovered the laws of science and established formulae were involved in spiritual activities. At times I would tell them that I could do the same and didn't need to leave my body. But they wouldn't believe me. How could they? I was an average student, and to many them, it meant that I was better than them. That day my classmates actually witnessed my ability, but they were still not willing to just let me tell them how I did that exploit. The day after, we were walking home, and someone brought up what had happened the previous day. Thiam, who is a critical thinker, expressed his intrigue saying, “I went home asking myself -How did this guy do it? -, and I was struggling to sleep.” I started telling them that what I had done was not, extraordinary but he objected that it was mind blowing. He asked Gabin to confirm, which he did. I told them that it was normal, that some people had abilities that allowed them to understand science at a deeper level, but they weren't many. I had believed for a long time that they were others like me, and I faced so many challenges because we were scarce and as a result, people were not used to dealing with the way we function and witnessing what we could do. That day I felt so different and alone! I knew my friends and what they could do as human beings. But there was a part of me that they didn't know at all, one that caused them to look at me as if I was an alien who just landed from a spaceship, when they witnessed it. I thought that if more people knew about our existence, such things wouldn't happen to us. That day, like many other days, I felt like letting everyone know. I felt like shouting to the world “We exist!”.

The world is a careful orchestration of facts and logics that lay onto each other to give varied results. Choices are invariably between few options, like video simulations, that pile onto each other to result in vastly different outcomes. The law of multiplication in its grandest application. Successful is he who can decipher these truths of the world to come up with his own. As a woman of logic, it baffles me, thus, how individuals can blatantly turn an eye away from the facts that stare them in the face. Certain advocates for equality like to harp on the premise that all humans are the same, a concept that I never understood. The very aspects that make us human differentiate us. From our genetic code which dictates our physical capacities to our appearance which segregates us on a visual level to our individual psyches that transcends measurable scales, humans are literally programmed to stand out. Which is why it is ignorant to assume that all of us are cut of the same cloth and fit into the same mould. However, an admittance of dissimilarity is not a translation to advocacy for injustice. There is a difference between seeing individuality and condemning others for it. These unwritten divides that segregate us into subgroups within a larger population are not the reason for the animosity that certain individuals feel. These malicious thoughts are viruses concealed in promising packets of healthy cells which cross the barriers within our heads to infect what lies beyond, to decay our minds. These trojan horses of malevolence implant themselves into our psyche without our knowledge, they start an unalterable process of gradual decline of our thoughts and of our perspectives. They turn dissimilar people into ‘them' who are deprived of the treatment and amenities that ‘we' should receive. Early interactions with non-neurotypical individuals normalised the concept to me that certain people have quirks or habits that may not resemble my own. The brain is akin to an ocean, it is uncharted territory that is not completely understood by individuals and hides secrets that are yet to be uncovered. It is unjust to box this super-machine with infinite capability into identical, restrictive containers. The world is filled with unique individuals and while we may have come a long way in the acceptance of individuals with varied physical appearances, we have yet to accept those who different from us neurologically. A moment that sticks with me took place when I was in ninth grade. The toll of the bell had indicated that we were free to go to the cafeteria to grab something to eat. On the food counter was a boy with autism who was working the counter to gain work experience. Unlike my usual, unsocial self I decided to strike up a conversation with him. Once I returned to my unofficially designated seat, I was bombarded with questions about my interaction with him by a friend of mine. This friend expressed her disbelief at my conversation, her primary question was 'why would I want to talk to him?'. This friend was considered social and accepting of all people, she was even working with students with autism for a project, which is why it shocked me to see her react this way, to take this fellow human as an alien creature who we could share no connection with. I came to the conclusion that dissimilarity scares us- the creatures of conformity. We very easily discard those who don't conform to our idea of normalcy. These preconceived notions make people tag non-neurotypical individuals as mentally deranged r dumb. This bubbling cauldron of emotions triggered me to work towards the acceptance of non-neurotypical individuals so that some day the need to ask the question that my friend had does not arise.

Long ago, my health became detrimental to normal life. First intermittent, now it's more often having escalated at a city shelter. I could no longer continue to work or finish my university studies pending health changes. Shelter food made me choke, vomit or sent me to the loo. It affects me daily. Every meal is sheer torture: I never know if I'll keep it down. A fluoroscopy confirmed that frequent up-chucking has narrowed and scarred my esophagus irreversibly. These dark times must pass. Like a boa constrictor who regurgitates barely-digested animals complete with that sticky gelatinous saliva, my choking is a lengthy painful process. Unfortunately, my constant throwing up isn't seen as an ingenious way of avoiding danger. The turkey vulture purposefully pukes up an entire stomach's wing-heavy contents, so that a rare predator will turn away from the maggot-infested stinky shit and rotting carcasses. My purging is just plain embarrassing and uncontrollable. Like boas who feed on rodents, songbirds, lizards and other small mammals, my normal diet is varied. My favorite meal is fish/seafood, rice/risotto and grilled vegetables. I like chicken, beef, lamb, and pork but can't consume these proteins without painful hard swallows. I can relate to captive boas prone to Inclusion Body Disease characterized by chronic regurgitation and abnormal painful postural positions: their challenges are like mine with Eosinophilic Esophagitis and other serious ills. Like a non-venomous boa, I wrap my coils around my faith. With God around me, I trust that things will improve henceforth. Also coiling myself around my friends, church family and sister, they act as the editors of my life and writings. Like the monogamous vulture, I'm fiercely loyal to those I love. Now others need to stick by me through thick and thin. Dark days must soon pass. Like boas whose habitat is threatened, so is mine, as Toronto's housing crisis means rising costs and limited affordable accessibility. As boas have adapted their perambulation to a straight line, I adjust to the times. Extinction threatens vultures too: they are poisoned by eating dead livestock given medication toxic to them. Shelters have fed me food months-to-a-year-beyond-expiration dates, poisonous to my now-delicate system. By picking dead carcasses clean, unsuspecting environmentalist turkey vultures are on clean-up and recycling duty to prevent the spread of disease. Their acute sense of smell has helped gas companies detect gas leaks as vultures circled attracted to the smell of gas also found in dead animals. Concerned with the environment, I enter contests funding tree plantings, clean-ups, and literacy programs. When migrating or searching for food, vultures congregate in ‘kettles' flocks of several hundred. I feed off the Salvation Army Bible study groups, kettle-crazed too. Like a baby boa, I was immediately independent, somehow discerning appropriate food without instruction. According to my father, I was ‘contrary' from birth refusing to drink my ‘milkies' and spewing up formula. My parents fed me pediatrician-recommended melted ice-cream. Somehow, I survived my first year, lactose intolerance then unknown. Again, I puke up constantly: it's hard to get nutrients into me. I'm not like others. I never thought as others do. Research is in my blood. An independent thinker, I can figure out most things with little or no instruction. Nowadays, Google becomes my first line of defense when faced with an unknown. Similar to boas and turkey vultures I hiss if threatened or encountering social injustice or iniquities upon the vulnerable. My sometimes-biting words are intended to propel others to act. Now I observe people's movements and utterances. Like an eagle-eyed vulture, I wait for the next juicy story. I write stories for contests. I may win one or not. But either way I'm the better for honing my observational, research and writing skills. Contests keep me alive. Everyday I write to achieve self-imposed entry deadlines. Too busy to worry about all the exigent conditions around me, including my own life's horrors, I focus elsewhere. Dark periods will lift someday. Till then, I keep my mind active even when my body fails me. Sometimes I write in floods like the expulsion of a boa's or vulture's stomach contents. Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness. Other times I hover, searching for words. Like a vulture circling its prey from high to low altitudes, I scavenge for details to fuel my stories by people-watching. My prey is not physically dead. Yet like the city's forgotten vulnerable many are dead in prospects, motivations, hopes and dreams. Like the turkey vulture circling overhead, I hope for that tasty tidbit. Rather than with menacing size, I want my writings to stand out shining a light on social injustice. I want to change minds - ‘What ifs” to ‘right now.' I'm different. Boa-Turkey-Vulture Me.

I consider it an ordeal to travel in Africa. My parents traveled a lot when I was younger and I have always wanted to travel too. The way they talked about living in Northern Nigeria, it feels like a different world from now. They never felt like strangers whenever they left home, but Africa is changing. It's meant to be the height of experiences; for young people to pack a bag and travel to see the continent but present day Africa could be as hostile as it is beautiful. Being a stranger is not just about changing GPS location, it's about being where you are not expected to be. I am Nigerian and I am skinny. One would think identity and body size are just what they are but along with identity comes the burden of stereotypes. After a few months of arriving South Africa from Nigeria, I visited an Indian Doctor in Hatfield, Pretoria. The first thing he said was "You are Nigerian, so you gonna pay me with drugs? Ahh! I am joking!" Very inconvenient joke I must say, but that was my reward for being Nigerian in South Africa. In moments like those you almost feel as if you are not welcome, that you are a stranger. South Africa is a good place but when it comes to making jokes, it sucks some times. Some locals tell you how they actually think about you -probably something bad- and then they add that it's just a joke. What better way to peddle stereotypes than to make jokes about them? Now every Nigerian who leaves home is a drug peddler? The moment we step out of our borders we are labelled. I have also heard that Indians are rapists and drug abusers too. Should I have said so to that doctor and probably added "I am joking?" The student medical aid is compulsory for all foreign students including Nigerians who are just a little different from South Africans. The medical aid is crap from what I hear and I am sure they also know I am Nigerian and think "probably he is a drug peddler." What happens when I need to use this aid? What if someone does not attend to me just because they think I am a criminal. The day I visited the GP at Hatfield, I had to pay the Indian Doctor with cash that I don't have and he told me it might take another century to get my claim back. It actually took a century to get the claims department and they never paid. *sigh* That day after telling me what was wrong with me, the Doctor gave me some drugs and warned that I must eat before taking the drugs. He said "You look skinny, either because you don't have food or you are just skinny." After worrying about my citizenship, now I had to worry about my body size. There are fat humans, average sized humans, skinny humans and so on and so forth. How long would it take for us to accept these differences? The whole idea of racism and apartheid thrived on the idea that skin colour is a definitive element of your humanity. Skin colour, body type, hair or any other body feature are things no one chooses. Yet a lot of us are made to feel like we don't fit in, just because of these things. People avoid you for as little as the fact that how you look or talk or walk is strange or new to them. I am skinny not by a fault of my own, my body structure is far from perfect for those who have seen me. I limp slightly, and it's not from an accident. I was born with a birthmark on my forehead and for years I felt different. There are so many funny things that are not "right" about my looks but everyone has their own weird features. If you looked around you, there are at least a hundred people who don't look exactly like you just because they eat different or live in a different environment. But these people are just as human as you are. Holding a Nigerian passport or walking with a limp doesn't make one human better than another. The value of life is one and the same all over the world. Being a stranger in Africa stems from the dying culture of inclusiveness, community and hospitality that Africans used to be known for. There is a hate culture eating deep into the fabric of our lives, we have been hunted, haunted and broken by strangers. Understandably, suspicion and fear becomes a defence but must we lose the beauty of Africa to fear and hate? We need to embrace universal citizenship, to travel, to love, to eat with and walk with people who seem different from us. There's no need for us to be strangers in our own world.