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Adunni is my main character in The Girl with the Louding
Voice.
She's a 14-year-old spirited, intelligent dreamer
who has so many traits.
And just before her mother dies, her mother
tells her story of what she lost due to her lack of education.
She talked about the loss of the love of her life
over financial freedom.
And she ends the story by saying to Adunni, she says,
"Your schooling is your voice, child.
It will be speaking for you even if you
didn't open your mouth to talk.
It will be speaking till the day God is calling you come."
And so Adunni takes from that that schooling, getting
an education, would give her a voice.
But because she's such a determined young woman,
she says, I just don't want to have any kind of voice.
I want a louding voice.
And so for Adunni, a louding voice is a few things.
It is the refusal to be silenced by society.
It's the desire to go for everything good and everything
positive that can come her way.
It is getting an education, but getting the best of education,
the best of knowledge.
It is, for her, it's having a legacy.
It's fighting for the girls that are coming behind her
to have an education.
It is living her life to the fullness of her potentials.
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She realizes that without the help of people around her,
she would not be where she is.
And even though it's not a great place, it's still a place.
And so Adunni understands that.
And she decides that she needs to help others.
She also knows that lack of education,
lack of being given opportunities as a young girl
from her village needs to be broken.
She realizes that it's a cycle and that she
can do something little as helping another person could
help break that cycle.
And so because of her belief in the good of others, because
of her kind heart, because of her eternally optimistic
outlook to life, she wants to help.
She wants to make a difference.
And I think that's what drives her.
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So I was raised by my mother.
When she left her marriage to my father,
she had to raise myself and my brother.
And I saw that what made her able to sort of overcome
this obstacle was her ability to have an education.
Because she got an education, she
was able to give me the very best that she
could within her capacity in Lagos, Nigeria.
And she said to me one time, just--
I think I was about 14 or 15--
she said, life can take things from you.
It can take your health.
It can take your money.
But one thing it cannot take from you is an education.
And if you have an education, it's
basically your investment to yourself.
And so I took that on board, and I applied it
in every single aspect of my life.
I pursued my education with everything I could.
And I realized that it opens doors for you.
Education allows you to think critically,
to stand up for yourself, to be able to speak out and be
listened to.
I think I'll summarize by saying that the quote by Nelson
Mandela that says that, "Education is the most
powerful weapon with which you can change the world,"
is why I think education is the most important thing to me.
Because with it, I can change my world in little ways,
starting from myself and my family.
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