In Absentia
I cried at a graduation I did not attend
When I graduated high school, I remember someone saying “oh this is going to be bad” as I went to hug one of my best friends. They were expecting a fallout so they quietly watched from the wings as we took pictures and said our goodbyes. Yet, the only time I cried was when I was saying bye to the girls I would walk to lunch with after English - the same girls I got sent to isolation with after our English teacher got COVID mid-IO season. (Ironically, the same day I pretended to be sick to get out of French).
The thing is, my best friends and I had an understanding: we will be seeing each other. Come hell or highwater. It was both a promise and a threat. “I know where you live.” Unfortunately, Standard Level English Lang & Lit was not enough of a uniting force and we all knew that. This was our final goodbye.
Our word of IB had been “perseverance.” We had climbed Sibebe Rock together in January 2020 - a metaphor for IB as the uphill battle that will push us to our limit but all we need is to persevere and support each other and it would be over before we knew it… I still vividly remember how sore I was after that hike and, equally, the horrors of my IB years. The body keeps score.
Months later, the Europeans disappeared from our campus one by one and eventually the rest of us were sent home. Here began the “unprecedented times” that call on us to be perseverant. Over the next year, we would hear some variation of this line at least twice a week. It would be in the newsletter, a post on google classroom, or the introduction of our online assemblies. So, when Ayeyi (Mr President) pointed it out during his graduation speech of course we laughed.
I have been thinking a lot about graduation speeches lately. Partly because I allegedly “bullied” my friend into giving our commencement speech (which was wonderful and emotive and everything a grad speech should be). It takes a special type of person to capture the experiences of all their classmates, to be our unified voice and our final goodbyes. It feels almost impossible to balance the funny and the sentimental without being overly corny. We’re running low on we made it metaphors that we haven’t heard before. What do you say to an audience that is getting their degree and, therefore, thinks they know every effing thing? and how do you say it in a way that lets them know there is always more to be known but what they do have is the tools to find out?
I’ve come to learn, from spending the past few weeks tuning in to graduation live streams, that my favourite grad speech metaphor is the one of finding yourself. I love the idea that all this has truly been a journey to myself despite the distance between me and everything I have ever known. 23, to me, has felt like a losing age. The last protections of minor-hood have fallen off and I feel bare to the world. If I was to get married tomorrow, I would not be considered a child bride by most! That’s terrifying! I still feel that I am at a very vulnerable age when so much is uncertain and I feel almost untethered. Yet, there is a part of me that knows that I am closer to myself than I have ever been. Definitely much closer than I was four years ago. To me, graduation, the gown, walking the stage, all of it is that affirmation. And despite the distance between me and the ceremony, I can at least affirm that for myself.
So, allow me to reintroduce myself:
Koko Sanginga, Combined Honours B.A. Sociology (Specialist) and Political Science!
As much as perseverance is now a trigger word, we really did that! Long live Sibebe Rock and happy grad szn!
We made it!
Congrats!!!
Congratulations Koko!