I was seven when Malala Yousafzai was shot, a girl in primary two, too young to grasp what had happened. I heard her name a few times, mutters from teachers, whispers from the older kids, a couple of words from the Muslim students I was in class with. It didn’t seem to be a big deal at the time, sure a girl was shot but it felt so far away, so removed from my reality, that it didn’t matter. A year ago I read her book “I am Malala” and after all this time, the gunshot doesn’t seem that distant anymore.
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is a human rights advocate, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. After the Taliban infiltrated her community. Malala and her father dared to protest which led to her being shot.
I was living in a different environment from Malala. They couldn’t be more different actually. While Malala grew up in a predominantly Muslim community in Pakistan, I grew up in the small sheltered city of Lekki in Nigeria, a mixed area in terms of religion. I had a minimal understanding of Islam from my childhood. I went to a school with a plethora of Muslim students, but religion always seemed to be a negligible thing when it came to us. The Muslim students were simply Muslim and I was not. There were no religious fights or disagreements of any sort, at least none that I witnessed. I lived in a bubble far from the hub of religion-based terrorism in my country, so while there was a looming threat in the back of my mind, it was still not an aspect of my daily life. But years later the well-known Chibok girls kidnapping happened. The kidnapping opened my eyes. I had lived in a controlled sheltered bubble and now the flood gates were open. It became a “Am I next” situation because it felt like we could all be next and suddenly Malala’s bravery made sense.
Apart from standing up to the Taliban at only 22, Malala has been awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and becomes the youngest person to address the Canadian House of Commons, released two books, visited South America to promote girls’ education all before she turned 21. She was awarded Pakistan’s first Youth National Peace Prize, Won the Nobel Peace Prize at seventeen, two years after getting shot by the Taliban.
Malala is my role model because she stood up for what she believed in, in the face of danger. And even after she got hurt she still didn’t let it stop her.
