My mum thought at the time that-body building was a waste of energy and time. Little did she know that I was doing it for the girls. My sister was a challenge. When she came home from school she forced me to go to sleep so I could grow taller. Then my mum started to give me a sasa (smack) if she caught me training. However, I had so much passion for building myself as I was literally the smallest kid in our entire level at school and village. I was being bullied due to my stature, yet my mum did not allow me to train. So I worked around these barriers by training in the middle of the day or straight after school before my mum and sister got home. I reasoned that if I could not grow taller I might as well grow stronger and wider so I could stand my ground.

There were other family obstacles in the beginning as well. I recall, one evening in the middle of my training on a full pumped up chest, when my eldest brother, Dean, came home, saw me training and walked straight towards me and proceeded to challenge me. I thought he was going to say something like, “What’s up dude?” Instead he bloodied my lip. I challenge him with, “Why? What’s this all about?” He said nothing? The incident put an end to my work-out for the rest of the evening. He never did give me an explanation. However, I later found out that my second oldest brother, Alfred, who started the body building in our family, actually did it so he could stand up to Dean. Perhaps Dean thought I was body building for the same reason as Alfred. Although this incident seemed overwhelming at the time, I began to wonder what else there was to stop me. Despite these set-backs I stayed the course and realized that I could handle anything.

You may think that building muscles is easy but this was not the case where I came from. But I am glad I persisted in doing it because it built resilience to face the challenges of life.

You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family. Family is everything and I love my family.