We enter this world like visitors stepping into a house we did not build. The walls stand firm, not by accident, but because someone labored over them. The floors are smooth because generations wore them down with their footsteps. The doors swing open easily because others fought to remove the locks.

We are never the first. We walk on roads paved by those who came before, and one day, others will walk on paths we helped shape. But how easily we forget.

We dance to Bongo Flava, but do we hear the echoes of the ones who sang before studios existed? The ones who carved out an industry in backyards, who choked on dust in makeshift recording rooms, who faced censorship with nothing but raw voices and defiance? We stream their legacy today, do we even know their names?

We breathe freely in this nation, but who remembers the cost of that breath? We didn’t bleed in Majimaji. We didn’t whisper secrets in the bush, barefoot and hunted. We didn’t watch our dreams get erased by colonial ink. Yet we type our opinions on devices built from sacrifices we never had to make.

We sit in classrooms and groan about exams, forgetting that once, entire generations were barred from those very rooms. That someone fought for the right to learn, to teach, to dream beyond what the system allowed. Now we debate grades while standing on the shoulders of those who demanded there be a ladder at all.

Even your body is an heirloom. Your skin, your bones, your heartbeat; how many ancestors survived wars, famines, enslavement, and storms just so you could exist? You are not an accident. You are a stubborn miracle, a thread in a story much older than yourself.

Every modern comfort is a gift from the past. The planes we fly? The Wright brothers crashed a hundred times first. The medicines we take? People died testing them. The phone in your hand? Its technology was dreamed up by minds who never lived to see it work.

Even faith was passed down in struggle. However, you pray in mosque, church, temple; someone before you prayed in hiding. Someone was punished for it. Someone held onto belief when it was dangerous to do so.

So here is the question: What do we do with this inheritance? Do we just consume it, like tenants who trash a rented house? Or do we repair it? Expand it? Leave something behind worth keeping?

Because one day, others will walk these halls. They will study the foundations we laid. They will live with the consequences of our choices, our apathy or our courage.

Our duty is not just to remember, but to add. Not just to enjoy the light, but to be a light. Not just to follow footsteps, but to leave a trail. You are here because someone else endured. Now live so that someone else can go further