Jessica Cox: The Pilot Who Has No Arms

Jessica Cox was born 1983 in Sierra Vista, Arizona, United States without arms, and today, she flies airplanes, drives cars and lives a normal life using her feet the way others use their hands. Jessica is the world's first licensed armless pilot, as well as the first armless black-belt in the American Taekwondo Association (ATA). She is also an inspirational speaker who travels around the world using her own life as an example of what you can achieve if you want it badly enough.

As a child, Jessica studied dance in her home town. At the age of 14, Jessica earned her first black belt in the International Taekwondo Federation. She attended the University of Arizona where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. During college, Jessica found a club of the American Taekwondo Association and resumed training in the sport. The instructors created a curriculum that would be accessible to any future armless students. Jessica then became the first armless person to earn a black belt in the ATA (she now has two black belts in Taekwondo). Her most famous accomplishment has been learning how to fly. After three years of training, she earned her pilot's license on October 10, 2008. She holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person certified to fly an airplane with only their feet. She is able to type on a keyboard (25 words per minute), to pump her own gas, insert and remove her contact lenses, apply make-up using only her feet and she is also a certified SCUBA diver. In 2012, she married Patrick, her former Taekwondo instructor. During their wedding, rather than presenting Jessica with a ring, her husband wrapped an anklet around her left ankle and during the cutting of the wedding cake, she used her feet.

Jessica, whose slogan is ‘motivating people to think outside the shoe’, believes in combining creativity, desire, persistence and fearlessness and that with them, nothing is impossible. She is such a huge inspiration to me. And again, she has demonstrated to me that none of us has any excuse to be less than what we can be in life. According to one of her admirers, she proves to everyone that everything is possible and that you can do what you dream of. I hope that after reading this story, you will be inspired to surmount every challenge and overcome any difficulty on your way in life. I end this piece with the following questions on Jessica’s website: Are you letting fears stand in the way of your opportunities? Is it easier to come up with an excuse than a creative solution to a challenge? What handicaps do you and others harbor that you do not need? How soon should you give up when confronted with a difficult challenge?

Deadlier Than HIV: Hepatitis

The First Service in my church on Sunday is tagged “Empowerment Service’, where issues like entrepreneurship, academics, health, wealth, purpose, etc, are addressed. Last Sunday’s Empowerment Service was on health and it was a revealing and enlightening experience for most of us who were present at the service. The speaker at the programme, a medical doctor, spoke on the deadliness of Hepatitis infection and its prevalence in Nigeria. So, I am using this platform to present some of the things I gleaned from the talk.
A staggering revelation the speaker made was that Hepatitis infection is deadlier than HIV and costlier to manage. Hepatitis B, he told us, is incurable while Hepatitis C can be treated but can you imagine spending 30,000 naira per week on treatment for 48 consecutive weeks? That should be around 200 dollars per week. Please try to calculate what that amounts to. How many people in Nigeria can afford such a treatment? It is however surprising to know that vaccination for this disease is not supposed to be more than 1000 naira (that should be around 7 dollars) and I want to hazard a guess that many people are not aware of this. What is painful about this disease is the fact it is prevalent in Nigeria and many people are ignorant about it. How many Nigerians have died from Hepatitis infection with the death attributed to something else? How many Nigerian are carrying the virus around now? We may not know. I believe that our society should embark on an aggressive drive to sensitise and vaccinate people against this deadly disease.

The Hepatitis infection is an inflammation affecting the liver. It can be contagious or non-contagious. It can also be fulminant. I looked up ‘fulminant’ in the dictionary and I got these meanings: coming on suddenly and with great severity; (of a disease or symptom) severe and sudden in onset. This means Hepatitis infection can come upon one suddenly with very severe effects. Some cases of Hepatitis infection may give you signs, some may not. There are different types of Hepatitis: A, B, C, D and E. Some of the symptoms of Hepatitis infection are: passage of dark urine, yellowing of the eyes (jaundice), abdominal discomfort on the right side, weight loss, easy bruising, bleeding tendencies, swelling, and it can be contacted through blood transfusion, sex, seminal fluids, etc.
My advice to you is to go for Hepatitis test, if you have done that. And if you test negative, please go for vaccination against this disease. If you test positive, please seek medical advice immediately. I have done the test and I have been vaccinated.

The Man who shocked Nigerians

Stephen Okechukwu Keshi became only the second person to win the Africa Cup of Nations as both a player and a coach. He achieved this feat by leading Nigeria’s Super Eagles to victory at the just concluded Orange Africa Cup of Nations which took place in South Africa. The only other person to have achieved the feat is Egypt's Mahmoud El-Gohary. Keshi, who had his coaching education in the United States, was the head coach of the Nigeria national under-20 football team at the 2001 African Youth Championship which also served as qualification for the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship but did not any record success.

Between 2004 and 2006 Keshi coached the Togo national football team and qualified them, against all expectations, for the FIFA World Cup in Germany in 2006 but was unable to lead the team to the World Cup having been relieved of his position and replaced by German coach, Otto Pfister after Togo failed to advance to the knock-out stage in the 2006 African Cup of Nations in Egypt. Pfister did not last long in the position. He too was asked to go after an unsuccessful World Cup campaign and Keshi became the Manager of the Togo national football. Keshi was later appointed manager of the Mali national football team in April 2008 on a two-year deal and was sacked in January 2010, after Mali's early exit in the group stages of the Africa Cup of Nations.

Keshi became coach of the Super Eagles in 2011. He qualified Nigeria for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations and shocked Nigerians by leading the Super Eagles to victory at the tournament. He shocked Nigerians again when handed in his resignation a day after leading Nigeria to clinch a trophy that had eluded the nation for 19 years but rescinded his decision the day after. According to reports, it took the intervention of the nation’s sports minister to make Keshi withdraw his resignation. His employers, the NFF, we learnt also begged him to change his mind.

My initial reaction to Keshi’s decision to quit his position as coach of Super Eagles was that of disgust but after some reflection and after seeing his reasons for resigning, I felt he might have been justified. He claimed the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) did not put faith in him and also accused them of undue interference.

Keshi’s story, for me, has some lessons to teach every one of us. This is a man who many Nigerians, including myself, never gave a chance to lead his team beyond the quarter-final of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations but he surprised all of us. He was probably the only one who believed the team could record some achievements. He kept faith in his team and he was rewarded. And at the moment Stephen Okechukwu Keshi is the toast of all Nigerians. The person who was being threatened with sack is now being begged not to leave the same job over which he was being threatened before.

Keshi’s story has again reinforced the importance of self-belief if anybody wants to achieve anything worthwhile in life. Oppositions will come. Threats may be issued. Discouragement will stare one in the face. Frustration may set in. But one thing will keep one going and that is self-belief. Self-belief has been defined as confidence or trust in your own abilities or judgment that you will succeed in an endeavour and that is what Keshi has demonstrated since he took over as coach of the Super Eagles. He believed that his decision (judgment) to drop some players from the team and include some players, especially home-based players was, a good one and that he had the ability to build a good team. If the truth must be told, his decision has paid off. The following quote sums up what I have been trying to say, “The only person who can pull me down is myself and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.”

Another interesting thing about the Keshi story is the fact that he is being begged not to leave his position. This tells me something. When a person records success in life, he gets to a level where he dictates the terms and conditions under which he will function. He finds himself in the driver’s seat and is able to make his demands on life and from people.

It was these realisations that made me change my initial reaction to Keshi’s decision to resign even if my reaction does not in any way affect the Big Boss.