2021 — The Good, The Bad, the Ugly

Ada Nduka Oyom
8 min readDec 29, 2021

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2021! Phew!

You know how they say what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger? Sometimes it does, sometimes it weakens you the more.

2021 was a rollercoaster ride, lots of ups, lots of downs, so many losses, little wins but here’s me choosing to let you in on all, cause no year’s been as “eventful” as this. Here’s 2021, from my POV:

Here’s a little info to know about me before moving ahead with the article.

First, the Good stuff:

Before we get started, it might look like so many victories, but this year, with all the trials and failures i kept going through, It was so easy to stay depressed and unmotivated but I made a mental note to pen down every win / milestone I achieved, no matter how little, to help channel my mind into thinking and staying positive.

Professional:

I made a tweet at the start of this year manifesting my 2021 goal as regards community building;

  1. …and to bring this to reality, I Started this year by fully launching a partnership on behalf of my non-profit organization ; She Code Africa (SCA), with SA based Cloud tech providers, Deimos Cloud, to train and set up a talent pipeline of female cloud Engineers within the continent.

This year we successfully trained ~60 ladies in Site reliability Engineering, with 8 going on to intern of which 4 have been fully confirmed as junior engineers) and another 4 receiving fully sponsored Nanodegree scholarships in Cloud Engineering. (Get a 1st hand learning experience from the girls on the program, using this hashtag)

A tweet highlighting one of the success stories from our Cloud school

My overall goal here’s to ensure we get as many more women in the cloud space within Africa, making sure these women aren’t left behind as trends continue to move across different fields in tech & providing them with resources to excel at it

2. Just like other fields in tech, my interest in open source got me leading my team at SCA to run our very 1st open source bootcamp, tagged “Contributhon”, for African women interested in growing their OSS contributions. This bootcamp got us successfully working with mentor and sponsor organisations Including the Cloud Delivery foundation, Jenkins, Cloudbees, The @ company and many more to get 15 ladies and 14 experts/mentors in OSS, actively contributing to OSS for 1 month. Read up more here.

3. As part of my commitment to build my Professional network, This year, I decided to apply for the TechWomen fellowship, as I had been doing a lot of impacting others and little of building my own knowledge and network. I successfully applied and moved to semi final stage. That was a win for me, regardless of how little it was and estimating the large number of applications received for this.

4. Part of my role at work had me co-hosting the first ever DevFest inspire session (web track), the first of its kind, a DevFest centric event targeted at Google Developers across the Europe and Africa region.

Cohosting DevFest Inspire (web track)

DevFest Inspire is a virtual event celebrating the end of the DevFest 2021 season where we’ll recognize content created by the community, as well as Googlers from Europe and Africa.

Spotlights/Features:

5. Every year i get featured on multiple platforms and stories but a few stand out for me, this year’s highlights for me on this include the following:

  • UNICEF: As part of my commitment to keep advocating for tech, I got to do a collaboration with UNICEF Nigeria on world youth skills Day, sharing my views towards education and developing technical skills for career development
  • Github: I also got Spotlighted by the Github team via it’s ReadMe Podcast, where I shared more on my interests in advocating for Gender diversity in tech via She Code Africa, open source advocacy via OSCA and my journey in Tech.
  • Google IO: Mid this year, I made my Google IO debut as a speaker at this year’s event #GoogleIO21, facilitating a session for Africans and discussing about the rapidly changing landscape and experience as Africans in tech.

6. I got nominated for a category under the Hackernoon Noonies award 2021, alongside some colleagues I look up to in the industry, feels good knowing my efforts keep getting recognised regardless. Voting is still ongoing by the way, here’s a link to vote for me

Personal:

Learning: Started out my Web3 journey, kicking off with learning about blockchain development and also got to deploy my first smart contract. A very exciting thing for me as i’m always eager to learn but find it hard staying motivated at it.

  • I got accepted as a Global youth ambassador for Theirworld, a global charity org targeted at children, I’m really excited about the prospects for this as I not only get to channel my passion for education especially for young girls but also advocate for it on a larger platform for the next 2 years.

Health: This year I also took up my Health and skin care journey really serious , it’s been almost year into it and i’m so proud of my journey. I’ve Lost reasonable weight(8kg) and also got my skin looking like glass, according to my dermatologist, so that’s a good thing😂.

Friends: I made new meaningful female friendships with girls who genuinely cared for me. I even got an award from one, lol 💛. This means a lot to me knowing how unlucky I’ve been with friends and me genuinely praying for it this year.

Love: This year I left a 2yr+ toxic relationship for my sanity and self respect, one of the best decisions I got to make this year, felt very liberating not having to deal with any of that anymore.

Travel: Found some time to do some travelling within and out of the country this year, after a year’s hiatus. Visited; Ethiopia (Addis) and Tanzania (Kilimanjaro & Zanzibar), Within Nigeria, I visited Abuja & Enugu. Loved the trip to Enugu as I got to visit my alma mata, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and speak with members of the SCA UNN chapter and girls in tech within the school community

Socials: Went viral on TikTok 4 different times! Almost missed adding this but if you’re familiar with Tiktok, you know it’s growth when your content goes viral each time. so here’s me celebrating this as well🤗

Data analytics from my most recent viral video 👀

THE BAD:

People see or hear about me and many times think things go so smoothly across everything I do, I mean that’s a good thing but I really do go through a whole lot I don’t get to share, so this is me being (partly) vulnerable in my writing, I guess?

Basically just saying, I take in so many losses each year, my life’s not as rosy as people think, but damn this year’s? Phew! Sometimes I ask my inner self how I’m able to keep going like nothing’s wrong and tbh all I can think of is God’s grace.

  • This year, had my team and I at SCA planning a lot to reach and train more women, to do this, we needed more funding. We applied for multiple grants, the most phenomenal one being the Google grants for women and girls, at a proposal of ~$1–2M. I remember staying up late nights to ensure answers for each question was as detailed as possible, we had evidence of proven success, numbers/traction, impact etc, what could go wrong? Well we applied and successfully got into the 2nd stage, which is a huge win for us knowing the number of entries received this year, only to get dropped. I guess life happens :)
  • And just when things couldn’t get worse as regards finance, She Code Africa’s account on Wallets Africa got hacked and funds stolen (~1M Ngn). One of the most traumatic nights of this year as I kept watching the funds leave while trying to salvage the rest and secure the account at same time.
  • Remember the TechWomen Application i signed up for earlier? Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough and got dropped off, Psych! You thought i was gonna get that? Life said No🙂 (might apply next year, not sure for now)
  • I Received so many rejection emails this year, I lost count at some point, you know it’s so bad when you try to apply for something but already envisage being rejected, but you still do it anyways? That’s how bad the rejection mails were. So bad to the point where I had to take a break from it, so as to not mentally and physically break down.

THE UGLY:

  • Struggled really hard with Depression and my mental health this year, seeing my therapist has helped a lot, and I still have a lot of personal growth to make around this, but 2021 really trieddddd me! Phew!
  • Lost a couple of friends to the cold hands of death, still something i’m trying to wrap my head around. Like they say nothing hits as a reality check like losing a loved one. Rest in Peace Seun & Uchenna

But we move!

2021 has been what it is, at this stage I can’t find an adjective to describe it but I made it to the end. the major life lesson that’s stuck with me is learning to stop struggling and going at God’s pace while also celebrating your little wins.

I’m really really hopeful for 2022 and can’t wait to kick ass! In the meantime, stay safe and be jiggy.

Love, Ada❤️

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Ada Nduka Oyom
Ada Nduka Oyom

Written by Ada Nduka Oyom

Software Developer | Developer Relations and community Expert | DEI Consultant

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