Believe in dreams

Today, I will share little experiences I have had in my life. I sincerely hope that they may help some of you my friends.

I come from a poor family. And when you are poor, you lack a lot of things. You lack money, you lack toys, you lack nice clothes, you lack nice shoes, you lack comfortable house, you can even lack friends (it is sad but many people do not want to be with poor ones)... Yes, I lacked a lot of these things. Fortunately, I did not lack dreams, strength, courage, family love. So most parts of my life have been based on dreams. Dreams are for me goals I need to achieve in my life. Those goals do not need to be big ones; they can be just simple things.

Let us start with little things. I dreamt of having a real Nike pair of sneakers. You may find it funny but yes, I wanted them. I wanted them because my classmates laughed at my fake and blemished sneakers. My parents already worked hard to feed us. I knew it would be too much to ask the Nike sneakers to them. I kept that dream in mind for a while. I then got a part time job and could afford to realize my dream. I bought the first \"real\" pair from a second hand (fripery) seller but I was really proud of my achievement. It was the same story for my first cell-phone. I worked while studying. This time it was at the college. Well, the same thing for my scooter but this one was harder to achieve. You may think that I just wanted to copy from the others. You may be right. But I did not see it this way. I looked at the others. I decided what should be good for me, what I really needed. I, for example, did not want to miss courses and go to clubs instead. And there is a Malagasy saying \"Ny soa fianatra\" - Good things should be learnt (copied) so I wanted only what I believed to be good things for me.

I lacked friends in my childhood. The only friends I had were books. I really loved reading stories. Later, I became interested in writing. I wrote poems and fairy tales for my younger brother. I then dreamt of becoming a journalist. The passion, the dream were hided within me when I started to do a completely different work. Suddenly, the opportunity to blog was offered to me and I became a citizen journalist. My articles are also published in a special English page of a local newspaper. I even became the publisher in chief of this page.

I also dreamt of becoming a photographer. I remember, my parents were mad when I shot flowers or animals when I was younger. They said I just wasted films because it was expensive for them to develop and to print the photographies. I worked really hard to get my camera to fulfill this dream. It is a bridge one for now but I am already dreaming of a nice reflex soon.

My best achievement I believe is my own t-shirt brand. Some of my cousins are living in France. When they spent vacation here in Madagascar, I noticed that they had personalized t-shirts with the words or the image they wanted on them. I started to dream of having my own company of custom t-shirts because we did not have so here in Madagascar. This was in 2000. I started to think of the process, to check how much the tools would cost. Too expensive for me to set up my little company. But I did not want to give up. Can you believe it? 10 years later (this year then), I found a way to realize it by co-working with another little company. And here I am with another dream come true!

By the way, let me introduce you Alô Fô. Alô fô is the brand of my t-shirts. At the beginning it was a term used by our neighbors. Then, my brother who was friend with our neighbors brought it home. Alô fôôÔ to say hellooO or yeah, every thing is ok. You can say alô fô to a sad friend to tell them: \"Come on, it is not the end of the earth, keep on MOVING FORWARD\". This is the philosophy that comes with my t-shirt brand, a philosophy of life that I want to share to my customers, my friends all over the world.

We should all believe in our dreams. Always keep your dreams within you. Someday, it will be realized. Do not only wait for them to come to you, do not give up, think of how you would manage them, work for them, move forward to achieve them.