Today is Galentine’s day. The day before Valentine’s day when you are supposed to celebrate the day with all your Gal-Pals.

Today there is a photo circulating on my Facebook profile. It’s a photo of my five friends and I, in our school uniforms, each holding a red rose. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It is in fact 20 years old!

I don’t actually have any Gal-Pals living close enough to me to actually celebrate today with. They are all scattered across the globe: Zimbabwe, Zambia, UK, Australia, Canada, America.

I guess that’s quite normal to us considering that we grew up in Zimbabwe before the country was virtually destroyed by the ravages of greed, corruption and hatred. Before the land invasions.

Shortly after we finished school we all went our separate ways. Most went to do a few years of working, travelling and growing up in the U.K. As Zimbabwe is a former colony of Great Britain, most of us either had British Passports or Ancestral visas which entitled us to live and work there for 4 years (at the time).

Every Valentines Day one of the culture clubs would raise money for the school by taking orders of roses from whoever wanted to send one to their secret admirer. Roses were distributed hroughout the day by ‘juniors’ – who I’m sure either loved or hated doing it. It was a great idea and everyone loved the fun and secrecy.

The year we turned 17 was a seriously fun year. We’d done our GCSEs. We were basically killing time before starting our A’Level syllabus.

That Valentine’s Day we decided that we would all send ourselves a rose but it would be our group’s little secret.

Thinking back, I honestly can’t remember if any of us even had a boyfriend. It was a time of friendship, laughs, fun and innocence (just kidding … ?).

So if I had one wish as to how I could spend Galentines Day it would be to have all those girls together again for more laughs, fun and good catchup. It’s 20 years overdue!  I know at least 3 of us are mamas now, 5 of us are married, but sadly I lost touch with 2 of them.

Happy Galentine’s day ladies … wherever you all are.

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