Award-winning Nigerian dancer Kafayat Shafau, popularly known as Kaffy in an Instagram Live chat, disclosed that many people confuse toughness for hatred.
The mother of two talked about her personality. According to her, she does not have the capacity to hate but that does not make her pat people in the back during the course of training with her dancers.
She said:
“Some dancers will come and expect me to pat them on the back. I am not going to pat you on the back because life will not pat you on the back. I will (only) pat you when it is necessary and correct you when it is needed. Sometimes, people confuse your toughness for hatred. I don’t have the capacity to hate.
“If you come to me saying you want to learn how I got to where I am, I would show you the way life showed it to me. My rehearsals are my motivational speaking sessions. Anytime we rehearse, I speak to my dancers. I do it for them to understand my direction and mindset.”
Previously, Kaffy had talked about childhood ambition. For her, she never envisioned becoming a dancer. She had always wanted to be an Aeronautical Engineer. However, dancing paved her way into the limelight.
She said:
“For me, dance has never always been what I would have thought would put me on this platform. I had always wanted to be an Aeronautic Engineer; I loved science and Math so much, in fact, the harder the maths the more I fell in love.
“So why I was planning to be an Engineer was because I said I want to do something that will shake humanity coupled with the fact that they were no female aeronautics engineer at that time.”