Hiiiii, I’m Cynthia (I love introducing myself 😂).

I’ll be frank, as at when I got an email inviting me for an interview for She Code Africa’s contributhon, I had FORGOTTEN I applied (I’m old, 😭 forgive me) and I was not even part of the community at the time, but I was soooo excited, I finally had the chance to contribute to open source, which I had never done before since I started programming.

I had an amazing interview, thank you, Omoyeni Kemisola, she was so warm and ready to listen to whatever I had to say. This was a veeery green light for me and actually made me more eager to:

(i) join She Code Africa, because I was sure I would be listened to (ii) there’s nothing here, I just felt like adding a second point.

Five days later I got an acceptance email, and the rest, as they say, is history(or not).

The Contributhon started on the first day of April(I built this page by the way 😁). We started with an onboarding meeting with Zainab, Ruth and we(the contributors). I felt a little weird initially because I can be veeeery shyyyy.

Working with Layer5, the partner organization was an experience!!!. Work on our assigned projects started immediately and at a point I was like ahhh….let us be calming down o, what happen 😔 . We were very much involved and Lee would make sure to call out our names during meetings to ask for our ideas or contributions, I made a tweet about this once(sorry, my account is private, limau). I love(d) this so much. Everyone was always ready to see what you did or listen to what you had to say!.

Personally, I contributed to Layer5’s main website, layer5.io, as well as meshery.io.

My goal initially was to work with tools I hadn't worked with before, and make sure things I worked on made it to production, and boy did I !!!

Prior to this, I had never worked with Gatsby, and I had only worked with GraphQL once. I discovered what MDX is during this contributhon also, and I must confess, I caught up fast (which, when I decide to, is one of my core strengths). My first PR was merged 7 working days after( 😬).

I also worked with Ruby and Jekyll while contributing to meshery.io. Initially, I had issues setting up the development environment, but I had help from Elizabeth and Adithya Krishna who, in fact set up a meet call and stayed on until we resolved the issues, that was so nice, and I will reiterate that EVERYONE in the community was always ready to help whenever help was needed, without making you feel dumb. I loved this, and I am sure other contributors will attest to this.

I wrote a report doc here

My mentors, Jash Patel and Chinmay Mehta were also very helpful and communicative.

Shout out to Ruth Ikegah for always checking up on her girrrrlsss, guiding us and responding to our inquiries. She has literally been there since the very beniinginggg. 😍

During the course of the contributhon, I mostly communicated with only two other contributors ( Elizabeth and Blossom , but only for a little while, my bad.. yikes), but I like to think I know everyone’s name. Moving forward, it would be actually nice if contributors communicated more among each other also.

Finally, I will like to state that communication in She Code Africa >>>>>>>>>>. Whatever information to be passed is passed clearly, you cannot be confused, limau.

Thank you so, so much She Code Africa for this opportunity, I actually do not take it lightly, at all. Also, thank you, Layer5, and thank you Lee!

To more Open Source Contributions 🚀