Tonight I met a man named Sam. In what I thought was going to be an ordinary hour and a half class turned out to be the most extraordinary part of my day–an experience I will carry with me always. Sam and I were peer editing partners for papers we wrote. The prompt for the paper had been to write about a learning experience from your past and how you overcame the obstacles that resulted from that learning experience.
I wrote simply about a golf tournament experience. Sam’s paper…the title got me first, “My Life as a Child Without Parents”. In a short two page essay, I was moved to tears in the middle of class as I read of Sam’s struggles at such a young age, a child from Sudan, his parents victims of genocide. At age five, he walked for three months struggling each day to find food, water, clothes to wear, a sense of security, and direction for his life. In order to stay alive, he sometimes drank dirty, contaminated water, dug up roots and scavenged for fruits, walked barefoot through the grassy brushes of Sudan, sleeping at night on the ground with no pillow to rest his head or blanket and sheets to keep warm. He learned early not to complain as no one was going to listen to a poor, abandoned five year old boy.
He recalled one night walking along a path that was not really a path, where animals of the wild attacked people near him. He escaped. In December of 1987, he was rescued by the American government and taken first to Ethiopia and then brought to America where he has lived the last decade. He is now tackling college with a determined, still independent, but non-defeatist attitude.
December of 1987 was the month and year I was born. Born in America. Raised by parents who never had to worry about genocide. By the month and year I was born, Sam had already seen and experienced more tragedy than I could ever imagine seeing in a hundred lifetimes. Upon conclusion of the class, I asked him if I could keep a copy of his paper. I want to be able to remind myself that what I think to be struggles are rather, things I should smile about, as there are people in this world going through far graver battles–internally and externally. I’ve had the opportunity and privilege to grow up in a free country my entire life.
Sam said it himself, “I am a survivor and God is good.” He is and He is. What’s more inspiring than that, he concluded his own paper with the fact that he knows there are people in the world having dealt with worse than he; therefore, he doesn’t forget his struggle but moves forward. What’s sad is he’s right, but what an inspiration, and sitting right behind me in class.