CAN’T COMPLAIN

I do understand that people sometimes differ from their customs. Some people grow up in well positioned families with a comfortable education, political and economic situation. If you are from that kind of family, whenever you need something, you get it easily. Those who are rich, are well taken care of.

My trip to Africa, in December 2015, inspired me and gave me the perspective to know that I should not complain about the life I have. I can see how far God has brought me. The war in D.R. Congo started in 1996, before that I was going to school. My dad would drop us off at school using his motorcycles, and we always had enough food to eat. But when I went back this December things had changed. Some people don’t even make one dollar per day. Their 7, 8 or 9 year old children all share the same small plate of food when (or if) they eat, and they are lucky if they eat more than once a day. We are so lucky here in Canada that we don’t even realize it. It is as if our prosperity has blinded us. People don’t lack food, we have ways of getting around, we have access to school and higher education, we have access to healthcare without paying. But we are still complaining, every day. I have realized that our nature as human beings is to always want more, especially in developed countries, where we already have more than the rest of the world.  The question is that, should we continue complaining about what we already have or should we be grateful?

Recently when I was in Baraka, I saw lots of kids eating off of the same plate. I couldn’t sleep that night. I got up early in the morning to go down to the lake and buy fish so that at least for one day the children could eat and be full and feel satisfied with the meal they had. While in Baraka, I also met with someone who I went to primary school with when I was a child. I couldn’t believe how hard the life had become for my friend.  I could barely recognize him, his clothes and they way his eyes were sunken and his face was so thin, you could see that life was hard. During my time in Bujumbura, I saw people sorting through piles of garbage, in search of their next meal. People in Canada love their pets as their own family, yet we fail to love one another. Shouldn’t we share what we have with other people?

The first day that I went to my parents home, my brother took me over to a house that I wasn’t familiar with. My parents live on the same plot of land as before the war but I could hardly recognize it from my childhood. I soon realized that the small house that my brother brought me to was where my dad and mom are now living. I asked my dad what had happened to our old house, the one that I grew up in, and he told me that everything was destroyed during the war and nothing remained of our old house. I wasn’t even able to find any markings of where the foundation used to lay. My mom built the small house where they now live with her own hands.

The reason I entitled this post “can’t complain” is because I lack nothing where I am now in Canada. I can find a job to work and help support myself. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I can get around the city that I live in without being scared because of gunfire. Even with the little that I have, I am happy to share it with others who are in need and are less fortunate than I am here in Canada. I have everything I need here and I can’t complain, I can’t complain, I can’t complain.

I’m so grateful and I thank ‘X‘ and ‘Y‘ who contributed to bringing me here to Canada and helping me to settle. I can’t complain.

More stories to come…