Love for yourself what you love for others

[Music]

i wake up to the amalgamation

of the echoing ringing of bullets and

deafening explosions

in the dry starving air i haven’t

showered in months

and i haven’t eaten properly in days

i feel my body getting weaker by the

stroke of time

as i’m engulfed in hunger despair

and sorrow i have mourned the losses of

all my beloved ones

and i have teared away all the hope that

i had for a better future

i know my only aspiration is to live and

survive

but why do i already feel dead

i have forgotten how it felt like to

play out in the open sun and the

scorching heat until my body gave in to

fatigue

i have forgotten how it felt like to sit

at the dinner table

as i dine with my mother and father and

as we laugh away

until our eyes brimmed with tears of

mirth

have forgotten how it felt to truly be

happy

i forgotten how it felt to smile

too many children in yemen this is the

reality that they have to go through

and i know sometimes it is a little

difficult for us to be able to

sympathize

and relate with such a distant group of

people that is going through such a

turbulent time in their life

so maybe i’ll give my example and how i

dealt with discrimination in my life

and take you guys through that journey

and the success that i reaped after

oftentimes i was the only black student

in my class

and since a majority of the friends that

surrounded me were asian or miss

or more specifically indian they often

use their language when they were

communicating

even when they were around me other than

the fact that

i did feel ostracized there was a word

that quite puzzled me

now i did hear from a few of my friends

outside class that if you ever hear the

word gola

it’s a word meant to discriminate you

because of the color of your skin

so one day amidst the conversation

between my friends and i

when we were talking i heard that word

the first time

and then i heard it the second i tried

to ignore it

until i heard it the third so i asked my

friends

what does this mean and they simply

replied with oh it doesn’t mean anything

it just means

friend or person but it was until years

later is when i realized that that word

when more and more people came to me

and told me that it’s a derogatory term

used to discriminate you

because of the color of your skin used

to discriminate the black people here in

tanzania

now when i found out my natural instinct

was to shut off from people

i mean it was very overwhelming after

all i’m the only

black kid in class i mean what can i do

anyway

but before i decided to make any

external change

i thought maybe the first thing that i

need to do is work on myself

so i’m going to take you guys on a

journey of how i started basketball and

then how come

and how that completely changed my life

so i thought maybe i should engage

myself

in an activity that would actually give

my life value

so i joined the basketball team and the

trainings yes were difficult

they were tiring they were very gruesome

a lot of blood sweat and tears went went

into it

but i could feel myself getting better

and i knew

i was improving so this is when our

school decided to

you know let our team take part in the

junior nba competition

as we progressed in this competition i

knew that our team was playing well

we were playing good we were winning

matches but when it reached the

semi-finals we lost

and got knocked out of the competition

now obviously the world came crashing

down on me

it felt like all those hours all those

days all those months

all that hard work went down the drain

it all

felt like a waste of time but during

this low point in my life

is when an epiphany hit me because for

the very first time in my life

i actually worked hard towards something

i know the outcome wasn’t what i

expected

i know the outcome you know wasn’t what

i wanted

but i still knew that we went very very

far and we were able to achieve

something

so from that point onwards i decided

that i need to put that same work ethic

into everything that i do in my life

so from then on my motto was to always

try but not only try but give it all i

can

every time i did so then i decided to

put the same work ethic

in my school grades mind you

i was that kid who sat at the very back

of the class

slipped through every lesson failed

every test

numerous zeros that was me but that same

kid who said at the back of the class

ended up being the valedictorian of his

grade

so i decided to put this work ethic into

music that same kid at the back of the

class

is now a self-taught pianist and a

singer and is part of a man

so then i decided to put this work ethic

into debating

that same kid ended up in the national

team

and then i decided to put this work

ethic into public speaking

and that same kid at the very back of

the class is now giving a tattoo okay

pretty good story

at this point in my life is when i

realized that

i can do anything if i just put my mind

to it is when i actually

decided and started to believe in myself

and this was when

i took pride in my beautiful mahogany

color

is when i took pride in my nappy hair

you know that defies gravity

is when i took pride in my skin that can

absorb race

[Music]

this was when i truly learned to love

myself this was also when i realized

that before you can learn to love others

you must first learn

to love yourself before we learn

to build bridges between us and those

that are

around us we should first build a bridge

that is within ourselves

so now that we’ve been able to establish

this first inner bridge

and the most important one in my opinion

how are we able to

create this love that we have into the

society that is around us

how are we able to use the same energy

and love

into helping those that are in need

oftentimes when we think about ways to

help people

we look at different things like giving

donations

visiting orphanages fundraisers

yes all of this is very good

but then we still see that there is a

gaping divide between the higher

socio-economic class and the lower one

we still see that there is a gaping

divide between the rich and the poor

we still see that there is a gaping

divide between the white

and the black well in my opinion

a way to solve this is for us to be able

to lower ourselves

the problem is we do not communicate we

do not converse

we do not work with each other at eye

level

only when we are able to see eye to eye

and of race color gender is

when we will be able to achieve true

love within us

all now

a practical way to view this is

something or a rule that i actually made

for myself

i call it the burden of responsibility

what it basically means is that for

everything that you have

you must feel a sense of responsibility

to work towards that thing

in order to help those that are around

you

if you have power if you have money

use it to help those that are in need if

you have a voice and a following

use it to sound out the opinions of

those that are being oppressed

if you have a good smile smile because

you know a smile can go a long way still

it doesn’t really matter

so even when you feel like you have

nothing to give and nothing to offer

look at yourself because there’s always

things that are in us that we should be

grateful for

and there’s always things that we have

that we can give to the community

as people we should never be okay with

the fact that

we can just joyously walk through our

neighborhoods

when we know that a black man in the

united states cannot do the same thing

without risking his life

we cannot joyously feast onto our food

while we know that the kid in yemen is

being tortured by starvation

as we sit and do nothing

we need to change

now in the very beginning i did mention

and i did talk about

the children in yemen and i did mention

the fact that

it is very difficult for us because we

think that this is such a distant group

of people these are people that we may

never

get to see in our lifetime but

[Music]

the first thing that we need to do is

love

so when we say love for yourself what

you love for others

it means that very same love that you

have for yourself that very same love

that you’ve been

able to establish in the very beginning

by being comfortable under your own skin

you should reflect that onto those that

are around you

ultimately as people as human beings

our goal should not only be to build a

connection

between us and those that are directly

around us

but rather build a connection between us

and those

we shall never see thank you