Empower through Diversity
my name
is chishay salam and i’m from lusaka
zanki
home of the monsieur tuning also known
as the victoria force
i have lived in asia for nearly 15 years
it’s home for me and i work in
architecture
designing that is when i was asked to do
this tech talk
i found myself i found myself
i hope that’s better i found myself
buzzing with energy excitement and
enthusiasm
and for some strange reason a huge sense
of nostalgia
my mind took me to various places faces
and moments that i had come across
in my youth but hadn’t thought about in
a long time
it was there that it became clear to me
that these were a huge part of my
journey
and speaking about it would only come
naturally
so today i’m here to speak to you about
diversity
and the huge role that it has played in
my story of empowerment
i’m part of diversity whether i realize
it
or not diverse in social status
diverse in culture diverse inability
and well diverse in race too
i was raised in as in law housing
community
right on the edge of lusaka called
chinda
you may call it a ghetto or a shanti
well
we call it a combo and so
i shouldn’t have gone to the best high
school in zambia
in palembe and i shouldn’t have left
home
for the bright lights in the fast
growing far east
without knowing where i was going or
what i was going to do
i shouldn’t have learnt architecture
in a tiny island in china called shaman
in chinese with fellow chinese students
i shouldn’t have worked on the solar
decathlon competition that raked in
awards
for shaman i shouldn’t have
lived and worked in the always bustling
never sleeping
metropolis that is shanghai
and i shouldn’t have made my way to
sunny forward thinking
singapore or be here giving a speech and
telling you bits about my colorful
journey
because you see i
come from a family of 10 kids
and my father died young so i was raised
by a single mother so to say that
resources were tight
would be an understatement
but women women are superheroes
i’ve seen it i’ve lived it
they just are despite how difficult it
is
on a daily basis for black women
they still make it work
did you know that zambian men are
mommy’s voice
well of course we are
now so much so that in many places back
home
the word for mom is often
interchangeable
with the word for help and so
instead of someone screaming nitandizeni
meaning
help me in yanja they would scream
mayo meaning mum and no
these are not children or babies is a
fully grown man
and so some say this is this is tied to
the fact that we lie
in what is called the matrilineal belt
and historically in many of our
societies women have taken up
positions of power and strength
something that has been slowly diluted
by colonialism
and in more recent times urbanization
all in order to fit what we view as the
more acceptable
international norm the western
patriarchy
my mother as a teenager
in her eyes i see a big world that she
wants to explore and experience
fueled by all the books that she loved
to read and support from her father
she manages to achieve that she lands
herself
a spot at the best institution in the
country at that time
university of zambia and in no time
finds herself working as an inspector at
the bank of zambia
which she did for 30 years
mission accomplished right well the 90s
roll around
and they’re not too kind to the majority
of zambians including my parents
and they fall on hard times and we find
ourselves
in china now i grew up around
a lot of strong females
my mother my sisters my aunts
my mom’s friends we didn’t have much but
we had
a strong sense of community
in the mornings i remember being sent
across the street
to buy bread from this tiny minimunt
mesmerized by
all the goodies that they sold in there
i would spend too much time there than i
needed to
so much so that when my parents would
have friends over
they would ask me and my young sisters
what we wanted to be when we were older
my sisters would go astronaut doctor
pilot and when it got to me i’d go
shopkeeper
you know and they’d burst into laughter
i wouldn’t get it not that there’s
anything wrong with it
but just because they didn’t get my
master plan
if i were a shopkeeper i could eat all
the chocolate in the store
what more could i want and so in the
evenings my ancestors and i would sit
around and watch my mother as she worked
her second job
tailoring it was one of those evenings
that i asked her
why everyone would laugh each time i
said i wanted to be a shopkeeper
she stops and looks at me and say and
says
because you choose something that’s so
achievable
i go yeah she pauses and then says
shisha you should never be afraid to
dream
big then she follows it with what is my
favorite phrase
in bemba imitikula empanga
meaning the youth are the future
and so if you are the youth you can do
and be
whatever it is that you want to be
that was the day that everything changed
for me
i didn’t just want to be a shopkeeper i
now
wanted to be at all
as the years pushed on my mother does
move us out of this
my mother does move us out to the
suburbs and i land myself
a spot at this amazing high school
because of my good grades i go through
high school like a regular teenager
even though a majority of my schoolmates
are from well to do families
something that i knew absolutely nothing
about
i do manage to complete or graduate high
school
having accomplished a few things good
grades
and a strong network while there
i also realized that most of the
students wanted to act like they were
coming from
the combine you know try to get their
street cred up
now that i knew plenty about it was
there that i came to the understanding
that my experiences were not just a
disadvantage
but also an advantage especially when it
came to communicating with individuals
such as these
who came from a different social
background
to myself shortly after
i quit my a-levels and decided to move
to asia
to try something new i of course shared
this news
with my mother who was convinced that i
had lost my mind
after a lot of arguments and
a lot of stubbornness i did make my way
east
with my family’s blessing of course and
where did i find myself you may ask
shaman and when i did i should have
realized that i had dived
into the deep end if the language
barrier
wasn’t a big enough sign i don’t know
what could have convinced me a few days
in
i start to feel the nerves so i meet up
with this young gentleman who worked at
shaman university
that i had been previously in contact
with
because he had led me to shaman with
stories
of the beach life and palm trees now you
see
i’m from a landlocked country and so
this
this was paradise and so then he
encouraged me
to study mandarin get a language
certificate
and use my gcse results to apply and
enroll
into university which i did
a year later i had
sat for my chinese language proficiency
exam
and passed i was so excited
i had learned basic conversational
mandarin
i could walk down to the market and ask
the vendor
china
basically asking how much do the red and
green apples cost
i had managed in my head i was dashing
and this was all the validation i needed
to know that i was ready
for uni i rolled up to my first class of
architectural school
full of excitement and full of such
enthusiasm about an hour
into my class i then realized that the
only words that i had understood
up until that point were good morning
class
surprise surprise no red apples or green
ones
either the hard truth
had just hit and things were about to
get even more real
so i thought it was just a phase well
one that lasted two years
so after a lot of sad days and a lot of
disappointment
one afternoon while having lunch with my
local classmates
after sharing the difficulties that i
was having i asked if they could tutor
me because they were passing and i was
failing
they then burst into laughter we’re
failing too
i was shocked failing well you guys
understand mandarin fluently don’t you
they go yeah but we’re also learning
this stuff for the first time
all this architectural stuff is new to
us i smiled
because that was exactly what i needed
to hear in that moment
in my own positive interpretation i had
understood
that we all had our own challenges and
so
if passing was achievable for them it
was achievable
for me too i had to quit
all the odd jobs that i held at the time
because clearly
school had become too demanding
even though i still needed the money
unlike most of my schoolmates who were
on scholarship
so one hot one one summer holiday while
down in guangzhou with a friend
we stumbled upon this huge shopping
district
with numerous stores and while we’re sat
in one of the stores and i’m having a
suit made for an event
for now a business idea comes to mind
to buy suits and sell them back home
much like my mother’s second job
and i did and i became successful at it
so much so that i started to think of
other ways in which i could
enlarge my empire then i remembered
that how much women back home
loved wigs and weaves
and at the time china was exporting
nearly three billions worth
of hair products annually with africa as
its
largest no well not largest the second
largest
consumer at 34
i jumped onto that train and there we go
i knew that this was an opportunity for
me to take up and so
as i was cultivating these new skills
outside my comfort zone i learned to
grow
more a few years down the line i
graduated
from my bachelors with flying colors
i then applied for a master’s degree
and got accepted on scholarship as an
exceptional
student i then took on my three-year
degree
but then completed it within a year that
left me plenty of time to move to brazil
where my wife is from before graduating
in brazil i learned to make chocolates
and these amazing round delights
that are absolute heaven called
brigadeiro
after going back to china to work and
eventually graduate
i was so inspired to start
i was so inspired to start a small
chocolate shop
to share my experience with my local
shaman community
and i did we added our own little twist
to this though
we started to flavor the brigadeiro i
would explain what we were doing with
this flavoring to my family and friends
in brazil
but they would have nothing of it they
would they would go
jose village you need to stick to the
original flavors that’s what the people
love
well turns out that people actually
liked our flavored brigadeiro
we ran the shop for about a year before
my business partner and i
decided to move to shanghai but there we
found that real estate was more
expensive
so we had to shut down
but not before i used this opportunity
to teach
my family back in zambia how to make
chocolates
in hope that it would empower them in
the same way it had empowered
me i went on to organize a recurring
event called africa night that acted
that acted as a bridge between local
shamanites
and africans in the diaspora and on the
continent
as well as working with an established
rubber and plastic
molding company mnk international as
they set themselves up
in africa training local zambians how to
manufacture their own products
rather than rely on imports solely
i was drawn to shanghai because of the
vast opportunities
especially in sustainability focused
projects
something that i am passionate about and
had focused on in my master’s
there i got to work with amazing
designers who were both
mindful and detail-oriented in their
designs
i could feel that i was starting to
pivot a little in my career
as the architectural projects reduced in
number
and we get more and more interior design
projects something that i didn’t know
much about
so even though i was out of my comfort
zone and intimidated
i was still willing to learn because i
was curious
about this and that led me to getting
an opportunity to work on mid-range
projects
as an architect and interior designer
and see
the whole process through
shortly thereafter my chapter in
shanghai came to an end
and my wife and i moved here to
singapore a few years ago
where i work on local projects as well
as those in china
in a nutshell the strong women in my
life
have taught me to dream big and if you
are different
you will have to understand what it is
that makes you different
because this this is your advantage
you have to learn to you have to learn
to accept what your surrounding
offers as this allows you and give
identifies
this allows you to identify pockets of
opportunity
this of course comes with its own
self-doubt
and so you have to find something that
you love
lean into it or dive into it
like i said before as a trader selling
suits
wigs and weaves i managed to cultivate
various skills
outside my comfort zone and so as long
as you are young
try new things try as much as you can
like i have and continue to do implement
things in your own way
and remember whether things go well
or not whether you fail or succeed it’s
okay
because you owe it to yourself
empowerment comes in various forms
for my mother it was education
for me it’s my journey for you
it could be a new skill a job
failing or trying again
but for us all i think it’s this
collective experience that we’re going
through
at the moment coveted 19.
if i think about our our topic today
diversity in empowerment i think my
story
tells it all it’s a story about life
experiences
it’s a story about establishing a sense
of belonging
for everyone it’s about understanding
and nurturing the connection between us
through language
culture and ethnicity and so
this speech goes out to all those
pre-teens
all those teenagers right all those
youth out there
and of course for all of you who are sat
here today
the world is ready for you
all you have to do is take that first
step if a mummy’s boy like myself
can achieve it then the sky is the limit
for you i will leave you here today
with the words of madiba nelson
mandela it all seems
impossible until
it’s done natasha
and thank you all