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