Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part XIV
*Cross-posted from The Age of Zinc*
Age of Zinc is proud to present the final instalment in a memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back soon for our next memoir!
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Chapter 14
I was always thinking that if I get married I have to get a man who will always take care of me and that is also what I tell my daughter. She is just 18 so she is still innocent and I thank god for that because it is hard.
My first daughter is targeting right and has some things she wants. I promised her, I’d work nail and tooth to see that she achieves whatever she wants. I told her, “You are not going to get married tomorrow before you have your own job. You have to be working and then you can get a man. If you want to get married before you have a job, you’re going to end up suffering. And when you start suffering, don’t think of me suffering for you, that is your own problem. But I’m ready to support you until you get what you want.” I don’t have to baby feed her. She is a good girl. When she returns from school you give her wax and tell her that this is your capital. I tell her she can make some candles and sell them and then she shows me the sales. I tell her that you have to work for this money so when you go back to school you will have some money with you. She will never sit still. She spares some time for her books and does housework and then goes to work on the project.
I think each child should at least show what they are able to do to. You need to know your children: who is ready to work, who doesn’t want to work, and who is trust worthy. If you are open with them you know what they are thinking and know if they are going in a certain direction.
Some others maybe think that they will be supported, but I grew up knowing that I need to support myself. I don’t think I need someone to wake me up because if I know what I want, I have to do it myself. Why wait for someone? Let me fail and someone can come in.
Appreciation:
To Slum Dwellers International of thinking to mobilize women and empower them to a higher level of leadership which gives them strength to face their challenges and target development. Today we have empowered slum dweller women for development.
To note Kiberu Hasan (Uganda), Rose Molokoane (South Africa), Joseph Muturi (Kenya), Jockin Arputham (India), Abasi (Uganda), and the ACTogether staff.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part XIII
*Cross posted from the Age of Zinc*
Age of Zinc is proud to present the thirteenth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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When we work as a team we are able to get many things. We can’t sit back and say: “I’m poor, I can’t do anything.” No, you have to start small and then you can grow.
The federation saved my life. I was almost gone and had a lot of stress. I had three children at that time. I was finding life hard with these children because I was not working much and the money was not supporting us. I had my shop but we still couldn’t save money. All the expenditures were going to pay off the loans and trying to survive. When I went to Owino I was able to start a new business and then with the federation I was new person. I was free.
With the federation women we are thinking big – we want businesses. We are also planning – we can buy a piece of land and we can acquire a loan. We can become a society and do things for ourselves. We do not have to sit and wait or beg.
We focus on improving our lives and changing the image of the slums. Instead of thinking that slums are places of useless people, we want the government to think that slums are part of development. This is what they have to focus on how we develop. Slums have always been around and are growing everyday. They need to understand how we can find a solution – together with the slum dwellers.
Today people are informed. Even if I’m gone there are thousands of other people who know what they want and they can get it. So for me, I’m satisfied that I’ve at least worked. I’ve done something. So even if I leave now, tomorrow my children who are still slum dwellers will find the movement moving on.
No More Kid Mangwangwa
Both India and South Africa are voting today in parliamentary elections. But change is not something that comes about every four or five years at the ballot box. The real change-makers are on the streets, moving towns, cities, and nations, forward through their daily struggles. Pule Raboroko was one such unsung South African leader. The below is a retrospective that honours this key personality in the South African SDI Alliance. Similar short biographies of the men and women who have forged this global social movement will be featured regularly on the SDI blog.
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“It is my subsidy you are talking about. It is you the government who promised it to us and it is you the government who tell us that the R15,000 is all we are going to get for our years of misery and suffering. And now you want me to accept it when you pour my subsidy down the drain, down your throats and the throats of developers.” – Pule Raboroko.
Pule Raboroko was stabbed to death in a Kanana shebeen in the early hours of Sunday 25 October 1998. His young wife lost a husband, his little children lost a father, the Federation (uMfelandaWonye) lost a national leader and the nation lost an unsung hero.
Pule Raboroko was an ordinary man. Pule Raboroko was never going to get a minute’s silence in parliament or an obituary in the daily papers, written by one of the venerable scribes of the new elite. It is left to his family, his community and his comrades in uMfelandaWonye to honour his memory. Raboroko would have preferred it that way.
He was born in Sebokeng in the late 1950’s. Like millions in his generation he grew up with the painfully simple aspiration to help to overturn the apartheid regime that tormented and degraded him. Raboroko grew up to be a proud man who did not like to be humiliated. He wore his wounded manhood on his sleeve, and in the end it might well have cost him his life. Just like it has cost the lives of countless men in this country’s racially segregated ghettos.
Pule Raboroko spent 15 years of his adult life in a back-yard shack in Sebokeng. In 1983 he was in the forefront of the riots that rocked the Vaal and ratched up the fear and the desperation of the white state. He was a member of UDF and ANC street committees until 1994.
On the day of the elections he led his people out of the backyard shacks and into a promised land – 15 hectares of dry veld that, of course, was called Kanana. In the eyes of the new authorities (what did Fanon say – Black skin, White masks?) that act made Raboroko into a land-grabber, a leader of queue jumpers, someone who undermines development and profits from the desperation of the poor.
Raboroko was no angel, but he did deliver 3000 homeless families in the Vaal Triangle from decades of humiliation and extortion in the backyard shacks of Sebokeng. And this action inspired thousands of others to follow this example, for Raboroko had exposed a universal truth. Government queues don’t move, they just groove for the corrupt. Government threatens land invaders with harsh recrimination, but nothing gets government to negotiate as quickly as a land invasion.
It is not the point to praise or condemn invasions, but by honouring Raboroko’s memory we honour the real urban planners of our cities – those men and women who have been desperate enough to occupy land, build shacks, source water at great risk to themselves and their loved ones.
First came the backyard shack-dwellers of Sebokeng. Then came their comrades from Small Farm, Evaton, Sharpeville. Soon the settlement of Kanana was followed by Election Park, Boitumelo, Botshabelo … And Raboroko was always at hand to help his fellow squatter citizens, to block out sites, to draw as good a layout plan as any professional surveyor, to design and help build infrastructure, to provide water.
The politicians did not believe him when he told them that he was not undermining Government but was helping them to deliver on their promises. The people did. Not only the people in the Vaal, but poor people throughout the land.
They are crying for Pule Raboroko today in hundreds of informal settlements throughout South Africa. They mourn him in Joe Slovo Village, Despatch where he helped design a layout plan that helped settle two thousands families. They mourn him in VukuZenzele, Cape Town where he did the same for 250 families more. And the women in Nonzamo, Queenstown are wailing for the soul of the man who helped them get running water. The men in Newlands West, Durban sit silent and solemn by the side of their stoves, thinking of the man who was with them when they fled the violence in Siyanda and sought a safe place to live. And it is a pall of sadness as well as a pall of smoke that covers the shack settlements of the Vaal region this week. There is hardly a squatter family in Kanana, Agrinette Hills, Patrick Hunsley, Election Park, Boitumelo that is not reminded that it was not the liberty that was awarded them by this new government that gave them land.
In the time of the bitter arrival of freedom, Raboroko was your everyman. Raboroko was a rough, even violent and self-destructive man. But then he was a product of the urban shacklands, and violence and roughness is the equilibrium of the shacks. So why is it so difficult to recognise that rough men like Raboroko who are committed to their communities are central to our urban transformation? Why point self-righteously at his scars, why look at his warpaint and say “I told you so”? Why not rise above the insalubrious, just like Raboroko did?
In the city centres and the suburbs where planners and politicians live, memory subsides into the new demands of reconciliation and consumption. On the outskirts where Pule lived, and debauched and tried to build a better life with his fellow squatter citizens, people have nothing and so they survive on memory. Not rigid, not dogmatic, not even angry, but the memory of old roots, the memory of community, a memory that spreads over time, carried by imperfect heroes like Pule Raboroko. It is that memory kept alive that is the key to a better tomorrow. It is not a sanitised solution, ribboned with red tape. It is beauty replete with horror. It is the simple order in the very heart of disorder.
A cowardly thrust of cold steel on a dark night and the Federation lost its first urban planner. Not a well heeled professional, schooled in an urban grammer, made up of grids and regulations, but a multi-lingual, multi-historical visionary, trapped for a lifetime in a mosiac of shacks and unlit streets and stagnant puddles. This was his backdrop. This was his home – be it in Kanana or Piesang River, Khayelitsha or Cato Crest. Our urban planner took the Federation’s message to the formal world – where he and his colleagues were often ignored and ridiculed.
But what is it that the Raboroko’s of the Federation are trying to say? That development is not a linear progression to be mapped and regulated. It is a process whereby the poor themselves show the way to make throbbing mosaics out of the haphazard whirls of life.
There will not be a minute’s silence in Parliament for Pule Raboroko, but the women of the Federation hold his memory to their hearts and their whispers accompany his spirit on its journey to his ancestors. Our tired eyes are burning with tears held back, as if by clouds of thick smoke on a highveld night, dust, and a wind as sharp and merciless as death.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part XI
**Cross-posted from The Age of Zinc**
My husband happened to be in one meeting and saw what I was doing. I didn’t know he was there because I was really busy, moving up and down, coordinating this and that. When I saw him later, he said, “Ah! That’s why you have become very tired. You are working so hard, now I understand.” Now when I go back home I will find that he has prepared food and he does not complain. If I tell him that I didn’t eat lunch or don’t have money for transport, he will give me something. Then tomorrow when I get money I show him what I made and we plan together. We agreed to share and know show much we are spending and what we have left. That is the only way it will change us. Initially, he would get his money from his houses and I wouldn’t even know how he was spending it. But after joining the federation we are like twins. We are one. We think the same and we work together. We even share the same challenges. If I’m hurt he feels that I’m hurt because he knows that we have the same responsibilities.
One of the things I learned from the federation was to understand how to manage my home and my husband. I had almost lost him before I joined the federation, because we were not moving in the same line. After I joined the federation, he was the one looking for me then. I was not around. I was so busy and I would go back home occupied thinking about more things. I was thinking about what we were going to do next. I was not thinking about him leaving me or doing whatever – I was busy, I got another husband, the federation! He was even scared that I found another man. I told him the federation is my husband and I’m going to be with them for the rest of my life! He asked me who this federation was and I told him it’s the savings that we had started – that is the federation. He was also scared because I never complained and was always satisfied with what I had. I knew that what I had was what I needed to fit into my life and I didn’t have to look for anything else then.
I’m used to not eating money, so I could never eat it. Whatever money I was given I was saving it. Our house was in a swamp area and whenever it rained water was always coming in our house. I thought two of my children were going to die in the house because of the weather – it was so cold. The first money I saved was for improving the house. I told my husband that I have saved this amount of money and I beg you to add in more money. So we improved the house. We had to buy cement and sand to lift the house up because it was sinking. When it rains in the swamps people have to pile up more soil to bring the level up. When you bring the soil level up though the houses go down more. So we had to bring the house up too. You change one part today and another tomorrow – that’s how you fix it. So it wasn’t breaking down the house. We had two rooms. After finishing one room, we did the other room, and then we did the floor. It was perfect! It changed our lives. It took time for the children to get well but today they are well. I also suffered from asthma with the weather; it was very tough for me. But I succeeded in changing it! Even women were wondering how I managed, but I did. And now my husband was also talking and telling people that when your woman joins that federation it changes them, they start thinking. He was the one then mobilising the men. He also joined and was saving. He knew that what I was targeting was big so he had to work with me. I was also helping him to plan. He used to get money and just spend it like that – on pleasure and going out alone. I grew up without those luxuries so I didn’t mind them, all I want to be alive and make sure my children are alive. That’s what I want.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part X
**Cross posted from The Age of Zinc**
Age of Zinc is proud to present the tenth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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In 2005 I started working in Owino Market. I worked there for two years. In 2007 I joined the federation. When I joined the federation I lost the time to be in the market. I would move around in the communities in the evening for the federation and I also had to work in the market evenings. So I had to sacrifice some time and also cover the other side of being in the market.
When I was unable to go for the daily collections the women started loosing. So I said to myself that I couldn’t let this die because I felt it like it was part of me. I liked it and had mobilized over 300 people who were saving. I could move door to door and they were saving. After I had mobilize all these people I requested to get someone to assist me because I could not be moving around as much; I was losing my job at Owino. But the federation agreed that instead of getting another person to help me, they would pay me a little so I could continue. It was a challenge because they could not pay me what I was making in the market. Because they trusted me, I chose to continue. Trust is something you can’t just get. If people trust you that means you are an asset to them and you can’t lose. So I agreed and continued it for four consecutive months – I collected the savings. We then were able to start loaning.
Some people from ACTogether (the local support NGO) came to Kamwoyka and called a big meeting for all leaders in Kamwoyka settlement. I went because I was a local leader. At this meeting they introduced us to the savings culture and informed us what was involved. Afterwards, some of the leaders said, “No, these ones will eat your money!” Because a Dutch team and about three other organizations had come before and done something similar but had just eaten our money. But I stood up and said “Me, I’ll try this!” But my chairman said no and I told him “I will mobilize the women and they will come, I have them.” So we set up another meeting and I got thirteen women to come on the first day. These thirteen women started saving that day! We saved 13,000 shillings total. Each one saved 1,000 shillings. Those women also nominated me to be their collector at the beginning. So I was the secretary for the group and then they also asked me to be the collector. They had other leaders as well: the chairperson of the group, the treasurer, and the mobiliser. Committees were formed and each one of us had a role.
After that, we started mobilising. We mobilised our community and then our community mobilised another community. After we mobilising our community that’s when I started to go to different areas because I now knew what I was doing. I knew the challenges and the achievements. I could talk about something that I’m a part of and understood. Some of the challenges we faced were that when you started mobilizing the community some leaders would think you want to overtake them – we were a threat to them. They thought if this thing is successful, people would think that this is the person doing good work and when the elections come they will nominate this person instead. But after people see the benefits of their savings it’s up to them to decide. With us, we did not forced them to save. It is your own will and you were free to withdraw. We would also advise people that it is better to save for something big, not for daily food. If you’re saving for daily food you cannot save because you have to withdraw money everyday. It worked well and we were successful.
Soon after we started going for big meetings at the regional level. At that time we were still just in Kampala Central. We would go for meetings and that is where they recognized that I could maybe be put in a leadership position. They formed a profiling team and I was part of that team. In 2009 we moved into new areas. We visited Mbale to meet the municipality. At these meetings it was my job to record the minutes. This gave me a lot of strength because I had a lot of information and knew everything that was going on. It was during that period that the National Slum Dwellers decided that we needed a leadership structure. We set up a lot of meetings to discuss leadership structure and it took us almost two years to agree on the type of structure.
Once we had agreed on the structure we decided to have a meeting with all the different cities. By then we had mobilised the five regions of Kampala and the five secondary cities of Mbale, Arua, Jinja, Kabale, and Mbarara and each city was given the chance to elect one leader to the national team. Each city decided the person who they thought was good. For example, if we are looking at savings and Kampala Central was good at savings we would have Kampala Central give us someone who can oversee the savings committee. Jinja was very good at reports and auditing, so we looked for someone from Jinja who was doing audits to be on the national leadership team. This was the process we used for all the cities.
We agreed that we should have another national council meeting in a different area to inform all the leaders of the new executive team. All the regional leaders needed to be there to agree with the committee that had been nominated. In this meeting we agreed that we all would work with the team that has been nominated. This was 2011.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part IX
**Cross posted from The Age of Zinc**
Age of Zinc is proud to present the ninth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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I’m trying to teach my kids and make sure that each one is doing something for himself. If one is looking after the poultry and chicks we agree that you have to take your time and make sure everything is done right. We are also making candles at home. Whoever helps make our candles at home also has to then take them to the shops and sell them. When we are making our briquettes, one kid has to take care of the whole process. So each one of them is trying. They are at least trying, and they really want it.
The oldest is about to be 18, a girl. She is in a boarding school. The boys are staying at home with us. Sometimes when I’m not at home I need someone to stay with the young one. I have one that is 17, another that is 14, one is 10, one is 7, and then the young one is 2 years. I have two girls and the rest boys. Their father is supportive; he is also working so hard.
The father is always moving with his son, he takes care of his children; let me say it like that. He is always responsible for his children. He is perfect, because I don’t even get a headache or worry or lose any track of my children. If a child is sick, he is there 24 hours.
Most of my time I’m with the federation so I cannot support them much because its voluntary work. But we earn and save our money from our projects. My husband is a carpenter and he also has some small houses for rent. At the end of three months we save 300 shillings for each child’s school fees. For us, we are looking at how we can survive. It’s a family effort to survive.
I don’t have much time for sleeping because I wake up at five, I do housework, and I leave for federation work. I get back at six or seven and I prepare food and then I have to make my candles. I make them at night. When I’m at home I usually don’t sleep until late because I have to make sure I can some have capital with me the next day.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part VIII
**Cross-posted from The Age of Zinc**
Age of Zinc is proud to present the eighth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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I’ve lived in Kamwoyka since 1992. I left school in 1994, I was home from 1995 to 1996 and that is when I met my husband. He was the one supporting me for two years paying my school fees after I stopped working. He supported me. He would give me some money and my mother and father would also give me some money. He told me he would support me, but I told him I was not yet ready for men. So he agreed and gave me space for three years. He still supported me without making me be with him everyday.
After three years, I agreed to be with him. I took him to my father and my father agreed, so we then stayed together. Within no time I was pregnant! We had our first child in 1996. We then had a second and then a third. During those years having young children was very difficult. At that time, I was with FIDA and since it was voluntary work I could do it in my free time with my child. I would move around with the first born during that time.
1997 to 1998 was not a good time for me. I had many challenges in marriage and had lost my thinking. I could not even work. Then in 1999 my mother said to me “No! You have worked for so long, even when you had no responsibility you were working. Now how can you sit at home and suffer when you still have your hands? Come back to the market and start working!” So I went back to the market and I started selling sweet potatoes. They would give me a loan of one sack and I would sell it for two days. I would pay them back and they would give me another one. That business also grew.
After having three children and getting some money I decided to start a shop. I had a shop so I could stay near the children but also have a business. I started operating a shop of my own and I worked in that shop for a period of six years everyday by myself. When operating a shop you are working 24 hours. You have to wake up and open early, around 5am and you don’t close until around midnight. You cannot leave your shop to go for other things. There are always customers, especially when the shop is located in the settlement. I got the loan for the shop through Microfinance Uganda. The loan was for 6 months. I would pay it back and take another. I took 3 loans for the capital for the shop, so for a total of one and a half years. Those loans helped me a lot.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part VII
**Cross-posted from The Age of Zinc**
Age of Zinc is proud to present the seventh instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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When our community began forming local village committees, the women in the settlement said I could become their secretary at the settlement level. I was recording their minutes and when visitors came to explain to the community what they were planning to do I would always invite them and we would sit and discuss.
After some time, Uganda Association of Women Lawyers (FIDA) came and was looking for someone who can be trained to help the children in this settlement. The committee gave them my name and I went for the training. I started to work with them, not as an employee, but someone working for the community – volunteering. Our role was to talk to parents about not violating children’s rights and understand how report those that have violated the rights of the women and children? This position was perfect for me!
Another program organized by FIDA was concerning the Land Act of 1995. There were a lot of evictions at the time. I was trained and moved settlement-to-settlement sensitising the communities on how to handle evictions, land ownership, and land negotiations. This helped me to learn how to work with communities and big congregations, especially with women who were suffering after evictions. The men would sell off the land/house without the women’s consent.
We had another organization come to our settlement, Concern Worldwide. They were focusing on the youth, women, and how to help youth in vocational training. When Concern Worldwide requested a community focal person, I was nominated to work with them. I mobilised the women and the youth groups who were going for the vocational trainings.
The community would tell me what they want and what they want to do, such as adult literacy, women’s rights, youth employment, and skill development. So my job was to inform those organizations what the community wanted most. I would then move door-to-door mobilizing people. I would explain to the community the purpose of the visitors and request them to attend meetings in person. I had to write down all the different teams and by that time I had become the secretary of the area. The women’s team said we need a secretary for the whole zone and that I should take it on. I had recorded all the people in this area and I knew them face to face, by their name, and what each person could do. If we needed someone I would know who to bring for the team and who could assist me to look for those people.
I liked being on the women’s team more than the youth team. I had mobilized 50 youth, 30 girls and 20 boys. For the women’s team, we were 60 total. I felt that the women’s team still needed me. They needed me to push them. Some people can’t push themselves and need someone to always push them. For the youth team, I had my two young brothers who had not gone to school completely so I also put them in the youth team. One was going for mechanics and one for carpentry. After seeing that they could benefit from the group, I decided that they should stay with the youth group and myself with the women’s group. Mobilization always needs to start from your own house.
In the women’s group we were just learning to share the challenges and experiences we were facing. In the women’s group the older women were advising the younger women and teaching them how to knit mats, baskets, and table clothes to sell for income. It was in this meeting that the women noted a challenge of poor sanitation and reported it to Concern Worldwide. Concern responded by providing the community with 10 public toilets.
The FIDA training was about law. But law is not only about children’s rights. We learned about the broader picture. We talked about land, about women, and about children’s rights – so I had a big package. This was a chance to implement what I learned, because I had a lot of connections. If a woman was violated, I knew how to assist and how to report it.
You know, I was dreaming about becoming a lawyer, or an accountant, or a nurse. I wanted those three things, but I did not get any of them. At least now just when talking I do a little of each of those things. The way I’m doing this, it’s natural, it’s just natural, it’s a part of me. No one is paying me, but I feel that I just have to do it. By the end when I see the fruits of what I’ve done I at least feel encouraged and think I need to do more.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part VI
Age of Zinc is proud to present the sixth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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After two years life had at least changed for my mother. She had left the toilet. She was now moving up very quickly. All the farmers in the area would come to her. They would give her goods that she would sell. She was like a business owner. They trusted her. She would never eat your payment. She records all the transactions and expenditures. Even if she uses 100 shillings, she will them that she used 100 shillings for water, this is how much I sold, and this is what you told me you wanted to sell. She gives you back what is yours and also keeps what is hers. So life was very easy. She would also get free food, free vegetables, and in the market people liked her.
Even up to today someone is giving her 3 kilograms of sugar every week for free. This woman says she’ll give her sugar, soap, cooking oil, every week. As friends, my mother will also do some shopping and take things to that family because they don’t go down to the market. When she’s in the market she sees different things and takes to them.
Currently, she is the elected elder leader of Nakawa market. She has organized the market vendors into teams, which are now doing different sports. They have a netball team, a football team, and also a music team. They have set days in which they play, such as Monday and Wednesday afternoons, because at those times there are not many customers in the market. Organizing the vendors has helped create more attachment to each other. Today the vendors recognize her work and they appreciate her efforts to make the elderly more active.
Memoirs of a Ugandan Slum Dweller: Part V
**Cross-posted from The Age of Zinc**
Age of Zinc is proud to present the fifth instalment in a new memoir from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. Check back every week to catch the next part of the story!
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I was sixteen when I moved to Kamwoyka. Life was very different. Most of the children were staying with their parents and everything was given to them. Everything they wanted was always there. Before I was living in a toilet, but at least we were all together so we could share everything. But I had left my family to stay with my uncle and his wife and their children. It was a hard time, harder than living in the toilet, because sometimes I could not eat. I would have to run back to my mother to get food and then come back to Kamwoyka to stay. My uncle would have liked to give me food but my auntie did not like people coming to stay with them. I didn’t mind though because at least at school they would give us posho. When I would eat lunch it was enough for me until I got back to school the next day. Then on the weekends, I would go to my mother’s for food.
My aim was to complete secondary school and get some education so I did not mind a thing. But I passed through some very hard times. Even women in the area were sympathizing and asking me, “Why I don’t go back to my parents?” But I always knew this situation was temporary and would come to an end. I also wanted to see how this world is when you are not with your father or mother. How are you treated? That’s what I was asking myself and others, “If I am alone tomorrow, how does the world treat me?” I realized that it was not about food, but about tomorrow. What I wanted was education. That was my target.
