This week I saw an article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about a Sudanese refugee, one of the “lost boys,” who resettled in Rochester, New York. His story is amazing, though hardly unusual for a Sudanese refugee, but what caught my eye and kept me reading is that he now works at a parking attendant at Strong Memorial Hospital, where my mother, my sister, and I were all born. I thought this would be just another story in a local paper about a refugee in the neighborhood, but as I read I discovered that Sebastian Maroundit is doing something remarkable: he is raising funds to build a school in his home village, where there is none. If he is successful, hundreds of children will have access to an education and opportunities that would otherwise be unreachable for them.
And that just floors me. So often I hear people give elaborate excuses for why they can’t do more to help others. Often, I hear those excuses come out of my own mouth. But I think there should be a new global policy that anyone who thinks they have reason to focus on themselves rather than the world’s poor or hurting should have to go explain their rationale to this guy.
“I don’t have a lot of extra money right now.”
“I’m just really busy.”
“What could I do? I don’t have any special skills or knowledge!”
Just think about how those excuses would sound to this guy, a man who saw his village attacked by Arab militias, was separated from his family while still a child, walked 1,000 miles from Sudan to Ethiopia, then fled war again by walking from Ethiopia to Kenya, suffered hunger and loneliness, resettled in an extremely foreign country, and now works as a parking attendant. Yeah. My excuses sound a lot less convincing now too.
-Stephanie
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