Undergraduate / "We must go where the work is" - QuestBridge Biographical - National Match [3]

A National Match and True Freedom

"We must go where the work is, my boy", said my father soothingly whilst gently wiping the growing tear from my cheek. Like a soldier leaving for the battlefield, he left in the ungodly hours of Monday morning only to return on the dying breathes of Friday night. Until such time, I was the man of the house, and the awfully imposing six foot walls, deadly electric fences and police-trained attack dogs were our overnight protection. My younger brother and I would sleep on an air mattress next to my mother's bed, whilst my gentle German shepherd, Duncan, stood guard by the door. I will never forget the look of angst on my mother's face as she said that if ever anyone managed to enter the house, we should lock ourselves inside the walk-in closet at the back-end of the room and wait for her to return; luckily, it never came to that.

One night late my father received a phone call from his best friend Thys who had narrowly escaped death at gunpoint, just a couple of metres outside his family home in nearby Muldersdrift. For days thereafter my father's ablutions were haunted by visions of being in Thys' shoes, and sleepless nights ensued. Fortunately, my father is a man of his word, and this time, the work was in tropical Mauritius. After his initial visit, he told me stories of young boys riding their bicycles on the sidewalks and people sleeping at night without a single lock or key; to me it sounded impossible, fabricated even.

Placed in an international school, I initially felt intimidated by the baffling languages of native Crďole and French. I felt like I did not belong. But with time I came to appreciate the amalgam of new opportunities I would not have otherwise been offered. I became part of a group of friends that originated from all corners of the globe, including England, Sweden and as far as the horn of Africa. Coming from a parochial school environment, I was intrigued by the variety of religions and nationalities that made up such a melting-pot of personalities and characters. But moving to a new country is never without its fair share of sacrifice. We lived in a modest household with very few luxuries to be able to get an English education, and my mother was not able to find a job. Yet I realized then that no amount of money could buy me this kind of freedom, and I needed to make my parents' sweat and tears worth something.

The contrasts between my old home and my new one taught me to question the world around me. At the tender age of thirteen, nobody really takes you seriously when you ask "Why do people without homes live one street from mansions and manor houses?" or "How come most people go to bed hungry in a country filled with corn fields and sugarcane plantations?". But I did not care, I was stubbornly inquisitive. Still, never had I imagined that I would find my answers in a stuffy four by three metre classroom in the middle of the Mauritian summer, but when I heard that unmistakeable shattering noise reverberate through my entire body, I could not ignore it: this was how I would repay my parents, by answering the questions they never could. Economics classes were more of a make-shift focus group session than a textbook regurgitation, fed by our personal narratives rather than case studies or emotionless theories. Finally, my questions made sense, and my answers had meaning. Even though my English was very poor, the language of economics was like music to my ears.

Once I knew that there were answers, it stirred an insatiable desire inside me to find them. Even though I lived more than an hour from school by bus, every last bit of my energy was spent researching economic articles and planning ambitious projects. One of my biggest ventures was entitled "The New South Africa Project", and included maps, figures and even analysis describing how the country could become the next African success story. This eagerness to know and understand is what drove me to dreaming big towards becoming the first one in my family to get a bachelor's degree. I promised myself and my parents that I would return home one day to a place where children are casually gliding by on bicycles and front yards are ornately decorated with flowers, not concrete barriers; a place where no mother is forced to lock away her children fearing their lives. A place worthy of the sacrifice my parents made to give me the opportunities that led me to true freedom. I know that if more people like me start to see it, then more people will start to believe it.