Winner of the essay contest

The C in the CYD course - Shikainah Champion Samuel

 

Arrays of birthday cards greet me as I open my front door. They have travelled from all over the world- Holland, Nigeria, America, Haiti, Philippines, Uganda, Nepal, Pakistan… the list goes on. They are from my former course mates, alright. But they are addressed to my six year old daughter Shifra who accompanied me five years before to Holland. As we open each card we reminisce about the sender. The Nigerian friend who cooked us an African meal, a young Dutch girl who invited us all to her father’s farm, the very academic American whose pithy repartees in class, I simply loved, my first Pakistani friend who helped me disco+ver that it didn’t really matter which side of the fence we were on. And, yes, as I tell Shifra that she has ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ in so many parts of the world who unanimously agree she represented the universal ‘Child’ of the Children, Youth and Development course….. I realise that my study in Holland went beyond the class room learning. It made alive that ancient Sanskrit saying ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ meaning the world is one single family.

- Shikainah Champion Samuel