I often think of luck in the unfolding of a human being’s destiny.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Just to be born here, in this corner of North America, in one of the richest societies in history, is a blessing.
No wars, no famine, not (so many) clashes. A society, on the scale of the world, pacified.
Afterwards, the chance to come into the world in a family where one is expected, hoped for, loved. The chance to come into the world in a family that won’t fuck you too much, to have a childhood without scars so deep that you have to freeze them as an adult.
I think luck is an overlooked thing in life.
Bad luck too.
Let’s talk about Plem.
Plem Kijamba was born in Congo 25 years ago. In the lottery of humanity, it is not the winning ticket, to be born in the Congo.
Political unrest and violence, coups d’etat, legacy of colonial exploitation, famine, unemployment, ethnic rivalries: to be born in the Congo is to discover the nuance between life and survival.
Plem was born into a family that loved him, a large family, a dozen children. Of the lot, two albino sisters. Albiwhat? Albinos, as in albinism, an inherited genetic disease that affects the pigmentation of the skin, hair: albinism whitens.
Almost everywhere in Africa, albinos are the target of superstitions, according to the country1. We laugh at them, we make fun of them.
And sometimes we hunt them. This is the case in the Congo. In the province of Kivu, the Kijamba family was discriminated against and persecuted because two of their daughters were albino.
A cousin of Plem, also albino, has been abducted. Plem’s father and uncle went looking for him…
They were taken away too. Plem’s father escaped, but not his uncle, who was never seen again. No more than his cousin.
The Kijamba family decided to flee to Uganda.
Imagine being born in the Congo, albino. Imagine being born in the Congo, having to flee to Uganda. The Kijamba family settled in the Rwamwanja refugee camp2like nearly 77,000 other Congolese, the majority of whom fled inter-ethnic conflicts in Kivu.
Imagine the bad luck. I often think of bad luck in the unfolding of a human being’s destiny.
Plem landed in the refugee camp at the age of 19, in 2015, with part of his family: “My father and I were working, odd jobs. We… we were surviving, if I may say so. »
His mother and sisters stayed at home, a mud structure covered with a tent.
You had to work to eat. Plem and his father did odd manual jobs. No job, no food: “We waited until 8 p.m. every evening to eat, Plem told me. But we never knew if we were going to eat. It’s hard to wake up every time, to look around you, not knowing what you’re going to do today, not knowing if you’re going to have bread for your little sisters. Me, I’m a man, I can manage. But little girls of 7, 8 years old… It’s not easy…”
Guess where Plem tells me his story?
In the student café at Cégep de Terrebonne, where he is studying human sciences, World profile.
It was a fluke that landed him here.
Before going any further, let me introduce you to the people who, at the time of the interview, were around the table with Plem: the teachers Marie-Bétie Collot, Mélanie Tancrède, Eric Dru, Éléonore Bernier-Hamel and CEGEP student Christina Roy. All members of the Cégep de Terrebonne committee who took it into their heads to welcome a refugee student.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
From left to right: Khella Aléïda Pierre (student), Antoine Gallo (student), Kelly Gagné (student), Christina Roy (student), Plem Kijamba Lushembe (sponsored student), Marie-Claude Lebrun (teacher), Eric Dru (teacher ), Joëlle Champoux-Bouchard (teacher), Marie-Bétie Collot (teacher) and Marie-Claude Dufort (student)
Why welcome a refugee to Terrebonne? Why not…
“Who was on this committee? »
They all look at each other, giggle.
“A lot of people,” replies Marie-Bétie.
Many people – teachers, staff members, around 40 students – who have lent a hand, for months, to prepare for the arrival of a refugee student, under the aegis of the Student Refugee Program of the World University Service of Canada. It was originally the idea of a professor, Marie-Eve Gauvin.
A lot of people, therefore, who have done a lot of work upstream to welcome a stranger or a stranger, who have worked on an imposing amount of paperwork, who have collected money – $35,000 in donations, in fundraising activities – for provide for this person he doesn’t even know…
On the other side of the world, at the Rwamwanja camp, Plem Kijamba heard about this program which sent refugees to study in Canada, through the NGO Windle Trust.
He applied.
Like 1000 other young people.
Plem: “I started to gather my documents…”
Marie-Bétie looks at me: “It’s like a lottery. »
Plem: “I was like, ‘Studying in Canada… It won’t be possible.’ »
After months of waiting, Plem got a call: he was called for an interview.
Plem looks at me: “There, I said to myself: “Maybe it will be possible…””
He did the interview in English and French. His French, learned in the Congo, was rusty. English was the language of use in the refugee camp. We asked him if he wanted to study in French or in English, in the event that he was selected… Whispering to him that since there were a lot of candidates who spoke English… it might help if he opted for the French program.
“I said I didn’t mind studying in French. »
Still waiting. Weeks, months.
Then, a phone call from a friend.
Plem: “He said to me: ‘You are selected, I saw your name on the list.’ »
Plem’s fluke has begun drette the.
“How did you react, Plem?
— I was happy, I was sad too. I knew I had to leave my family, I knew I couldn’t help them anymore. They were happy for me. I also thought: there are plenty of people who wanted to have this place, who didn’t get it. »
There, around the table of this student cafe, above the masks, I must tell you, there were eyes that shone as eyes shine when they are full of tears.
“I didn’t think to bring Kleenex,” someone said, maybe it was Mélanie, maybe Éléonore, I don’t know.
Under the masks, there were not even discreet sniffling noises.
It was Éléonore Bernier-Hamel who first told me about Plem. She expressed in The duty3 his concerns about his students’ declining abilities in French. She had told me about this refugee student who, by dint of hard work, had become almost irreproachable in French, both in writing and in understanding text, after barely a few months in Quebec…
I wanted to meet him.
This is how this column was born.
Plem was therefore selected in February 2019. He was told: “You will land in Canada in August 2020.” But the pandemic turned the program upside down, and Plem landed in January 2021.
I can not stop :
“Did you land here in the middle of winter, Plem?
– Yes ! »
He’s laughing. Around the table, everyone laughs with him.
He ended up with Eric Dru and his wife, Damise, who showed him so much. Damise, who taught him the codes of Quebec society, with affection. Damise and Eric, his second family.
Everyone tells anecdotes of the Congolese landed here in the heart of the Quebec winter. Plem, who didn’t know what to do with his mittens, he had never seen that in his life. Plem, in confinement, who took a photo of the snowstorm that fell on Quebec a week later. “I took a photo, he said, I sent it to my little brother. He showed it to my family. And that’s when they started to worry about me! »
Plem lived his start of CEGEP remotely and then face-to-face. His French was rusty, he didn’t understand everything that was being said, with the accent, and our talking to us. But Plem worked hard, worked hard; he read it again and again. And today he is first in class in French.
So good that Plem became a tutor at the Cégep’s French help center…
He learned to skate, too, he was admitted to the running team and the cegep soccer team, he discovered Speak White and The Goddess of Fireflies…
And Plem has learned the expressions of the land: grabbing the donut, fretting, flipping over, grabbing your ass, flipping over, silly…
Christina: “Sometimes he lets go of Quebec expressions, then I ask him: ‘Plem, did you really just say that?’ And I’m like, “It’s coming!” I took the Marie-Bétie cultural context course, and you learn that when a person starts to say Quebec expressions… it’s because they’re starting to fit in! »
Plem’s eyes smile. It is no longer him who speaks, everyone goes there with their anecdotes about him.
Apple plem. Plem who works at the Cage aux sports. And at the vaccination center. Plem who is a star of the Rafales collegiate sports program. Plem who runs in shorts in winter, at the hoop. Plem who started putting the garbage bins from all the houses in the neighborhood on the road on garbage day. Plem who wants to go to sugars…
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Plem Kijamba
And Plem who, remotely, was one of the only students to turn on his camera, most left theirs off: so, when they returned to the face-to-face, at Cégep de Terrebonne, everyone recognized Plem.
Christina: “When we walk through Cégep, everyone stops to talk to her; it’s “Plem!” over here, “Plem!” that way… He knows more people than I do. »
In short, everyone loves Plem.
Before I wrote this paper, Plem emailed me, with some thoughts.
I already had the idea of a column on luck, on the role of luck in the destiny of a human being…
Plem wanted to talk to me about hope.
The Student Refugee Program, he wrote to me, sows hope, in the camp there, in Uganda, where he was: “It may not be seen in the eyes of many people, but as a result of just one sponsorship, there is a whole community of young people who are motivated and inspired. Behind the sponsored person, there is a whole family who finds hope, who finally finds something to which they can cling…”
One hundred and sixty-three words, impeccably written.
I replied to his email: “Well noted, Plem. Welcome to your home ! »
At the end of his third year of residency, Plem Kijamba will be eligible for Canadian citizenship.
We would be lucky, I believe, to count him among our fellow citizens.