Inspiring Stories

Nelson’s story

Today we have another remarkable story that I find particularly inspiring.  Nelson has written up some of the story of his life and sent it in to be published as the second in our series.  Nelson has had a remarkable life up until now and from what I can see there are big things in store for him.  You can read more from Nelson at his site

I recommend you head over there and have a look around.  You may well be surprised at what you find.  Nelson is a deep thinker who has an interesting commentary about the world around us.  In particular check out his take on Life As The Only Asset.

But for now lets read what Nelson has to say, in his story:

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I grew up in a very rural area of a small village in Africa where
electricity is a luxury, yet people there are happier than some here in
America. My father was the only educated in his family, and I was
fortunate to be exposed to things some kids there weren’t. By being
exposed then, I mean having a TV to watch, and getting half a day
electricity supply in our home - (Not to mention that the first time I
used the Internet was in 2001). By the time I graduated high school, my
father had already passed away and it became almost impossible to further
my education even though I wanted to desperately.

My family and I started working on a “yam farm” with the hopes that by
harvest time, we would sell and save for my siblings’ educational funds
and mine. Selling the yams was even a difficult task because we had to
walk (while carrying the yams on the head) for about 20 miles to the
market where we would sell them. Technology was something I thought about
often because I would tell my mother – “with technology, we would never
have to manually work on the farm and walk to sell yams, hopefully one day
things might change and we can afford it”

After years of saving, we experienced an unforgettable tragedy when the
village was engulfed with the infamous furious army invasion in late 2001
which my family and I narrowly escaped but our house did not.
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1621651.stm]

At this time, the hope of reconstructing our lives was gone, but the faith
of doing so stayed and still remains in my heart to date. My brothers and
I started looking for other means of coping up with life. Shortly after,
my elder brother knew about the US Diversity Visa program through a few
people he encountered on his trip that were current with world affairs.
This is a program in which the US government selects around 50,000 people
randomly from other countries to immigrate to the US and become citizens
from a pool of about 10 million applicants. He obtained three application
forms (for himself, myself and my immediate brother) and brought them back
to the village. We completed them and did not have access to the post
office, but luckily, somehow, we were introduced to someone whom we did
not even know that was traveling to the city, and agreed to mail the forms
to the US even though we doubted if we were going to beat the deadline. I
was the only one among the three of us that was selected. To shorten the
story, today I have the opportunity to be attending graduate school at the
University of California in the field of Computer Engineering with the
faith and goal to open up a primary school in that very small village I
grew up in, to teach the children there more about technology and science,
especially about creativity. Even though I might have started using the
computer and the Internet in 2001, I believe I have achieved some of my
goals by working with top companies here in the US and most find it hard
to believe me that I have only used the computer for barely a decade. Just
like Steve Jobs writes in his resume “I’m not afraid to start from the
beginning.” [http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html]” – So am I not
afraid for a fresh start.

My story may sound “here and there” but I always feel that I would never
be here today reminiscing on my childhood days of sleeping in a dark quiet
hut, in a small village in a different continent.
To end my story, since the force of passion supersedes “what you would
like to do”, I may eventually become a vocal performer (my passion) rather
than a research engineer.

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Thanks for sharing that with us Nelson

I am still looking for other stories from you all.  If you would like to tell us a bit about your goals, the challenges you face and how you over come them, please send me a message via my contact page.

Thanks

Tom