""Throughout my whole life," he noted later, "during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.""After reading this passage, I remember a smile beginning to pull at the edges of my mouth. I think it startled me so much because it reminded me that yes, we are all a part of this huge universe and it is hard as an individual to believe we have an affect on it, but at the same time the world can have a huge affect on us. This quote reminded me to slow down, take a look around me, and get inspired.
I had the opportunity to speak with an extremely inspirational man this weekend as a result of the Engineers Without Borders Mountain Region Conference. This man from Kenya goes by the name Ronald Omyonga, and he is the person responsible for initiating the project that EWB-MSU has now worked on for a decade in Western Kenya. Hearing him tell his story of how he moved from poor, rural villager raised by a single mother to attending one of the best high schools in the nation to going to college to become an architect and now working for Habitat For Humanity spoke volumes. I kept thinking, now here is a man whom the fire of the world is blazing within.
Here is his story: Ronald was one of four boys, raised in a village in Western Kenya called Khwisero. It is very rural; most of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. They are mostly subsistence farmers, and boys inherit property from their father so they may carry on farming the land. However, Ronald grew up without a father, so his mother told him over and over again that "his book was his land and his pencil his jembe." A jembe is a Kenyan hoe. His mother somehow always made sure he had paper and a pencil and something in his stomach to eat before going to school. So Ronald worked extremely hard, never wanting to disappoint his mother and scored the highest marks in the district, earning him an invitation to a top high school in the capital city of Nairobi. He was no longer the top student, and that humbled him, but he kept studying hard and placed into the architectural school at the University of Nairobi. He finished his degree and when he went back home to see his friends he used to play with, he realized he could not even relate to them anymore; they didn't even understand what an architect was (there is no word for architect in the tribal language). It was at that point Ronald realized the importance and power of education. That's when he sent in the proposal to Engineers Without Borders USA to start a project in his home village. He wanted everyone, girls and boys included, to have the same opportunity he did without obstacles like dirty water and inadequate sanitation to stand in their way. After initiating the EWB-MSU project, Ronald continued to do aid work while working as an architect, and has been very successful. He is the core of EWB-MSU and the most incredible human being I have ever met.
Sorry for the aside, but I wanted you all to have the background story. I can't do his story justice, but I can tell you why he is an inspiration to me, and why I think he has the worlds fire within himself. When I first met him in Nairobi, Kenya, the first thing he said to me was something along the lines of, "welcome, thank you for the great work you are doing," without even knowing my name or my story. How many people do you know that can do that? He appreciates people, and most of all the people that have allowed him to LEARN. He thinks the world has been opened up to him because of his education, and this is how the fire inside him was ignited. It continues to burn, and I can tell. When he spoke at his keynote speech last Sunday, he had the audience crying and laughing at the same time as he lit a fire inside each person in that room, if only for one hour.
Think back to the times you have been inspired. Whether it is by a person, a place, an idea, does it not feel like at that moment, the world is on fire around you and you are enveloping that flame until it burns within you too? Like the world has something to offer you, and you just keep soaking it all in? For Ronald, education lit that fire, what will light it for you? The world itself is inspiring, we just have to choose to notice it, and let the fire spread within us.
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