Scholars’ Voices: The Elephant in the Room

At the 2022 Baobab Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, McGill University Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program alumni, Bior Ajak, presented a powerful spoken word reflection on the importance of education. Access to education transformed his future and his words speak of a bright future for generations to come.

My pilot friend tells me that when he is in the skies he’s thinking about home, But when he is at home he’s thinking about being in the skies. If that doesn’t make sense then tell me why the African abroad always thinks about coming back home yet the African at home will risk their life to go abroad. We are chasing the American Dream because the African Dream’s undefined. The grass always seems greener on the other side. When I was a herd boy, I would cross the Nile for greener grass that my goats declined. But what’s that future for a herd boy dodging crocodiles in the Nile, bombs from the skies and exploding mines on the ground? So I hopped on a cargo lorry southbound.

For education is the key, I crossed borders to find schools, hoping to get better tools. To improve my present and maybe my future too. Then when I thought I got the key, the locks were changed, leaving me in invisible chains. But the Equity Group and the Mastercard Foundations brought the master key. So should I be struggling again? I’ve had the best education and to my family and friends, I should know no pain, as my life is made. Now I understand why cover girls don’t cry after the face is made.

I ask my people, why does the richest land have the poorest people, taught to believe that money is the root of all evil? You know, easier for a camel through the eye of a needle, so lost in translation. Yet we fight each other like war is the lesser evil, displacing half the nation, losing our balance like improper fractions. Soldiers forming different factions, forgetting we are just one nation that needs a plan of action. Like, can our girls get formal education? Can I go to the Congo just for vacation? 36 million solutions, Can our refugees come home for national development, to undo this state of arrested development? Can the young African work with dignity and grow food, making a feast for all nations, not becoming ‘Beasts of no Nation’? My dream is we all witness the greatness of our Scholars Program. Young scholars without borders meeting in the middle with so little, laying the foundation for the Africa we want for ourselves and the future generation, through listening and co-creation, the core values of the Foundation.

Read more of the highlights from the 2022 Baobab Summit.

Watch Bior’s spoken words at the Baobab Summit

About Bior:

Bior was born in South Sudan during the second phase of the Sudanese civil war. Leaving his family behind, at the age of 10, he would find himself in Kenya as a refugee where he grew up with his great aunt and relatives. He completed both his primary and secondary education in Kenya, after which he emerged as the best male student in his district, during the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national examinations. This performance won him a spot in the Equity Leaders Program (ELP), where he joined the Equity Group Foundation (EGF) in Nairobi, Kenya. At EGF, he received college counselling and college application support through which he obtained admission and was awarded the Mastercard Foundation Scholarship at McGill University in Canada.

Bior holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and currently works as a Commercial Banker in Montreal, Canada. He is passionate about financial inclusion, access to education, and food security, particularly for refugees and marginalized communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is involved with mentorship programs supporting high school students in Montreal as well as projects supporting refugees in Kenya. Bior is currently a member of the Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) on the DREEM Project by World University Service of Canada (WUSC).