09/23/2020
"Covid caught us off guard. We were thinking it was somewhere else and it’s not coming here. Then the next thing we know, we have cases in Washington. That's why I started buying PPE to stock up on supplies. And then two weeks later, all those orders got cancelled. I realized I have to come up with an alternative.
When I had my clothing business back home, I bought used clothes and then I would tailor them. Those skills helped me make masks easily. I distributed the masks to my drivers. And then we started making them for Veterans and people working in assisted living centers. We brought them masks for free. The demand got higher and higher. Then the IRC approached me and asked me to make them for refugees working in health care.
My mom always told me: ‘don’t take advantage of the moment to gain power.’ For me, this is not the moment where you want to make money by selling masks. It’s helping our community be safe.
The village where I grew up in Cameroon was very small. I think we had about 20 to 50 families. My life was very stable. I was very close with my parents.
When I was 10, my dad went out drinking one night and he was poisoned by one of his friends. On Saturday morning, somebody came to school to announce to me that my dad passed away.
After that, my dad's family came and took everything that my mom and dad had built and kicked us out of their house. My mom had to start from zero. I think that's what started a depression and she began to get into alcohol and other things. After a year of massive drinking, she got sick and she passed away.
After she passed, I decided to come back to live with my dad’s family; my uncles and aunts and grandparents. When I came back, I was pretty much their maid. I had to wake up at five in the morning, go get water ready, prepare everything for the kids, walk them to school, come home and clean. One day I said: ‘this is not right.’
Usually in the evening, they would send me to go get water about four miles away and one night, I never came back. I walked 20 miles to the city in the middle of the night. I was 11 years old at that time.
I had to find a way to support myself. My dad used to be a fisherman. He would wake me up at five in the morning and give me tiny chores just to keep me busy. I was already in that routine.
I just tried to keep myself in line. Even though I was living on the street, I wasn't involved with things that other kids were involved in. If you are living like an orphan, drugs are everywhere. At five years old, you can get access to drugs very easily. So you just have to know what your boundaries are.
I was picked up by a gentleman from another country. He trusted me but also didn’t trust me because I was living on the street. He owned a bakery. I would come in the morning and start doing the cleaning, and he would give me a baguette of bread.
I would clean the entire bakery everyday and he would give me bread. One day, he produced more bread than expected. He asked me if I wanted to take a couple baguettes and go sell them for cheaper. He gave me ten loaves and I went and sold them. I came back and he gave me twenty. Then he gave me one hundred. I came back and he asked me: ‘Where do you live? Where is your family?’
When he found out that I didn’t have a family, they told me that I can work there and I can sleep there. So that’s how my life started getting better. Later, I told him I wanted to go back to school and I started going to night school. I worked with him for four years until I was ready to move to the capital city. He bought my bus ticket.
I went through the same process for several months. I lived on the street and I started selling clothes. One day, I found a man’s passport on the street. Somebody had stolen his passport thinking there was money in it. When there was no money in it, they threw the passport away. I picked it up and read it, and saw that it's a very important document. I wanted to keep it and take it to the embassy. My friends tried to talk me out of it. They said: ‘Jonathan, you need to throw that away. If this guy catches you, he’s going to think that you're the one that stole it and he's gonna put you in jail.’
Later I saw him. He was walking back and forth looking for the passport. So I said ‘Hey, are you looking for something? I’m looking at your face and it seems like this document is yours.’
So I gave it to him. He took it and he didn't even ask my name on anything and he was gone. Then, three weeks later he came back. He was asking everybody: ‘I’m looking for the guy who found my passport. I just want to talk to him again. I want to know who he is.’
Months later, I was having coffee with friends. Somebody ran up to me and said: ‘Jonathan, do you remember that white guy that you helped last time? He is looking for you! You need to run away right now! You're gonna go to jail!’
I looked up and I saw him. I said: ‘I gotta go meet him.’
So I approached him and he said: ‘I'm sorry. I didn't talk to you last time. I just want to know more about you. I know you helped me last time. Most people don't do that. And I want to just know more.’
He asked me about my parents and he wrote everything down. He told me he worked for the UNHCR. Before he left, he gave me five bucks which was big money. He said: ‘put a credit on your phone and call me. Here's my number, here's my information.’
Three months later, he came back and he said: ‘Hey, I want to talk to you about your parents. I plugged your parents information into the computer and found that you are actually not Cameroonian. Your parents ran away from Chad because of war and they came to Cameroon.’
I never knew my parents were refugees in Cameroon.
Then he started telling me what was going to be the next action to take. He told me: ‘We are going to submit your application. Sometimes it takes a long time, up to five or ten years. If you are lucky, maybe one year.’
Six months later, I got a call saying my application got accepted for two different countries, Australia and the United States. It was a miracle. I don't know what happened. I don't know where that gentleman came from. What if I never found his passport? What would have happened?
I keep telling people: ‘I can hear my parents sometimes’ When I was an orphan, I had certain messages that I got from my mom and my dad. I could always hear my dad saying: ‘I want you to go to school, I want you to focus on education, that's the only time you're going to be successful.’ And my mom saying: ‘you need to be respectful. You need to follow your education.’ These messages in my head gave me direction. How else did I get here from a tiny village in Africa to the United States?
I started feeling emotional about my parents when I moved to Idaho. It was very hard when I would see other kids with their parents at soccer games and events. That's when I noticed that I was alone. I would think: ‘I don't know my parents. I wish they were here. There's nothing I can do.’ Especially in the last three years, my daughter started asking: ‘Where's grandpa?’ It's hard to explain to her.
When I was a lifeguard at the YMCA, we called 911 all the time. One day, we had a lady who was having difficulty breathing during water aerobics. When the paramedics showed up, I gave them a patient care report. After that I asked the paramedic if there is anything I can do better in this situation. His feedback to me was that I did a great job and nobody ever gave him such a thorough report before. He asked if I was an EMT. I didn’t know what an EMT was, but something clicked. That person opened my eyes. I had already registered for Phlebotomy at CWI but I switched to EMT. I wish I could get a hold of that gentleman again and thank him.
I became an EMT because I wanted to help people and be an advocate for people that can’t stand up and help themselves.
My lifestyle back home helped me to keep myself calm even though the Covid problem is serious. I trust myself that I can get through this and I told my employees: ‘Don’t worry about your bills, let me know if you need anything. I'm here and we can help each other until this thing is over.’ I knew that my business would survive no matter what. This is a bad moment and if you get through it, you can say: ‘this is what I learned and if this happens again, this is how we're going to do it.’ So have a plan for yourself.
That's what I do my entire life. You have to pause and ask yourself: ‘if this was me, how would I want somebody to treat me? How would I want someone to treat my grandmother? It helped me understand being humble and helpful."
-Jonathan Amissa
Skyroad Medical Transport
Boise, Idaho
April 30th, 2020
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