FLW User Submitted Story

I am Mayani Pelo Luhabanya from a small refugee’s camp known as Nyarugusu in Tanzania a country in Africa. I was born in 30 July 1998 in Tanzania as a refugee from Democratic Republic of the Congo escaping ethnic fighting (war). In Nyarugusu is the where I grew up and where I have a lot of memories their friends, family’s members etc, it is a lovely place where most people would love to visit more and more. There are families that are suffering from healthy treatments, food that they (UNCR) give people for only one month which means it can’t even last for two weeks, but I used to it as days was passing by I was growing up most of parent(s) are very hard working and they can’t let their families struggle from hunger, so they decide to borrow land, which cost a lot too, where they can plant maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, rice etc. to feed their families. The school their I can say was not bad, but it was a very poorly salaries for the teachers who spend whole day teaching without a projector or any electrical equipment and there was only books for teachers, non-books for students which was very, very hard to catch on what teacher is really teaching, but if you pay more attention to teacher most of students was always succeed in the end of the year. A part of me I wasn’t very focused in studying since young I was always lose when we done exam, but yearly was passing by I was very embarrass of myself, but I one day I ask myself this question why can’t I just focus on school, because there was nothing I was doing apart of eat, sleep and go to school, and even if you look for job there is nothing I can do (no job). The mainly reason I changed was because of my older sister who was already in secondary which was shame to me and my little brothers who were growing up, how would I could tell them about my education history, and my parents were always does the people who passed the exam was getting present and the fail one sat their watch how they spent their gifts. And the other reason the way I was growing up and learn how people finished their school and become a teachers or go aboard to continue their school which was very inspires me and push me study hard and the other thing was, my dad was a teacher and it was very embarrass for me to walk around friends who my dad was teaching, so I decide to go start all over again with full straight and when I went back to school when exam was done my place was 3 to 5 not more than that and before I was always the last one in whole class, but I put a lot of effort and reach five class which make me feel comfortable around friends that I was hangout with but even my level of education was very low, still I was very proud of myself.

In 2013 I moved to Ireland alongside with my parent, my sisters and brothers which was a good opportunity for me to continue with my school. In Ireland I did go to a secondary school called Patrician High School in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan where I had very difficulties on learning the English language. But without that confidence that I had since Nyarugusu I wouldn’t be able to go to school. And in Nyarugusu I was only in five class but in Ireland they put me in 4th year in secondary which I had no idea what I was going to do if I go there, so I had just to attend to see how would my first day would be like, for the first time it was just ”OK” I can say, because I was new student so the principle(s) introduce me to other students who were already there after me. But day passing by I start learning the language with highest speed catch up with my classmates even I won’t be as fast as them in speaking and writing, but I can still hear and understand the teacher and other speak freely with other students, at school just expect that there will be always bullies no matter what, as I expected too, but I was ”OK” with it because I used to be the number bully in class in Nyarugusu, so I was just ignore the bullies and focus on my studying books in libraries and follow English teachers YouTube platform, which improve my English. And there were my three English support teachers who start teaching me how to count, pronounce words and many more, at first, I was very embarrassing to follow what they were teaching, thought it was very ”childish” which wasn’t, and it help me a lot to communicate with people etc. When I reach 6th year I was very nervous during the leaving certificate exam, I was praying every day to at least pass the exam to go to college, and god listened to prayers and had a chance to attend to college called Monaghan Institute where I started studying multimedia (Digital media & Web Design) level 5 where I did well too. I was good at video editing, producing songs and edit photo by using Adobe photoshop, before going college I was already good at editing video, producing songs and editing photo, which was good opportunity for me and make the year very easy to handle, even thou I had struggle of spelling but not as much as before back in secondary.

In 2016 I started doing hip-hop music style and my music name is known as ‘’Mayestron’’, I began writing and recording songs in my home studio which I firstly sent one of my favourite pop song know as ‘’Nothing To Share’’ to one of the biggest music distribution service called Spinnup which was my first song to record on and sent it to public and I eventually release another song called ‘’Forever’’ which the song that I recorded and write on my own home studio, it still one of my most viewed song everyday and until now I am still doing music, but I still doesn’t have enough fanbase but as long as I have a thousand follows me I’m still very happy with what I have.