My Very Much Religious Family I: My Mom

You still remember how the teachers taught you in school about imperialism and the colonies your people created and how poor those countries currently are, all because of the greed of the whites. You were such a sensible and empathetic guy that you started watching documentaries and interviews about people crossing all kinds of borders to escape poverty and malnutrition, risking slavery and even dying to get to the so-called First World.

You regularly shared those thoughts with your Mom, a very old school catholic woman. You told her too about the difficulties they had to face once they were here: Learning the language, the cultural shock and the blatant racism that made them succumb to the solitude and loneliness: No friends, no partner, no family, as they left everybody and everything back home. They were alone.

Soon after preaching to your Mom about those issues, she announced one day that she researched for a while until she decided to join the homeless and refugees local shelter. There was a good amount of people from Africa that arrived illegally and lived pretty much like you described. You felt proud, knowing that your Mom was adamant in investing her time and effort to help them, to make a change.

One of them took a special kind of liking towards your Mom: He always ran and hugged her when she arrived, sang to her and even danced and jumped around for joy. The songs he sang were composed by himself, he picked flowers for her from the shelter's garden even though he wasn't allowed to do, he made clumsy wood jewelry for her... He basically showered her with attention every time she was close.

One day, they started talking about why he fled his country. He told her in his broken English that there were no jobs, no money and no way to support himself or his family. There was no war, nor was he religiously or racially persecuted, but the country was just so corrupt that he thought, as everybody else, that coming to Europe would be his salvation, as the smugglers promised him he wouldn't have any financial worries once he came to Europe, but until now the only thing he got to know was the local shelter for refugees. He then started sobbing.

Your Mom felt bad for him and thought for a solution. Your house was big enough, and some bedrooms were empty, as your dad died prematurely before being able to have more kids as he wished. She couldn't find a real reason against it, so she eventually offered him to move in. He, of course, accepted immediately.