Lord Worm
09-29-2004, 07:40 AM
There's this guy named Phillip (Not his real name, it's a psuedonym, I have no idea why he goes by it) who is in my program at SAIT. He never says a lot, and a couple of people began making fun of his shyness. The other day I talked to him.
It turns out he's from Sudan. When he was a child, his parents and three of his brothers were executed en masse by AK fire. He and two of his other brothers were hidden somewhere (Not exactly sure on the details) close by. He says he could remember that he didn't know if they screamed or cried because the gunfire was so loud.
He spent 17 of his years in a refugee camp where he never got much education. He's never used a computer before comming to SAIT (I now tutor him in computer basics), and he didn't even know what the difference between a click and a double-click was. His first language is Arabic, and his English is always correct, but fairly slow.
Whereas his reading and writing skills in English are shakey, he is a genius in math. He can calculate complex derivates in his head faster than I can write down the question. I think he must have taken some equivalency test and aced it in order to study here.
It turns out he's from Sudan. When he was a child, his parents and three of his brothers were executed en masse by AK fire. He and two of his other brothers were hidden somewhere (Not exactly sure on the details) close by. He says he could remember that he didn't know if they screamed or cried because the gunfire was so loud.
He spent 17 of his years in a refugee camp where he never got much education. He's never used a computer before comming to SAIT (I now tutor him in computer basics), and he didn't even know what the difference between a click and a double-click was. His first language is Arabic, and his English is always correct, but fairly slow.
Whereas his reading and writing skills in English are shakey, he is a genius in math. He can calculate complex derivates in his head faster than I can write down the question. I think he must have taken some equivalency test and aced it in order to study here.