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As a refugee, I hated Canada until one specific night. Now I see this as a stage in a journey – CBC.ca

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This is a First Person column by Syn Amanuel, who lives in Calgary. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, see the FAQ.

Daybreak Alberta5:25First Person: Syn Amanuel

When Syn Amanuel first arrived in Canada as a refugee, she says she hated Canada until one fateful night. Her’s is the latest in CBC’s first person writing series. Here she is writing it for us.

Two years after I arrived as a refugee in Canada, I returned to Africa to get married and to visit the rest of my family, who were refugees in Sudan.

I was telling everyone who asked that I hated Canada — the winter and how difficult life was — until one specific night, when my brother came to wake me in the courtyard at 3 a.m.

“Wake up, we need to get inside.” 

“But I want to sleep outside where I can breathe freely.”

“Not tonight, a sand and dust storm is approaching.”

We rushed into the one tiny room where my mother and two brothers were living.

The wind started to blow furiously outside in the small, dirt compound. Inside, we sat in darkness with the windows shut and without even electricity to power a fan. The sound of rain outside was just blowing sand. I felt like I was buried alive.

When morning finally arrived, all I wanted was to pour water over my head, but that wasn’t available either. And the thermometer read 50 C, the maximum it could register.

Miserable, I sat under a tree in the compound.

And in that moment, the strangest thing happened — I actually wished for what I hated most. Winter! 

I longed for the snow of Canada and finally realized that as difficult as things were for me in Canada, they were far better than what my family faced in Sudan.

A woman cuts potatoes using a cutting board that's propped up on a bowl over the red dirt.
Syn Amanuel cuts potatoes outside the small room where her family stayed while they were refugees in Sudan. (Submitted by Syn Amanuel)

I didn’t know it then, but I’ve since learned there are specific stages that many refugees go through, similar to the stages of grief. The first is a honeymoon phase, with a sense of relief and accomplishment for having made it to a safe country. Then reality kicks in with Stage 2, a stage of grief and hardship.

When you are a refugee, you are a nobody. You’ve lost your identity. Everything that you once believed to be true and familiar is jeopardized and you’re rebuilding a life from scratch.

In 2001, my sister and I fled persecution in Eritrea and were among the first Eritreans to arrive in Saint John. And although the local community was incredibly kind, they had little idea how to help us. We learned by trial and error. We literally had to open many cans and bottles to taste if it was close to what we were accustomed to eating. I have lasting scars from frostbite on my legs, from when I didn’t understand how to protect myself. 

I was working two full-time jobs to support myself and my family back home, and to repay the immigration loan for my air ticket. I worked overnight shifts as a health care aide. My colleagues assumed I would sleep during the day, but that’s when I worked at Tim Hortons. 

My colleagues assumed I would sleep during the day, but that’s when I worked at Tim Hortons.– Syn Amanuel

I thought I knew basic English but I was lost when customers ordered a “double-double,” and the term “feeling blue” seemed completely unrelated to emotions.

I felt exhausted, overwhelmed. Only the support of my faith community kept me going. My beliefs were the reason I left home, and meeting with my spiritual family three times a week brought me a sense of belonging in the midst of the pain.

The third stage in many refugee journeys is adaptation and acceptance. For those first two years, this seemed distant and unattainable. I wasn’t even trying. 

Until the night that I experienced the sandstorm in Sudan.

It was my wake-up call, prompting me to reconsider my mindset. When I got back to Canada, life was still difficult but that spark of gratitude helped me transition into the recovery phase.

It took roughly six years, but I slowly grew comfortable with the new culture and surroundings. I moved to Hamilton, Ont., and took a one-year diploma course in medical administration, which opened the door to a better job.

My husband arrived and we moved to Calgary. Here, we were able to buy a house, and the city is so culturally diverse, I no longer feel like an outsider. I work in east Calgary, out of an office located amidst the many ethnic shops and restaurants of International Avenue.

A family of four wearing formal clothes pose together for a photo.
Syn Amanuel now feels settled and grateful to be in Calgary, where she lives with her husband Melaku and children Zema, left, and Amron. (Submitted by Syn Amanuel)

Plus, the rest of my family was able to come. That took 10 years but finally my brothers, sister and parents all live together in the same city again.

Today, I can look back and see those stages in my journey. I’ve seen these stages in the lives of other refugees as well. For 15 years, I’ve been first volunteering to help settle newly-arrived refugees and am now doing so in a professional capacity as a licensed immigration consultant. Many people get shocked by the scale of the challenges they still face. 

I want to share my story to give them hope, to tell them they won’t always feel like a refugee.

I also wanted to thank those who sponsored and welcomed me. Since I was sponsored by the Canadian government, that means my gratitude is toward the whole Canadian society.

Canada welcomed me with open arms 22 years ago, whether I was in a state of mind to appreciate it or not. And today I’m giving back to the community in my work and volunteer life; I didn’t let you down.

It’s been a long journey but now Canada is my home, even though I still hate winter.


Telling your story

As part of our ongoing partnership with the Calgary Public Library, CBC Calgary is running in-person writing workshops to support community members telling their own stories. Read more pieces from our workshop at the Village Square library in east Calgary.

Check out our workshops and sign up for the waiting list, or pitch your story directly to the national team.

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As sports betting addiction takes hold in Brazil, the government moves to crack down

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SAO PAULO (AP) — “King” doesn’t disclose his real name. Even clients of his Sao Paulo newsstand have to call him by his moniker. The Brazilian online sports gambling addict lowered his profile after a loan shark threatened to put bullets in his head if he didn’t pay up.

Broke and embarrassed, King sought treatment and support earlier this year.

“I was once addicted to slot machines, but then sports betting was so easy that I changed. I got carried away all the time,” he told The Associated Press.

King’s story is that of many vulnerable Brazilians in recent years. The country has become the third-biggest market in the world for sports betting, following the U.S. and the U.K., a report by data analysis company Comscore said last year. But unlike those countries, rampant advertising and sponsorship have been coupled with an unregulated market. The government is now — belatedly, some say — striving to get a handle on the epidemic.

On a recent evening, King’s Gamblers Anonymous meeting took place in an improvised classroom inside a church, with coffee and cookies to keep everyone awake, and supportive messages scrawled onto the blackboard. One that’s become ubiquitous in Brazil and beyond: “Only for today I will avoid the first bet.”

King and other attendees, all Christian, started a prayer and the meeting began.

King said his financial problems arose from his addiction to online sports betting, chiefly on soccer.

“I miss the adrenaline rush when I don’t bet,” he said before the gathering. “I have managed to stop for a couple of months, but I know that if I do it once again, even a small bet, it will all come back.”

Driven by the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was a key driver for Brazilians embracing sports betting. King said he transformed almost every sale during that time into a bet. His hook was the non-stop advertising on TV, radio, social media as well as sponsorship of local soccer teams’ jerseys. He asked for bank loans to pay his gambling debts and then, to cover those, went to the moneylender. His total debt now amounts to 85,000 reais ($15,000) — impossible to pay off with his monthly income of 8,000 reais.

Digging oneself out of debt in Brazil is especially daunting with its sky-high interest rates. Loans from Brazilian banks could add interest of almost 8% per month to the borrowed sum, and from loan sharks could be even more.

Four Gamblers Anonymous meetings attended by the AP in October featured discussions about difficulties paying down debts, forcing working-class members to postpone housing payments and cancel family vacations.

Some members of impoverished Brazilian families have used welfare money for betting instead of paying for groceries and housing, official data suggests. In August, beneficiaries of Brazil’s flagship program Bolsa Familia spent 3 billion reais ($530 million) on sports betting, according to a report from the central bank. That was more than 20% of the program’s total outlay in the month.

A host of gambling related problems

Sports betting was made legal in 2018 in a bill signed by former President Michel Temer. The subsequent turmoil has recently been setting off alarm bells, with addicts venting on social media and media reports of people losing huge sums.

On Oct. 1, the economy ministry prevented more than 2,000 betting companies from operating in Brazil for having failed to provide all the required documents. Soccer-loving President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview on Oct. 17 that he will shut down the entire market in Brazil if his administration’s new regulations — presented at the end of July— fail to work. And Brazil’s Senate on Oct. 25 opened an investigation into betting companies, focusing on crime and addiction.

“There’s tax evasion, money laundering of organized crime, the use of influencers to trick people into betting. These companies need to be audited,” Sen. Soraya Thronicke, who proposed the inquiry, told journalists in Brasilia.

Sérgio Peixoto, a ride-sharing app driver in Rio, is one of many lower-middle-income Brazilians who have reduced their spending due to sports betting debt. Peixoto’s debt currently amounts to 25,000 reais ($4,400). His monthly income is four times less than that.

“It stopped being a game, it wasn’t fun. I just wanted to get the money back, so I lost even more,” said Peixoto, 26. “I could have invested that money. It would surely have given me more benefits.

Pressure to bet

Pressure on people to gamble is everywhere. Current and former soccer players, including Vinicius Júnior, Ronaldo Nazário and Roberto Rivellino, are among the poster boys for local and foreign brands. All but one of the top-tier soccer clubs have betting companies among their main sponsors, with their name and logo emblazoned on their kits. There have been cases of kids and teenagers setting up accounts using their parents’ personal information and money, multiple local media outlets have reported.

Brazil’s economy ministry estimates that Brazil’s sports betting market had $21 billion in transactions last year, a 71% increase compared with the first year of the pandemic, 2020.

The ministry’s newly presented regulations include facial recognition systems for gamblers to bet, the identification of a single bank account for transactions involving sports betting, new protections against hackers and the government-authorized domain, bet.br, which will host all betting sites that are legal in Brazil. Once they are in place, come January, between 100 and 150 betting companies will continue to operate in the South American nation.

The changes in Brazil have prompted some companies to take preemptive action. A report by Yield Sec, a technical intelligence platform for online marketplaces, said several betting companies voluntarily restricted their operations in different places after the latest editions of the European Championships and Copa America in the hopes of presenting “the best possible license application face to the Brazilian authorities.”

Magnho José Santos de Sousa, the president of the Legal Gambling Institute, a betting think tank, said Brazil is currently “invaded by illegal websites that have licenses in Malta, Curação, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom.”

De Sousa expressed hope that the new regulations for advertising, responsible gambling and qualification of sports betting companies will transform the country’s deregulated arena into a more serious one that doesn’t exploit the vulnerable.

“The whole operation could turn from water into wine,” he said.

Gamblers Anonymous in high demand

Meantime, the demand for Gamblers Anonymous meetings in Sao Paulo has grown so much in recent years that the weekly gathering, in place since the 1990s, was no longer enough. Many groups have added a second day in the week to help new people recover, mostly sports bettors.

Earlier in October, a group on Sao Paulo’s northern edge admitted a man who was struggling with sports betting and card games. The 13 other people in the room stressed that he wasn’t alone.

“Welcome,” one long-time attendee said, in a greeting that has become a regular for the group. “Today, you are the most important person here.”

___

Dumphreys reported from Rio de Janeiro.



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Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman improves to 6-0 at mixed curling nationals

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SAINT CATHARINES, Ont. – Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman remained undefeated on Wednesday with a 7-4 win over Newfoundland and Labrador’s Trent Skanes at the Canadian mixed curling championship.

After going down 3-1 through four ends, Ackerman (6-0) outscored Skanes (3-3) 6-1 the rest of the way, including three points in the seventh end.

Alberta’s Kurt Alan Balderston also earned a win, defeating New Brunswick’s Charlie Sullivan 9-2 in another matchup in the final draw.

The win improved Balderston’s record to 4-2 and sits in third in Pool B.

The top four teams from each pool will play four more games against the survivors from the other pool. The remaining three teams from the pool will play three more seeding games to help set the rankings for next year’s event.

The championship final is scheduled for Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Oilers fall 4-2 to Golden Knights in McDavid’s return from injury

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EDMONTON – Noah Hanifin had a pair of goals as the Vegas Golden Knights won their first road game of the season, coming from behind to shock the Edmonton Oilers 4-2 on Wednesday.

Jack Eichel had a goal and two assists and Mark Stone also scored for the Golden Knights (9-3-1), who have won two in a row and six of their last seven. The Knights entered the game 0-3-1 on the road this year.

Brett Kulak and Zach Hyman replied for the Oilers (6-7-1), who have lost two straight despite getting captain Connor McDavid back from injury earlier than expected for the game.

Adin Hill made 27 saves for Vegas, while Stuart Skinner managed 31 stops for Edmonton.

Takeaways

Golden Knights: With an assist on the Knights’ second goal, William Karlsson has recorded at least a point in all five games he has played this season (two goals, four assists).

Oilers: McDavid was a surprise starter for the Oilers, coming back just nine days after suffering an ankle injury in Columbus and initially being expected to miss two to three weeks. The star forward came into the contest with 11 points (three goals, eight assists) during a six-game point streak versus the Golden Knights, but was held pointless on the night.

Key moment

With just 48.4 seconds left to play, the Golden Knights won a race to the corner and Ivan Barbashev was able to send it out to a hard-charging Hanifin, who sent a shot glove-side that beat Skinner for his second goal of the third period and third of the season.

Key stat

It was Hyman’s third goal in the last four games after the veteran forward went scoreless in his first 10 games this season following a 54-goal campaign last year. Hyman now has five goals in his last six games against Vegas.

Up next

Golden Knights: Head to Seattle to face the Kraken on Friday.

Oilers: Travel to Vancouver on a quick one-game trip to clash with the Canucks on Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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