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.
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
