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

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 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.

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.