Breaking papadum and giving thanks to the country I call home.

Our success story is not very different from the stories of most of the other Ugandan Asians that arrived in Canada. The collective success of Ugandan Asians is in fact as much a success of Canada and Canadians, in doing everything that was necessary in an expedited way, to meet the needs of time, with an open heart, with compassion and with humanity.

Mina Mawani is an exemplary civic leader based in Toronto. She has been an avid volunteer in the community and an exceptional leader for many local and international organizations. I recently spoke to Mawani about her early years as a refugee and how she learned to become more resilient.

Before we left Kampala, Uganda's capital, it was a daily occurrence for me as a young child to see dead bodies in the street and to fall asleep to the sounds of machine guns and screams. And when my father failed to come home, I always thought that his voice was one of those screams I heard in the night.