FROM ROAD TO REASON

I was not born into a room. There were no white walls, no bed sheets, no gentle voices counting time. I arrived on a road—bare earth beneath my mother, open sky above us, and the hush of uncertainty all around. The world did not prepare for my coming; it simply made space for it. My mother had been traveling when the pains came. There was no warning, no time to turn back. By the time help arrived, the decision had already been made by nature itself. I was coming, whether the world was ready or not. And so I came. Wrapped in dust and urgency, welcomed by strangers and silence, I took my first breath under an open sky. It was not the start my parents imagined for me, but it was the start that found us. In that moment, survival mattered more than comfort, and arrival mattered more than perfection. My father arrived shortly after. A man of quiet strength and deep faith, his face held worry and relief in equal measure. He did not ask why the road had become my birthplace. He simply thanked God that both mother and child were alive. For him, gratitude always came before questions. Soon after, we returned home. A small mud house with low walls and a roof that knew the sound of rain too well. It was not impressive to look at, but it was filled with something stronger than material comfort. It was filled with faith, discipline, and the stubborn will to endure. My birth story followed me like a shadow. Neighbours whispered it with curiosity, sometimes with pity. Children repeated it without understanding. “He was born on the road,” they would say, as though that single fact explained everything else. In time, I learned that beginnings do not decide endings—but they do shape the road between them. And mine had already begun.