STUDENTS of Moree Secondary College had a surprise visit by 2013 Young Australian of the Year, Akram Azim yesterday.
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Azimi, invited by Federal Member for Parkes Mark Coulton as a guest speaker as part of his current electorate tour, currently studies a triple major at the University of Western Australia but came to Australia as a refugee from war-torn Afghanistan 13 years ago.
Telling his life story in an engrossing way, Azimi said he was born while a bomb went off outside the maternal hospital in Kabul.
He said during that time people were taken away, never to be heard from again.
When his grandfather, a famous engineer, was killed his family knew they were next and fled to Pakistan, a trip from about the distance of Brisbane to Melbourne.
They'd escaped the war, but ended up living with open sewage, a situation that didn't leave much room for human dignity, he said.
Whilst in camps he saw children with polio, paralysed from the feet up, to “different heights, depending on how incredibly unlucky they were”.
When his mother said polio was a contagious disease he asked he if he was going to get it, but she said that he was “protected”.
It made a huge impression on the five-year-old and when he later studied human biology in secondary college he learned about vaccines and understood that he must have been vaccinated against polio.
"I have two healthy legs because Australian tax payers contributed to international vaccinations," he said.
Azimi said during his further life he suffered from low self-esteem for a while and that it was one of his teachers who encouraged him to “do something for others” and it is mainly “doing good” that brings joy and satisfaction.
He also learned that the vaccination that saved his life only costs 13 cents.
"So don't think that you can't change the world; sometimes even 13 cents can change the life of a person," he said.
After the talk the students were rushed back to class but Jake Hetherington (who recently won his fight at the Moree boxing night) just had enough time to tell the Moree Champion what he had gotten out of it.
"We are pretty lucky here, and we sometimes do take stuff for granted," he said.
