Together in the Ivy-League journey with Mohamed Moumie | Triumph Kia Teh

Harvard flew me to Cambridge for Mohamed's senior year speech. I was never told there was a special occasion for me as well. I just showed up, like I had shown up when he was due for a life-or-death surgery almost two years before.

Mohamed had arrived at Harvard in 2022 carrying something very few knew about. A spinal condition hidden for years through mockery, gap years, and the application process. At Harvard, doctors told him the truth. His vertebrae could not hold. Surgery or paralysis. Surgery with a chance he might not survive the table.

Every visa application to bring family from Cameroon was denied.

I heard. I packed a bag.

I do not speak French. His siblings do not speak English. For weeks, I became the bridge, forcing broken French through a phone every day so his family could know their son was still alive. I sat with him through his pain. And mine. The immobility. The tears. I watched him take his first steps again.

I did not think of it as significant. It was just showing up. The same way he had shown up for me in December 2021 when my rejections kept piling, and his Harvard University acceptance letter was already on the wall at the Open Dreams Center in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

He did not celebrate and move on. He stayed. Essay reviews. Tips. Kept telling me I could still make it when I had stopped believing it. He had his door. He kept helping me find mine.

March 2022. Dartmouth College said yes.

We became the first two scholars of Open Dreams Educational NGO ever admitted to Ivy League colleges. A door we opened together. Since then, dozens of scholars have walked through it.

That is what it looks like when you do not forget you are on the journey with others.

This spring, I sat in Harvard's Lowell House among Harvard students, staff, and faculty and listened to Mohamed speak. About growing up in Cameroon. The mockery of his height and shape. The surgery. The fear. About choosing to keep going. About CS50, which he now tutors. The hikes since the surgery. The judo. Walking into his future with his spine straight and his head up.

The room was silent in the way rooms get when something true is being said out loud. 

Here is what I took from it:

1. On the way to your dream, you are not traveling alone. The person beside you is also on a journey. Check in. Show up. Review the essay. Make the call. Sit in the hospital. Speak the French you do not know.

2. You rarely know which act of showing up will be the one that holds everything together for someone.

3. The door you help someone else open has a way of opening something back for you.

Neither of us called any of these significant at all.

And that's exactly the point. Just showing up for a friend.

Follow Mohamed Salam Moumie. One of the most remarkable people I know. And he is just getting started.

What is one person on your journey you have not checked in on recently? 

Do it today. - Triumph Kia Teh