This week in the blog I will be talking about the story of Mark Hadean. Mark is from Detroit, Michigan, which means he is, unfortunately, a huge Michigan fan. When he came into my home for the first time with a Michigan shirt plastered across his chest, it was fair to say it was a rocky start since I am a Penn State fan. Mark, like the people in the previous blogs, is an optometry student of Salus University (Pennsylvania College of Optometry) and was living with us for three months as a part of his rotations which were needed for his graduation. Mark was one of the liveliest people I have ever met before, and based on his childhood, I have no idea how he does it.
Like most of the stories of the people I have had the opportunity to meet, their life fat first glance seemed very vanilla. Starting off, Mark has a twin brother, an older sister, father, mother and an enormous extended family. This was typical for a family in Iraq. The entire family lived in a large compound. Mark and his family were very well off in Iraq. They owned and operated a huge carpeting production plant which was kept in the family business for generations before him. Almost immediately, Mark and his family were forced out of their country due to religious prosecution. Mark and his family are devoted Catholics in a country that was trying to wipe them off the face of the earth.
For those who are unaware, Christians living in Iraq have been under persecution after the fall of Saddam Hussain. The day to day discrimination of Christians has caused a mass amount of them to move and seek refuge in other countries. Before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were more than 1.3 million Christians in Iraq. Today there are less than 250,000 people as of June 2019. Mark and his family were forced to leave due to this persecution. A boycott to not buy their families carpets is what lead to the demise of their riches and jobs. With a small amount of money, they were forced to leave their home of Iraq. By complete luck, a few members of Marks family, including himself, were granted Visas to come into the United States.
Even in the United States they still had problems, they did not speak any English, and their job experience in Iraq was obsolete. To make things worse, they were settled in an area that Mark called, “The hood of Detroit”. Mark attended an inner-city school now in the poverty cycle. Mark’s tenacity to do well fueled is fight against the cycle and did something with is life after high school. Mark from there went to college, became an optometry graduate, and now engaged.
Mark and the stories of these students of optometry are where they are today not because they allowed the challenges at the beginning of their life effect who they are in a negative way. They still carry that chip on their shoulder, and they thrive with what they have. I will continue to admire them and try to understand the fuel that drives them to do great things. Thank you for reading about my blog, I hope you learned a little about Mark today.
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