A GOOD WORLD

I

I joined my partner in Toronto at the beginning of winter, when there weren’t a lot of activities for someone coming from a warm climate. It was difficult to make new friends, explore places, or do my favourite activity: cycling. My fingers froze over multiple times as I accumulated gloves with varying promises of protection while cycling. I tried to stay active with my partner: we used our home gym, we went on long walks, and as soon as we cracked our first few friendships, we basked in the opportunity to have familiar people to jolly with. Our friends are really kind people who share many of our values. It might seem mundane, but finding someone to play FIFA (now EAFC) with is a thing of joy. I don’t know why people still play PES.

When I was an undergraduate, I volunteered a lot and that allowed me to travel to different parts of Nigeria, meet people across different social classes, do things for people I may never meet again, and find joy in community. Even as I have lived across multiple cities in the past few years, I have learned to always find communities that fill my life with joy and satisfaction. Like missing the sun when it starts to snow, a hole grew in my heart for the noise of a community of which I belonged, after moving to Toronto. I did not want to be defeated by the isolation and loneliness that many newcomers complain of, so I promised myself to fight pretty hard to meet people, make more friends, and be part of communities again.

About three months after my relocation, I saw a shout-out — on a local newsroom’s newsletter — to an organisation that had cyclists volunteering to pick up food and other resources from food banks and other places and people giving out stuff to be delivered to the homes of those who needed them but who couldn’t go and get them on their own. I signed up because it combined my favourite activity with my curiosity for people and places. 

I couldn’t pick up deliveries for another month because I had to travel for work. When I eventually made my first delivery, it started snowing out of the blue and I was caught in it. The second time I delivered to someone, it was to an elderly woman who refused to collect the supplies directly from me, and I had to put the food outside her door. It bothered me a bit that she might have been racist, so I spoke to my partner and some friends about it. After yapping about the situation, I decided she was just an old woman who didn’t want to stress me, but I made a note not to sign up for her supplies anymore. I have been to her apartment complex many times after that, delivering to other elderly people in the building, like the old catholic woman who prayed for me for a minute and kept thanking me for helping her out, being patient enough to wait a long time for her to open the door, and helping her move the supplies into her kitchen.

II

I meet many people when I deliver supplies. I meet a lot of kind, grateful people. I met a disabled gentleman who asked that he take me around Toronto if I was up for it, after learning that I had recently moved from Nigeria. I didn’t follow up because I felt I would be stressing him. I have a family that I have signed up to deliver supplies to for as long as the food bank is open, because of how kind they are to me. That I know their allergies and preferences makes me feel happy to ask for supplies for them at the food bank. I have also had very strange occurrences. Like the woman with a dangerous dog warning on her apartment door, whose dog barked so ferociously that it struck fear into my heart. It was the first time I didn’t wait for more than a minute for them to get to the door.

There was another strange occasion where I got to an apartment complex and ran into this weird-looking man who kept staring at me. He would give me a jumpscare in the apartment’s dimly lit corridor just before the elevator. I would enter the elevator fully alert and ready to defend myself with force if necessary, when he started talking to me. It was Eid day, and during our short conversation, I would learn that he was from Kenya, and I had been to his homeland more recently than he had. He would walk out of the elevator, leaving behind an ominous message: “Be careful out there.”

Apart from delivering food, I have also found a community with a group of cyclists training for a fundraising event. I had gone out to train some Saturday morning when I saw this army of lycra-wearing folks. I asked if I could train with them, and they were happy to have me. 

This group has taught me a lot about caring for other people, and caring for myself. There is an older man, let’s call him SY, who helps to train others. SY is at least 60 years old, charming, helpful, and dedicated. The summary of what I have learned from SY is that being the strongest should always condition you for kindness. Despite being the best climber — climbing is such a difficult thing in cycling that not all pro cyclists are great climbers — SY makes an effort to train others, wait up when he can, and push people to be better, stronger and healthier.

From August 3-8, 2025, I will be spending five days on the road with this group to cycle 600 km from Toronto to Montreal, to raise money for people with HIV/AIDS. As a first-year rider, I am trying to raise CAD1,950 to participate in the event. People from around the world have been kind enough to help me raise CAD1,076.56 as of writing this. I still have about CAD900 to go, and if you’d like to support me, you can do so here. All proceeds go to getting food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and other support for people with HIV/AIDS. None of the money comes to me.

III

My friends and I went to a very rich neighbourhood for a yard sale. We got to a house with a shit load of books on women’s rights, socialism, workers’ rights, and some very rare English works. Saw some early edition T.S. Elliot. We asked folks around how much the books were. They said they weren’t sure, but they thought they were free. We decided to wait until we saw the owner and asked them ourselves. Barely two minutes after waiting, a lanky old man came from the backyard, eyes sunken, hair greyed with bald patches, holding gardening tools. He told us the books were free to take. It was a pretty conservative and Jewish neighbourhood, so it was unusual for someone to have that many liberal materials just out on the porch. Some of the books we saw were anti-zionist, pro-peaceful Middle East. We asked the man about his interests, how he came to have such books and why he was giving them away. 

Old man invited us into his home.

We had a rich conversation about anti-semitism, his family, zionism, Palestine, the state of the world, his life, etc.

In his home, we saw an even larger collection of books and classical music. Old man is a musician in a long lineage of musicians. He had these classical collections at home that he was trying to give away. Some, he said, had been in his family for more than 50 years. He gave me a Mozart that his (deceased) wife inherited from her father. He let me have a tennis racket that his wife got when she started learning to play as a teen.

We live in a deeply beautiful world where my family from Nigeria gets to keep the multigenerational story of a liberal Jewish family from Toronto. A world where I get to deliver food to people as a way of knowing Toronto and people beg to cook for me with their limited supplies. A world where I could be asked by a stranger if I wanted some shoes on the same elevator where I was stared down by another stranger. A world where I get discounts for fixing my bicycle because I am fundraising for People with HIV/AIDS, despite someone driving their car over my foot at a traffic light.

There is so much beauty in the world that we live in. And it saddens me that despite this beauty, despite this grace, we also have to endure harsh unkindness.

But I’ll always choose to hold on to the beauty. Because more than anything else, beauty endures. Beauty heals. Beauty makes for a good world. 

I want to live in a good world.