Episode 78 – Brolin Mawejje

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:22:10
Brolin Mawejje
Spent majority of my childhood in Uganda, bouncing around kind of between my father and extended family and. You know, survive or survive of Africa in the 90s. It was almost like an acid trip. You woke up one day. I remember I woke up one day. I was in my little town. The next day, somebody like you’re going to America tonight.

00:00:22:12 – 00:00:27:09
Brolin Mawejje
Go home. We’re going to take you to America. I remember when I told you that. Kidnaped people.

00:00:27:12 – 00:00:29:06
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:00:29:08 – 00:00:31:00
Brolin Mawejje
That’s the best way to kidnap somebody.

00:00:31:02 – 00:00:32:20
Brandon Adams
Is that night a night?

00:00:32:22 – 00:00:57:10
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. You’re going to go to America, you know? In my head, it’s like I’m getting kidnaped, you know? Like you don’t understand what’s happening. I was a man by the time I was 11, in Uganda. Once you in America, you a child? I didn’t dream to become an Olympic snowboarder. I’m studying medicine right now. Yeah. I don’t think I would have ever, ever had the same opportunity if I had stayed in the same circumstance.

00:00:57:12 – 00:01:15:10
Brolin Mawejje
The kid I met day one, like the guy that turns into my best friend, happened to be obsessed with snowboarding because he was so obsessed with snowboarding. He wanted to be an Olympic snowboarder. He’s like, oh, you know, we’re going to. You should come and, you know, join us. We’re about to go ski and snowboard. Yeah. I have no idea.

00:01:15:12 – 00:01:53:16
Brolin Mawejje
There’s true snowboarders who sandwich in the hand, living a ten roommates deep. Just doing it for the love of the game. Who are the core industry of snowboarding? They carry the industry. Seeing the process of medicine from different facets. I realize that I personally feel like I can make a difference in the community from the standpoint of helping regulate the nervous system.

00:01:53:18 – 00:02:13:24
Brandon Adams
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Blueprint. Today I’ve got Brolin mortgage. Top 50 most interesting athletes in the world. Pro snowboarder. This guy’s got the craziest story you’ll ever hear, and I hope that I can get through it. And this entire time, please stick with me. This is going to be amazing. If you guys could do me a favor, if you could just hit subscribe at the bottom down there, it’s going to allow me to tell more of these stories.

00:02:14:00 – 00:02:19:00
Brandon Adams
You’re gonna love this one. Stay tuned. Roland, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate you being here.

00:02:19:01 – 00:02:21:08
Brolin Mawejje
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.

00:02:21:10 – 00:02:26:22
Brandon Adams
Yeah, honestly, like, we met in. In Vermont. Yeah.

00:02:26:24 – 00:02:29:07
Brolin Mawejje
Middle of nowhere. Vermont on a cold day?

00:02:29:07 – 00:02:46:02
Brandon Adams
Yeah, yeah, up in the mountain. And somebody came up and said, Brandon, you need to have this guy on your podcast. And I was like, yeah, but, I’m in the middle of Texas, you know? And so there’s no way the odds are going to be. And they were like him, too. And so, we talked for a minute, it was over a few whiskeys.

00:02:46:02 – 00:02:50:08
Brandon Adams
So I’m not exactly sure you know, the full story, how it went down, but,

00:02:50:10 – 00:02:51:23
Brolin Mawejje
We’re a little faded.

00:02:52:00 – 00:03:11:08
Brandon Adams
But we connected. It was it was really cool because, I got to hear a little bit more about your story, and I was like, for sure, I got to get this guy on. So, again, thank you for coming. Wanted to really kind of jump into this because I don’t want to beat around the bush because you got such a long story to tell, but, Berlin, where did you where did you grow up?

00:03:11:08 – 00:03:14:12
Brandon Adams
Where his family from, where it where roots.

00:03:14:14 – 00:03:35:23
Brolin Mawejje
I know, roots. Originally from Uganda. I was born in Uganda. Kampala. That’s in East Africa. In the 90s, kind of mid 90s, which is, interesting time to be born because late 80s, you had a lot of power change and a lot of little bit of, many wars and struggles within a lot of governments around Uganda.

00:03:36:00 – 00:03:54:24
Brolin Mawejje
So I was born Nestle, right after a major, major war. Within the country that kind of split the country, and spent majority of my childhood in Uganda, bouncing around kind of between my father and extended family and, you know, survivor, survivor of Africa in the 90s.

00:03:55:01 – 00:04:15:13
Brandon Adams
When you say survival, like, look, most of us are from a country that is, we hear the name we studied in school. We don’t really understand what that’s about. Like you say, survival. We think survival over here is like, man, what am I going to eat today or or whatever? And you say survival is what you dive into that a little bit.

00:04:15:15 – 00:04:42:07
Brolin Mawejje
Survival was trying to stay alive. So let me just paint a picture for you. Uganda and Kampala, where it’s at on the, western border, you have Sudan. Sudan was going through a huge war where they were kind of. Oh, actually, on the north border, you have Sudan. Sudan was splitting from North Sudan and South Sudan. So you have the Darfur war that starts and kind of amplifies around, late 90s, early 2000.

00:04:42:09 – 00:05:03:24
Brolin Mawejje
Before then, you have Rwanda rendered gone through the genocide? Maybe the audience knows about Hotel Rwanda, where they talk about the Tutsis, Hutus killing each other. That happened right as I was born, in Africa. You know, it’s kind of like the New England states. Everything’s so close. It seems like it’s big, but everything is within 4 or 5 mile radius.

00:05:04:02 – 00:05:31:11
Brolin Mawejje
Okay. So anything that happens in one country or it spills over within all the countries. So when I talk about survivor, I’m talking about war time survival, rationing food. Really education when it’s possible, when it’s available and, you know, you see family members and you cherish the moments you have, right then and then and you might not see them again, you know, type of aspect.

00:05:31:11 – 00:05:41:17
Brolin Mawejje
But I also I was young, a lot of being young and the survivor being young really having two meals on the table and getting to see your family the next day.

00:05:41:19 – 00:06:01:06
Brandon Adams
Wow. Really. So, I mean, you know, you think about I mean, the scope of that is just that is too much for for most adults to kind of take on. But you’re saying you’re only there till you’re 11 and you’re thinking, at this point, I’ve got a on two meals, hoping to see my folks for the next day.

00:06:01:08 – 00:06:17:23
Brandon Adams
What’s day to day life look like as you’re going to do those types of things? Because we’re thinking about survival is and I’m trying to eat, I’m trying to get ahead, I’m trying to win, I’m trying to do these things. And you’re like, no, no, no. Yeah, I mean literally survive, wake up tomorrow and see another day. What’s what’s a day to day life look like?

00:06:18:00 – 00:06:37:11
Brolin Mawejje
Day to day lives kind of changed. I feel like when I was younger, you know, day to day life. My mom left when I was young. She, you know, obviously with war time, a lot of family gets scouted, and she kind of got an opportunity to being lost from the family to kind of move to a better, almost like refugee camp.

00:06:37:11 – 00:06:44:07
Brandon Adams
Which, like, what’s it mean to say scattered. Like the people come in and they separate families or pull them apart or families.

00:06:44:07 – 00:06:45:01
Brolin Mawejje
I mean.

00:06:45:03 – 00:06:46:15
Brandon Adams
They’re running.

00:06:46:17 – 00:07:07:24
Brolin Mawejje
They’re I was born in you. I don’t know if you remember, I don’t know if, there was a guy in the North they used to terrorize. There’s a terror that came out with the children’s army or the children’s rebels. Kony’s. In the name, there was a Kony 2012 campaign that went around. I’m not sure if your audience remembers that.

00:07:08:01 – 00:07:39:12
Brolin Mawejje
There’s a huge campaign to try to create awareness about what this guy was doing, but Kony really does not start the work that he’s doing until really late 90s, early 2000. And a lot of society did not catch on to it until Kony 2012. I was in Uganda during that era. So when I’m saying, kidnapings are a lot, trying to steal children, to try to join and, cross them into armies and, factions was a big thing.

00:07:39:14 – 00:07:57:13
Brolin Mawejje
Separation of family was a big thing. You know, the instability of both the government that was trying to hold on to power and then people who were trying to destabilize the government and not understanding, okay, I was about to go into a civil war. That was like the the day to day. So that, that changed.

00:07:57:15 – 00:08:07:17
Brandon Adams
When you say frequently someone, someone would kidnap the kids to bring them into their army, to try to raise them like try to get them in an early age just to try to make soldiers out of them.

00:08:07:19 – 00:08:26:01
Brolin Mawejje
If you get a chance to look into Kony, Kony and kind of the whole Darfur and the DRC war and what’s happening, a lot of that war was fought by children and young. It, by a lot of my peers were at the edge because the idea is you if you can grab somebody at an edge where you could cross them.

00:08:26:03 – 00:08:48:22
Brolin Mawejje
And sometimes, you know, by offering meals, by offering a little bit of money and safety, a lot of people were orphans, whether they were orphans through the Aids epidemic, which was also happening middle, late 90s of they were orphans through Civil war, if they were orphans through just, you know, just, being, you know, poverty and parents not being able to take care of them.

00:08:48:24 – 00:08:54:21
Brolin Mawejje
There was a lot of crossing that happened during those times, you know, yeah.

00:08:54:21 – 00:09:04:17
Brandon Adams
So the let me when you say, the parents not being able to take care of them, they were just kind of left on their own. And so they just had to fend for themselves at this point.

00:09:04:17 – 00:09:26:07
Brolin Mawejje
In a way. Yeah. You grew up. I mean, at those times you grew up very, very quickly. I was one of seven. So my parents, my mom had left when I was young. My dad had, other I had other siblings from my dad’s side. And throughout your childhood, since you’re so young, society around you is surviving.

00:09:26:07 – 00:09:53:00
Brolin Mawejje
It’s not just you surviving. Your parents, your older siblings, you know, besides the grandparents, everybody’s in that survival mode. So the neglects to just allow kids to just have to grow up, catch up to the adults. It’s, I think it’s still alive right now because of poverty. I came from a very poor stricken country that was surrounded by a lot of civil war and a lot of war and a lot of more, more poverty.

00:09:53:02 – 00:09:59:15
Brolin Mawejje
But I think that whole system and that whole sphere just trickles down into the everyday family.

00:09:59:17 – 00:10:06:19
Brandon Adams
So when you go home, let’s say you’re, you’re six, when you go home there’s not food in the pantry. There’s not.

00:10:06:21 – 00:10:23:24
Brolin Mawejje
This is not wake up, go to the fridge. You. This is wake up. If you’re hungry there’s not enough food for everybody. Everybody eats at the same time. So for example you come home, you want to have a snack that beauty of Africa and Uganda, there’s food everywhere. You know, people can. You could go get a mango from somewhere.

00:10:23:24 – 00:10:39:17
Brolin Mawejje
You could go get a fruit from somewhere. So that band is of mangoes and kind of fruits and naturally grown food is everywhere because people have guns, but you could not show up and just eat a meal before the whole family’s ready to eat. You know, there’s not a there’s not food like that. You’d have to sit down.

00:10:39:17 – 00:10:55:12
Brolin Mawejje
Wait. All eight of us sit down, eat off one plate, share the meal. That could happen twice a day. Once a day? You know, a morning you have you a cup of tea and some bread. If you have bread, if you have sugar. Wow.

00:10:55:14 – 00:11:10:18
Brandon Adams
So that’s that’s, that’s eye opening, you know, I mean, the so who calls the fact that we’re having a meal at that point, is it someone says, hey, guys, I’ve got food. It’s going to be in like an hour or, let’s gather the gather the family, my family.

00:11:10:18 – 00:11:31:15
Brolin Mawejje
We waited until my father was home. Okay? He spent majority of the day kind of, you know, trying to make ends meet. He’ll go out there. He was a tradesman. So whatever came in, after civil war, when the country and the borders opened up, as a young man, he had started trading goods, from trinkets to shoes to whatever was needed within the household.

00:11:31:15 – 00:11:40:04
Brolin Mawejje
So he’ll go out there, try to get goods from the border, try to sell them. And then when he came home, the whole family was ready to eat.

00:11:40:06 – 00:12:06:01
Brandon Adams
So if you were hungry at 10:00 in the morning, guess what? You’re going to be hungry for the rest of the day until until dad gets home. Wow. Right. Perspective for sure. That’s incredible. You said that there was, kidnapings. How did you stay away from getting kidnaped? How did you keep from falling into being one of those kids that ended up in the Army?

00:12:06:03 – 00:12:26:11
Brolin Mawejje
I cherish my family. You know, I had, a huge presence with my grandparents, my mom, both sides. My grandparents were very active in the grandchildren that were there. I feel like, grandparents in Africa play a huge role in kind of protecting the kids and protecting their kids. Kids? And then my family, you know, kind of understanding what’s happening.

00:12:26:13 – 00:12:46:14
Brolin Mawejje
You’re young. I spent what I left Uganda when I was 11 years old. So from 0 to 9, you you don’t really know what’s happening. Somebody else is responsible for you from 9 to 11. You’re kind of aware of what’s happening, but once again, somebody is responsible for you. So I just had really good, responsible adults taking care of me.

00:12:46:19 – 00:12:47:17
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:12:47:19 – 00:12:57:19
Brolin Mawejje
Although we had nothing and we had poverty, we had a sense of family, and we had a sense of, you know, as long as we’re together, we can kind of overcome it.

00:12:57:21 – 00:13:20:00
Brandon Adams
So you had people that were watching out to make sure that you didn’t get kidnaped. I mean, or the kidnapings happening just because somebody’s saying don’t do it. Or is it just like, don’t be in this area, don’t be around these people, don’t do these things, blah, blah, blah, because there’s people that are waiting in that. Or is it y’all live a little further away and kind of hung close together, like how do you how does how does advice keep you from getting kidnaped?

00:13:20:05 – 00:13:40:11
Brolin Mawejje
Bruce? I mean, you’re not a lot to live like, you know, kind of the house or the sun sphere. A lot of the kidnapings happened at night. Oh, there’s a lot of snatching, you know, where they snatch kids off the road. So say it’s just two young kids. You’re easy target. I had older siblings. O’Connor, try to watch out for us.

00:13:40:11 – 00:14:00:20
Brolin Mawejje
And my oldest brother and oldest sister were teenagers. So they, you know, they were kind of in tune to what was happening. A majority of the bad kidnapings from geographically, from where I was that we were a little bit on the outskirts of like where the massive, massive like terrorizing was happening and you know, you were aware of it.

00:14:00:20 – 00:14:10:23
Brolin Mawejje
So as a family it’s like, okay, this is happening, this is coming down. You hear kind of the passed down message, okay, the rebels are in town. You hunker down.

00:14:10:23 – 00:14:11:22
Brandon Adams
Everybody lay low.

00:14:11:22 – 00:14:18:24
Brolin Mawejje
Everybody lay low, hide out, wait for the kind of commotion to come down. And then, you know, you move on.

00:14:19:01 – 00:14:39:23
Brandon Adams
So everybody’s kind of passing notes of so-and-so’s in town. Watch out. Be careful. Yeah. You know, everybody stay out of the way. And then we’ll, we’ll we’ll wave a flag when everybody’s when the coast is clear. Yeah. That’s crazy. I saw in one of your, your other interviews that you had talked about, there was some religious kidnapings going on as well.

00:14:40:00 – 00:15:11:19
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. I mean, in my point of view, because of so much that was happening, the religious kidnapings were happening, but they never happened to me or any type of like, religious prosecutions. But if I’m not sure if you could look up, when did the Kony, when does Kony kind of like get shut down? The religious separation that happens a lot in Uganda has been the paralyzed by the power, by the guy in power.

00:15:11:19 – 00:15:13:19
Brolin Mawejje
He kind of has a stranglehold on the country.

00:15:13:23 – 00:15:14:07
Brandon Adams

00:15:15:12 – 00:15:33:03
Brolin Mawejje
So during the time when I was young, man, it was like the wild, wild West. Now as the years have gone where he just won his six election, eight years old, he just kind of, you know, militarized the country to try to shut that down okay. Yeah.

00:15:33:08 – 00:15:40:00
Brandon Adams
But the but you said there was like sacrificial type. Oh, yeah. Kidnapings like, what does that mean.

00:15:40:02 – 00:15:53:23
Brolin Mawejje
That that stuff I can’t really get into. I don’t really. Okay. Yeah, but they’ll they’ll kidnap kids to, you know, kidnap kids to try to.

00:15:54:00 – 00:16:18:05
Brolin Mawejje
Whether it’s witchdoctor stuff or whether it’s gaining lock or whether it’s gaining protection, there’s a lot of, witchcraft that sometimes happens within not just Africa but within East Africa. And a lot of that was happening for people to try to get it a better right, a right passage to the right thing. I don’t want it to be like a mixture of like Epstein, like kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:18:06 – 00:16:22:05
Brolin Mawejje
I’m like, people are just eating kids.

00:16:22:07 – 00:16:27:21
Brolin Mawejje
But yeah, just some wicked people do some wicked stuff to get out of poverty, I would say.

00:16:28:02 – 00:16:45:01
Brandon Adams
So you’re saying they would take and, kidnap the kids and sacrifice them for luck or for, protection? Yeah. And I guess this is to whoever they’re sacrificing these kids to and, or for prosperity.

00:16:45:03 – 00:16:46:14
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah.

00:16:46:16 – 00:16:51:01
Brandon Adams
Wow. So it’s a it’s a whole different world from from.

00:16:51:03 – 00:16:54:20
Brolin Mawejje
I don’t know much about this. I can’t really speak to my whole world, you know?

00:16:54:21 – 00:17:14:16
Brandon Adams
Yeah, yeah, well, it’s just a whole different world from. I mean, as Americans, we go through and we talk about hustle and grind and and everything that goes into it, and we only know our scope. Right. And so if you have only heard of yours being as hard as this growing up. Yeah. Are you only heard about like, you know, oh, man, I, I didn’t have any opportunity.

00:17:14:16 – 00:17:53:24
Brandon Adams
Well, really, you didn’t have any opportunity to listen to this guy’s story. Yeah. This guy’s day to day having one mil and he’s, you know, scrounging around for people not to kidnap him every day. And he’s trying to dodge these deals, are waving flags to tell them when it’s safe and when it’s not. And and, you know, it might get picked out early and get put on a you put in the children’s army, you know, like that is dodging a bullet literally, you know, like, was did you see a lot of loss in your, your friend groups or your family of like, you know, where’s John and John’s not here today or John’s gone

00:17:53:24 – 00:17:58:04
Brandon Adams
or they took him or things went down. And I think.

00:17:58:06 – 00:18:21:16
Brolin Mawejje
Man, growing up in Africa, loss was it’s a part of the culture. You know, people whether they’re dying from disease, whether they’re dying from wrongfully, like they just disappeared, whether they’re dying from just, Civil war aspect of it and instability. Yeah. But people were dying. And the beauty of Africa, especially growing up young, is you’re well protected as a child.

00:18:21:18 – 00:18:47:13
Brolin Mawejje
So not everybody’s explaining, like in American culture, everything is well explained to a child and aware of what’s happening in Africa. The ignorance is bliss is a better kind of conversation. So you’re not explaining to somebody disappears. No one’s going to explain to you. Or if somebody dies, no one’s explaining, well, this person died like this. You just you go to a funeral, you’re burying somebody within a week, you burying somebody within every other month.

00:18:47:13 – 00:19:17:04
Brolin Mawejje
You know, people just die now. But the explanation of this is what’s happening. I think I got it once or twice. I had an uncle that was very close to me that died. I believe he died of Aids. And that was the first time that was like, explained to me, you know. But besides that it was, you know, like no more kind of common, you know, existence, I think to this day to, you know, death is just kind of within existence with living people live as if they might die tomorrow.

00:19:17:06 – 00:19:19:06
Brolin Mawejje
And they approach life as if they might die tomorrow.

00:19:19:12 – 00:19:24:23
Brandon Adams
Yeah. And your and your mom, you said she. What time did she leave. At what age.

00:19:25:00 – 00:19:28:19
Brolin Mawejje
My mom left me when I was I don’t know what her age was but I was one and a half year.

00:19:28:19 – 00:19:30:18
Brandon Adams
One and a half. Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:30:20 – 00:19:32:01
Brolin Mawejje
1 or 9 months.

00:19:32:03 – 00:19:37:17
Brandon Adams
Okay. And she got split from the family and went to another city somewhere close.

00:19:37:17 – 00:19:47:11
Brolin Mawejje
Or that, I don’t know, I did not reconnect with my mom until I was ten. Was the next time I seen her again. Wow.

00:19:47:13 – 00:19:51:15
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Okay. And it was. And it was somewhere local to where you were when you saw her.

00:19:51:17 – 00:20:08:07
Brolin Mawejje
She had come back to Uganda. She had come back to visit. She came to reconnect with the family, obviously, the excitement of, oh, my God, my mom’s alive. Hey, how are you doing? And a little bit of, resentment, feels like, oh, this is my mother. I gotta really have to, like, you know, hang out with,

00:20:08:09 – 00:20:27:12
Brolin Mawejje
Who is she? Who am I? I don’t learn a lot of that about myself until I’m in America. Because I don’t meet my mother again until I’m 11. I fly to Massachusetts by myself, and I reconnect with my mother. And that’s when I really, for the first time, got to be like, oh, this is my mother, this is me.

00:20:27:12 – 00:20:41:13
Brolin Mawejje
But she comes back again. I did not recognize that she was my mother, you know, because, yeah, once again, the child is so well protected. And then I going to tell you, oh, this is your mother. And then she flies out and like, oh, she’s gone again. I had no idea until I was 11.

00:20:41:15 – 00:21:01:10
Brandon Adams
Man, what a what a big jump. I mean, from, from 10 to 11. You see your mother for the first time at ten. And from you said from like 9 or 10 or whatever is when you start to have to grow up, you know, and start to have to fend for yourself and get your own food. And yeah, I guess you’re helping the rest of the family trying to find food for the rest of the day to at certain ages.

00:21:01:13 – 00:21:02:06
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:21:02:08 – 00:21:33:20
Brolin Mawejje
I nine and between nine and a, I started going to school. Okay. So I went to a local school, around the town. I went to primary school locally. I went to a school also, after primary school, there’s like, as you entered to secondary school locally and in the evening, I just, you know, it was a part of the family, did chores, fetch water, clean, you know, kind of become a part of the community which, to hard description to describe to America because everybody, you know, families live as individuals.

00:21:33:20 – 00:21:50:21
Brolin Mawejje
So there’s not really commodity where people are helping each other to kind of create that community thing. But. In Africa is like, okay, you’re from school, you’re not going to school. You need to fetch water, you need to clean, you need to do this. So there’s chores and jobs that keep you busy. You’re not doing that. What are you are you selling.

00:21:50:21 – 00:21:55:09
Brolin Mawejje
Are you trying to help? Are you helping bring something into the community?

00:21:55:11 – 00:21:58:02
Brandon Adams
So the community all kind of thrives together at that point?

00:21:58:02 – 00:21:58:17
Brolin Mawejje
Exactly.

00:21:58:22 – 00:22:08:12
Brandon Adams
It’s kind of when, when you’ve kind of been broken down and splintered, everyone has kind of glued themselves together as a.

00:22:08:14 – 00:22:11:04
Brandon Adams
More or less orphans hanging together.

00:22:11:06 – 00:22:31:21
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. Because you can come a bigger family, basically a larger not really seeing. Oh, this person is wealthy. This person is not. Every once in a while, you see. Oh, there’s the UN. There was a lot of U.N. workers. I’m not sure if people familiar with U.N. workers are. You see, a U.N. worker, you see, a white person that was like a U.N. worker and you’re like, oh my God, they’re driving a nice car.

00:22:31:21 – 00:22:42:04
Brolin Mawejje
But it wasn’t like you’re poor and your was rich. Everybody was poor. And I think it was normal for everybody to be within the same circumstance.

00:22:42:06 – 00:22:51:20
Brandon Adams
And inside that community is violence prevalent or is violence. We’re all kind of protecting each other.

00:22:51:22 – 00:23:09:10
Brolin Mawejje
In the community. We’re all protecting each other. It’s like the community. That’s where you’re getting into kidnapings people are trying to, you know, because you’re trying to gain as many people to your side so you can try to overthrow the government. Which government comes in by the gun? So you kind of have to overthrow the last government to do that.

00:23:09:10 – 00:23:28:22
Brolin Mawejje
You need to collect enough people onto your side to kind of overthrow the government. So within our community, who are you within, outside the other community, the guy from the north, I think it was coming from the north side. Kony, when you look at who’s coming from the north, he’s trying to destroy destabilize the government from the north.

00:23:28:24 – 00:23:30:24
Brolin Mawejje
And move in a little more central.

00:23:31:01 – 00:23:31:09
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:23:31:14 – 00:23:32:13
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah.

00:23:32:15 – 00:23:36:21
Brandon Adams
So you’ve gone through a lot. I mean, you’re, you’re a ten and a half 11 at this time.

00:23:36:23 – 00:23:43:09
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. How does a kid this time I’ve described the whole story as an adult, you know kind of the circumstance of Africa.

00:23:43:10 – 00:24:09:00
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Is what is the transition and how do you all of a sudden go from like a kid that’s in the middle of this, group or, collection of people, community? How do you how do you go from that to all of a sudden in Boston, like, it’s such a that’s such a jump, like you didn’t go somewhere even 100 miles away or, you know, whatever locally.

00:24:09:00 – 00:24:13:17
Brandon Adams
That was just a better environment. You jump to the other side of the world. How did that happen?

00:24:13:19 – 00:24:40:03
Brolin Mawejje
Well, luckily, when years passed, my mom had made her way to America and because of there was so much war in Africa, and in particular the area I was in, there’s a program called the Lost Boys, and a part of that program was to try to rehabilitate. A lot of the younger kids, try to create some change through education, change of environment and also try to dumb down the violence.

00:24:40:05 – 00:25:02:17
Brolin Mawejje
That same program was similar to what they did in the Rhondda, kind of genocide, post genocide. Try to bring the whole community together. I believe through those grants which were set up by I’m not sure who set it up, but the early 2000, I want to say Bush era. Through that, I was able to apply for Green Card and, to reunite with family.

00:25:02:19 – 00:25:18:08
Brolin Mawejje
You were granted a green card if you are, like, within a certain age. So I just happened to make be within the right time. At the right time. I have an application be filed by my mom. Be at the right age where you. Then you can get a green card. And then I came over to Boston to reunite with my mom.

00:25:18:11 – 00:25:25:13
Brandon Adams
So your mom came back, saw you at ten. She then came back over here. You don’t know how she got over here?

00:25:25:15 – 00:25:35:09
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, well, she probably she was a she probably had settled in America now. Had the ability. Yeah. Because she gets married in America. She comes to America at some point, okay. And gets married to an American.

00:25:35:09 – 00:25:36:03
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:25:36:05 – 00:25:37:02
Brolin Mawejje
Starts a new life.

00:25:37:07 – 00:25:56:16
Brandon Adams
Okay. Yeah. So she starts a life here. Now she wants to go back and check on her kids. She goes and checks on you. You’re still alive. She says hello. Whatever. Next thing you know, you get some paperwork. Hey, I’d love to bring you back. And she applies from the US side to bring you over. Yeah. You get rite of passage.

00:25:56:16 – 00:25:58:16
Brandon Adams
You’re the only one in your family that got.

00:25:58:20 – 00:26:04:18
Brolin Mawejje
I was the first one in my family. And then, I believe a month later, my two sisters got the same. Okay, the passage.

00:26:04:18 – 00:26:06:16
Brandon Adams
Older, younger, older. Okay.

00:26:06:18 – 00:26:07:12
Brolin Mawejje
A little bit older.

00:26:07:17 – 00:26:11:20
Brandon Adams
Okay. So you come over, you land in Boston where you said Boston.

00:26:11:20 – 00:26:12:06
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah.

00:26:12:08 – 00:26:16:08
Brandon Adams
It’s crazy. What a what a big jump. Did you know the English language at all?

00:26:16:10 – 00:26:38:08
Brolin Mawejje
I knew how to ask for the bathroom. And I knew. And you? Simple English. And you British. English. I had gone to school, prior. I’d gone to a local school and through that there was a lot of church missionaries, because you got it was a British project. A trope I don’t know even how to say it was under the British, government.

00:26:38:10 – 00:26:59:04
Brolin Mawejje
Okay. And through that they had a lot of missionary schools, people got to get a little bit of education. So I knew how to say bathroom, toilet, torch. You know, a few basic British English words. When I showed up to America, I learned very quickly that’s not how you speak. And, those are not the right words as well.

00:26:59:06 – 00:27:03:15
Brandon Adams
Yeah, yeah. You’re saying water closet and, and they were like, I mean, the restroom.

00:27:03:19 – 00:27:05:08
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. Right. Like, what are you going.

00:27:05:08 – 00:27:20:23
Brandon Adams
Yeah. So you landed here. Did you immediately go to school? Did you go to someone’s home? Did you like what was the transition between 11 when you landed? And now I’m going to sit in a class somewhere.

00:27:21:00 – 00:27:45:17
Brolin Mawejje
Luckily, I landed in Massachusetts. My mom lived in a town called Lincoln. Lincoln is known for the Civil War. The Concord Minutemen are coming. That’s kind of where the whole Lincoln gets his famous thing. And my mom was a she was. She is to this day. Great. Nice. So what happens when Africans get opportunities is they get into healthcare and you’re gone into healthcare work as a nurse, hospice nurse.

00:27:45:19 – 00:28:05:04
Brolin Mawejje
Had a client, introduced her to Lincoln. So she got to move to Lincoln because a lot of her clients were within Lincoln. She worked at a hospital that was close by. So when I landed and because she was already in the town of Lincoln, within a week, I went to school. Started ESL classes the next Monday.

00:28:05:06 – 00:28:06:10
Brolin Mawejje
Just settled in.

00:28:06:12 – 00:28:14:17
Brandon Adams
So how did you communicate? Like, I mean, you could go to sit in a class and someone saying, did you understand it? Or you just couldn’t speak it or like, what’s the level? And you said.

00:28:14:19 – 00:28:18:09
Brolin Mawejje
The level is 2% of English.

00:28:18:11 – 00:28:20:20
Brandon Adams
Speaking or understanding.

00:28:20:22 – 00:28:24:12
Brolin Mawejje
Speaking. 2% probably maybe 10% understanding.

00:28:24:12 – 00:28:25:21
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:28:25:23 – 00:28:29:07
Brolin Mawejje
I couldn’t, you know, think my way through was happening. A little bit of gesture.

00:28:29:07 – 00:28:30:00
Brandon Adams
Context clues.

00:28:30:00 – 00:28:52:23
Brolin Mawejje
Context clues. I want to say it’s a timing thing. You know, if I had landed in America and been three towns over, I don’t think I would have had the same experience. Oh, not have been integrated into the schools early. I would not have had a school that has a ESL program that was already established. It just happened to be the my mom was in Lincoln.

00:28:53:00 – 00:29:01:07
Brolin Mawejje
Lincoln was one of the towns. It was, it was a suburban town. It was one of the towns I was bussing kids over already from Boston was called the medical Program.

00:29:01:10 – 00:29:01:22
Brandon Adams

00:29:01:24 – 00:29:24:22
Brolin Mawejje
They already had so much was established because the town itself had a little bit of, excuse me, a little more wealth. The, you know, the surrounding towns. So the school was so well funded that when we landed the school on the surrounding program already had prior Lost Boys. I’m not sure when the Lost Boy program. I mean, we can look it up, but I’m not sure when the Lost Boy program starts.

00:29:24:24 – 00:29:29:12
Brolin Mawejje
But that program we had found, the system already, you know.

00:29:29:14 – 00:29:35:03
Brandon Adams
Working, when you, when you landed, were there any other, people from your area?

00:29:35:05 – 00:29:52:04
Brolin Mawejje
No, I just landed, because a lot of the effort that was made for me to reunite with my mom was through my mom, and a close, close client who turned into family member at that time, were really single handedly handling that. So when I landed, it was like, you know, just went straight to reuniting with my mom.

00:29:52:04 – 00:30:08:14
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. You know, she had an apartment with a room ready for the kids to come through, which was kind of. She had spent 14, 18 months prepping for this. So she was kind of very excited for the for the reunion. And, I was excited as well. And. Yeah.

00:30:08:16 – 00:30:23:04
Brandon Adams
Could you see at this point now, like being a kid whose mom lives at one and a half, could you see when you were 11 that mom’s plan had started to come into action of, like, I need to get my people out of here, man.

00:30:23:04 – 00:30:44:04
Brolin Mawejje
To be very honest, I did not see it until I was 18. Yeah, because when you 0 to 9, you’re just kind of like, okay, this is the world that I know you have. I’ve never seen a plane in my life. I barely seen cars. You know, we had bicycles. That was kind of the idea and we had TV.

00:30:44:04 – 00:31:04:05
Brolin Mawejje
So you watch America from such a far distance. You’re watching TV, watching shows. Maybe you’re getting a little bit of satellite of what’s happening geographically. But we didn’t, we didn’t have a working TV in the house, so we had to go to the neighbors to watch TV. Flying over and getting to America as a kid who they have their mother.

00:31:04:05 – 00:31:24:16
Brolin Mawejje
What changes over at that age? You’re like I have a mother. Where have you been? You know those are the questions and kind of the emotional consumption the you, you kind of bathing in at the same time. It was almost like an acid trip. You woke up one day. I remember I woke up one day. I was in my little town.

00:31:24:18 – 00:31:38:11
Brolin Mawejje
The next day somebody is like, you’re going to America tonight. Go home. We’re going to take you to America. I remember when I told you that kidnaped people. Yeah, that’s the best way to kidnap somebody.

00:31:38:13 – 00:31:40:05
Brandon Adams
Is that night a night?

00:31:40:07 – 00:31:45:20
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. You’re going to go to America, you know. Anybody going back? Okay. Get in the van.

00:31:45:20 – 00:31:47:17
Brandon Adams
Get in this little van, kid, I got you.

00:31:47:21 – 00:32:08:18
Brolin Mawejje
You never come back. Yeah. So in my head, it’s like. And getting kidnaped, you know, like, you don’t understand what’s happening all the way to. I remember my luckily, my father took my father, my family, my sisters, they all were able to take me to the airport. So that diffused the whole idea. Okay, maybe I’m not getting kidnaped.

00:32:08:20 – 00:32:27:09
Brolin Mawejje
I was handed over to a flight attendant. Never knew what a flight attendant was. This random lady white lady takes you with her like okay I’m, I’m gone, you know, going to heaven because back in the day, they were like, you go to the white lady going to heaven, get on a plane. Never seen a plane before.

00:32:27:15 – 00:32:43:01
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. I don’t know if you know that feeling of when a plane goes and you’ve never had that feeling before. You get that feeling, you feel like, you know you’re not just going to faint. After a while you’re sitting on in the seat as a kid. You going to knock out sleep. You come back in a different place.

00:32:43:03 – 00:33:07:11
Brolin Mawejje
Another lady transfers you from one place to another place. They sit you in a room. There’s something in a room for eight hours this time. Now I understand it. That’s how you transfer a unaccompanied minor through whatever borders to get them to the next point. I did not know that. Yeah. After that, I randomly get onto another plane, land in Boston and get walked to a gate.

00:33:07:11 – 00:33:26:19
Brolin Mawejje
And next thing I look up is this lady that looks like me that I’ve seen once before I’m kind of familiar with. I was told I was going to meet her, but I was not sure who she is. Just like your mother like I don’t know maybe I’m not describing. It’s like an acid trip. Like it’s so you spend so much time trying to figure out what’s happening.

00:33:26:20 – 00:33:28:04
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah kid you’re like so.

00:33:28:04 – 00:33:28:23
Brandon Adams
Not.

00:33:29:00 – 00:33:48:24
Brolin Mawejje
Playing. You know I was playing with my friends. Yeah. Today I’m in this cold area in Boston on the coldest day. Do not know what’s happening. My ears feel like they’re going to fall off. Yeah. You know, then the next month, you spending majority your time like that. Shit. Okay. I’m in school now. Wow. This is what a real school looks like.

00:33:48:24 – 00:34:06:07
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, not this broken down. You know, maybe there’s a roof. Maybe not. Maybe you own a tree type of school. Everything was in one building. I never seen that in my life. Wow. Lockers on the same side. You go from one class room, you go outside and you little lock, and then you go to the next in the same building.

00:34:06:12 – 00:34:31:05
Brolin Mawejje
You never stepped outside, you know, that was foreign to me. So you spent a whole year, first half of the year because I’m, I came in January 7th. It was very cold. I remember because the next season, the Celtics or the, Red Sox were trying to break the, big cast. Everybody around me is talking about it because I could barely understand what English is.

00:34:31:05 – 00:34:34:00
Brolin Mawejje
So I’m thinking, oh, the school’s getting cussed. What is.

00:34:34:02 – 00:34:36:03
Brandon Adams
Happening. Yeah. You’re thinking back to witch Doctor Days.

00:34:36:03 – 00:34:58:18
Brolin Mawejje
Exactly. Well so confused. Yeah. That’s majority of fifth grade. Just like what is happening. You don’t speak English all the time. Sixth grade comes around in that summer. You’re now grasping the fact. Oh, I might be here for a while. Oh, this is my mother. Okay. How do you create a relationship? How do you settle into this? How do you bond?

00:34:58:20 – 00:35:24:01
Brolin Mawejje
You know, because there’s already a bond that has to be reestablished. By the time that someone came and went. You’re already back in school now. This is my first full experience of what it should feel like to go to school. Fall. Summer. Yeah. Oh. Season. Winter, spring into summer. By the time the winter comes around, the Red Sox have won, major title.

00:35:24:03 – 00:35:48:15
Brolin Mawejje
The city was going crazy, so I do not understand. I remember school shut down for 2 or 3 weeks. I didn’t understand that was a thing. Well so as you’re trying to grasp what’s happening, you also have your own traumas that you’re trying to stabilize. You have a lot of in a childhood traumas, a lot of trust issues just because of that inner city, the lack of stability, of coming from the lack of safety.

00:35:48:21 – 00:36:15:12
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. Horizontally. So you’re coming from a fight or flight mentality into American suburb, you know, and they’re just a position of that. It’s just it did not take it took until I was 14 to kind of be like okay. But at each point you’re kind of battling different. Once one barrier closes, a once one chapter comes, new challenges are kind of coming on as you’re moving.

00:36:15:12 – 00:36:38:21
Brandon Adams
So what was it like? It’s crazy to to kind of, rebuild that relationship with your mother. Like it I mean, you, you get ripped out of somewhere that wasn’t perfect, but it’s it was you. Yeah, right. You get put into something, and, you know, I remember you saying it was day to day on this other one. We bury people by the week, we bury people by the year, by the month.

00:36:38:21 – 00:36:57:15
Brandon Adams
Like it’s happening all the time. Like. And then you come over here and you have this lady that’s like, remember me? I came and saw you once, you know, gave birth to you, I promise. Yeah. And now it’s like, well, why would I trust you? Or why do I want to believe that you’re taking care of me? And how permanent is this?

00:36:57:20 – 00:37:14:24
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Like, when did you start to feel like this? Maybe the new me, you know, like and and what was it like the journey with your parent or with your mom? And I guess her new husband, you know, at that time, and it’s like, do you now question any of that?

00:37:15:01 – 00:37:27:04
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. I mean, at the time, the husband, the American husband she had married was not in the picture by the time we show up. So just to make that clarity, but that relationship took.

00:37:27:06 – 00:37:51:09
Brolin Mawejje
Took until I was 25. Wow. To to kind of slowly work on, the first year I was in my mother’s house from my end, when I’m looking at is I’m expecting I finally have a mother. I finally should have this, this, that. But that’s when really the work starts. Because now you’ve come out of the fight or flight of Africa, you’re in America.

00:37:51:11 – 00:38:14:22
Brolin Mawejje
Everything is flipped upside down. I was survivor, I was a man by the time I was 11, in Uganda, with a full on man, I can move, navigate, obviously within a community. But you understand what’s happening. You’re navigating well to once you in America, you’re a child. You can’t just be, you know, you can’t just you needed a vehicle just to go hang out with somebody.

00:38:14:22 – 00:38:32:06
Brolin Mawejje
You need to schedule things just to hang out with your own friends that you’re making. And you. My mom was unaware of all that she was foreign to the idea of raising a kid. So for the first year, you’re both breaking that barrier of, oh, you’re my son, you’re my mother. How do we you know, how do we can?

00:38:32:07 – 00:38:32:12
Brolin Mawejje
How do I.

00:38:32:12 – 00:38:33:15
Brandon Adams
Do this.

00:38:33:17 – 00:38:48:22
Brolin Mawejje
Second year now we have a full house. I have my two sisters in the house. They had a prior connection. Their girls and girls usually have a a different relationship with their mother. So that dynamic kind of enters into it where they.

00:38:48:24 – 00:38:49:16
Brandon Adams
All ended in.

00:38:49:17 – 00:39:10:13
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, it was chaos. You know, if you if you really picture trauma, instability, a little bit of chaos, a little bit of testing waters of ways, trust. I have teenage sisters. I’m about to be a teenager. My mother is working three jobs at a time. She’s hoping everybody would just come to America and fall in line in the way she pictured it.

00:39:10:13 – 00:39:33:08
Brolin Mawejje
But we are now all developed adults, so the it took me years to really decipher what was happening. How come we didn’t just, oh my god, Kumbaya. Let’s just kind of move on with life. Because that’s what you expect. The opposite really happened at the time. I’m finishing sixth grade.

00:39:33:10 – 00:39:52:06
Brolin Mawejje
I’m going through the school thinking there’s a lot of abuse in the household. I’m going through my mother questioning should she send us back or send me back to Uganda and just kind of maybe it was a mistake. You know, she’s now kind of tiptoeing backwards and like, oh, did I make the right decision? Am I ready for this?

00:39:52:06 – 00:40:13:15
Brolin Mawejje
Can I raise kids? Because there’s a lot of rules and consequences when you’re responsible for children in America, for example, you go work, bus drops you off, you’re walking home, neighbors are like, oh, what are you doing? What are you going to do for dinner? I don’t know, you forget I haven’t seen your mom in two days where she is working.

00:40:13:17 – 00:40:35:14
Brolin Mawejje
The neighbor is a foreign kid from Africa saying, my mom’s working to her. She’s worried. She’s like, oh, this. Kids haven’t. I haven’t seen an adult here. Yeah. So now they call the police. Now, your mother, who just went from being an immigrant to like a citizen, I was worried. Oh, the police is asking. So it creates a very unhealthy home environment.

00:40:35:14 – 00:40:37:15
Brolin Mawejje
Slowly. That was.

00:40:37:17 – 00:40:38:24
Brandon Adams
Stop talking to these people.

00:40:39:02 – 00:40:44:10
Brolin Mawejje
Exactly. You know, it just created more division than it created. Kind of.

00:40:44:12 – 00:40:44:19
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:40:44:24 – 00:41:06:21
Brolin Mawejje
That, like warm bond. By the time I’m in sixth grade, the school, remember, because we showed up through green cards and through a program, the program could take your kids away. Yeah. If you’re not able to demonstrate that you can raise. You have to be able to demonstrate. You could take care of the kids, raise them and create there some rules, but basically you have to take care of them.

00:41:06:23 – 00:41:07:15
Brandon Adams

00:41:07:17 – 00:41:19:00
Brolin Mawejje
Show safety and show stability. As an adult she was working. She had the two three jobs at the time because she was a nurse who work in different shifts, picking up early shifts. But you’re not home.

00:41:19:02 – 00:41:19:15
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:41:19:17 – 00:41:37:02
Brolin Mawejje
The kids are showing up. Most white kids in their school in Lincoln are showing up with lunch money and stuff. We show up, we sit there, everybody’s eating. Yeah. Like, we’re so used to not eating in. This goes like that’s not normal, you know? Where’s your lunch? Oh, the idea I don’t have lunch. Is I an adult now?

00:41:37:07 – 00:41:48:00
Brolin Mawejje
You know, it’s just me and my sisters to me. Who’s African? That’s okay to say, because I come from a space where I’ve been taking care of myself. It’s me and my sisters.

00:41:48:03 – 00:41:58:06
Brandon Adams
Yeah, I heard you say a minute ago. Like that’s hard for me to reengage with my mom because we’re already adults now. And then you said right after that I was in sixth grade.

00:41:58:08 – 00:41:59:23
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah.

00:42:00:00 – 00:42:22:23
Brandon Adams
In America, if a kid in sixth grade says I’m an adult, that’s wild, right? Because they haven’t been raised the they haven’t had to grow up as fast as you have. Exactly. You know, they haven’t had the experience of loss and, fend for themselves. The amount of it’s a different lifestyle. So it was very foreign to me.

00:42:22:23 – 00:42:27:04
Brandon Adams
So I can understand why these people are concerned, you know.

00:42:27:06 – 00:42:40:12
Brolin Mawejje
And now I understand it too. Now I understand culture, especially American more, of course. What do you mean? A young kid is by himself. Yeah, just him and his sisters. And they just moved here? Yes. How come there’s not an adult?

00:42:40:14 – 00:42:59:07
Brandon Adams
When we were growing up that was called latchkey kids. That was when parents my my parents. Yeah. The generation they were in would go to work all day long and I would come home from school myself. And we all had keys of our own, you know, we get in the house and they called us latchkey kids because we basically raised ourself.

00:42:59:07 – 00:43:28:08
Brandon Adams
That was generation X is the same, same scenario, right? It it changed over some point. Yeah. To what you’re talking about now. You just seem to have kind of been raised in the middle right there in a, in a different deal. Right. And so, yeah, it’s very fortunate because people became very protective of that, you know, and understandable, like, I have my own kids and thinking about them, it’s in sixth grade A, do I have the mental capacity to think like they’re good or or do I need to do better?

00:43:28:08 – 00:43:45:04
Brandon Adams
Right. So from your perspective, not to jump in on that, it was just very, very funny to me. You said it’s very hard for me to connect back with my mother because we were adults at this point. And I thought, okay, you know, I’m thinking I got six more years of this person to kind of tune them into who they are, right?

00:43:45:04 – 00:43:47:22
Brandon Adams
Yeah. But your journey is very different than the most.

00:43:47:22 – 00:44:10:13
Brolin Mawejje
So which is crazy because given to her, she is like, oh, my kids are African, so they grown up. But to the environment around us, they’re still viewing us as a new family. Young kids, babies, babies. Yeah. They also are viewing as as people that maybe need more help. I’m more hands on right than the rest, but expecting a lot of that baby and you know.

00:44:10:13 – 00:44:33:02
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. And to their circumstances that were coming from that was not a luxury even half that was not even an option. An option. And the almost the excitement that came out was, oh, you’re in America now. What do you mean? Like you you’re in America. This is the land of the free, home of the brave. And we used to think there was gold everywhere in America.

00:44:33:03 – 00:44:38:00
Brolin Mawejje
I mean, I still I personally still think that. I love this part. Yeah. Sorry.

00:44:38:05 – 00:44:38:17
Brandon Adams
You’re good.

00:44:38:17 – 00:44:52:06
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. So but I, you know I have a lot of love for America because America for me personally changed my life. Yeah. I not speaking from nobody else for me. Yeah I have a lot of love for the country.

00:44:52:08 – 00:45:12:03
Brandon Adams
Yeah. That’s interesting you say that because a lot of people internally here are divided. I am a huge supporter of the country that we live in and the things that we have, because I’ve done a lot of traveling around the world. I’ve seen poverty, I’ve seen things that are bad, I’ve seen, and I even have a discussion with people all the time.

00:45:12:03 – 00:45:30:21
Brandon Adams
And when they start firing bullets at me about, America, is this, that or the other? And I asked them a simple question have you ever traveled outside of this country before? And if they say if they say no, we can’t have a conversation, we can’t have a real country because you have no scope, right? And it’s nothing to your detriment.

00:45:30:21 – 00:46:00:21
Brandon Adams
I’m not knocking someone down for not having that scope, but you can’t be an authority on the subject, and you can’t call us bad if you don’t know the full scale of good to bad, right? And so for someone like yourself who is seeing the other side and to go, man, this place is amazing. We were getting one meal a day, and I didn’t know my friends are going to be there, and kids are getting sacrificed and stolen and putting armies and blah, blah, blah, right?

00:46:01:02 – 00:46:15:22
Brandon Adams
And death and disease were everywhere. Yeah, but not ear I hear. What is that like as you start to mentally now hear people from this side bash what you think is so amazing.

00:46:15:24 – 00:46:38:23
Brolin Mawejje
It’s I mean it’s baffling, you know, because even with the trauma that I just described and kind of the hardship that people look at my story and be like, oh my God, that is such a hard story to me. Even my mother, we look at America and just live in this land is the only place you can come from because I come from poverty.

00:46:38:23 – 00:46:56:12
Brolin Mawejje
But that means my mother comes from even worse poverty. She made a sacrifice to live all her kids because she bet it on a country that will allow her as long as she works hard, she could kind of climb out of it. And what a blessing is God. And slowly by her climbing, she got us to come out of that.

00:46:56:12 – 00:47:22:00
Brolin Mawejje
Now we had an opportunity. I didn’t dream to become an Olympic snowboarder. I’m studying medicine right now. Yeah, I don’t think I would have ever, ever had the same opportunity if I had stayed in the same circumstance. So when you see people bash something because they’re so used to the norm of it and they’ve never seen what bad is, what good is you don’t have a reference because you don’t understand when you have.

00:47:22:05 – 00:47:52:23
Brolin Mawejje
Sometimes you don’t get it when you have it too good. Yeah. And I’m a circumstance of that. Like when I, when things are going well, you just kind of like on autopilot. It’s not until. Yeah like clapped in the mouth and you’re like, oh my God. I had a really good. Yeah. You know. So and the older I’ve gotten and having the opportunity of being an athlete, I’ve utilized that same mentality of stay knowing and stay traveling because of what you just said, of as soon as you can see or know, a different perspective, can understand where the good is, and you can see and focus on the good.

00:47:52:23 – 00:48:14:18
Brolin Mawejje
And now focus on what you want to focus on, on the bad. Because man, there’s an alternative. Yeah. You could go to, you go and I’ll tell anybody they you can never survive in Africa. Like I can’t survive in Africa. And I grew up in Africa. Yeah. You know, I’m not saying Africa is a bad place. Not saying it’s broken, but it’s just there’s harder places that are not America.

00:48:14:18 – 00:48:19:08
Brolin Mawejje
And you don’t see the systems and the beauty of the country until.

00:48:19:10 – 00:48:32:06
Brandon Adams
They go somewhere else. And human rights just outside of the borders of the US for men, for women, for kids, for everybody. Completely different. Correct?

00:48:32:08 – 00:48:35:17
Brolin Mawejje
Correct. It can be whatever you want here. Whatever you put your mind to.

00:48:35:20 – 00:48:36:10
Brandon Adams
Yeah, and.

00:48:36:12 – 00:48:42:10
Brolin Mawejje
Don’t cancel me, but whatever. Yeah. Whatever you put your mind. Yeah. You can’t do that in Uganda. Yeah yeah.

00:48:42:12 – 00:48:43:02
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:48:43:04 – 00:48:50:00
Brolin Mawejje
And I can’t really speak on other countries but I could speak on Uganda being Ugandan. Definitely can just be whatever you want.

00:48:50:02 – 00:49:12:13
Brandon Adams
Yeah. I’m glad you said that man. Honestly like, I always love to hear people’s perspective from other places, you know, just because you have experience that I don’t have, you know, certain things. I’ve been to 36 countries, but I’ve never been to Africa, you know. And so to hear, you know, you talk about that and then have the transition over to here,

00:49:12:15 – 00:49:36:13
Brandon Adams
You know, and adhere to you say the love that you have for, for a place like this. It warms my heart. So, appreciate you, you know, kind of kicking it on that when you made the transition over. I’m gonna jump back to the other side and thank you. Thank you. I’m going to. So I got somewhere I want to go with this, but when you landed over here and you said it was so cold, I mean, had you ever seen what was the lowest temperature, temperature you’d ever been in before you got off that plane?

00:49:36:15 – 00:50:06:04
Brolin Mawejje
Man, I was born in the most tropical, best weather, fair weather country ever. I think if it drops, it’s like Texas. Now. If it drops below 75, I would feel the cold. Yeah, I think 75. Let’s say it was maybe the lowest of like, you know. Oh my God it’s cold outside. That quickly changed because I believe on that day it was seven degrees with a windshield that made it negative 14.

00:50:06:06 – 00:50:10:24
Brolin Mawejje
Coldest day I remember of the, of the peak of the winter season.

00:50:11:05 – 00:50:11:15
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

00:50:11:15 – 00:50:16:17
Brolin Mawejje
Oh one of the coldest winters that Boston had. So it was a change.

00:50:16:23 – 00:50:20:10
Brandon Adams
Yeah. And so had you ever seen I’m guessing you’ve never seen snow before and.

00:50:20:10 – 00:50:36:04
Brolin Mawejje
Never seen snow. I the next day I showed up a night. I spent the next 6 or 7 hours the next morning watching snow fall for the first time, like straight up just through a window, like a movie, like at a time. Yeah.

00:50:36:06 – 00:50:40:00
Brandon Adams
I did. You go out and jump in it and make a snowman or anything or just.

00:50:40:02 – 00:50:40:18
Brolin Mawejje
Scared of it.

00:50:40:23 – 00:50:43:10
Brandon Adams
Really? Yeah, yeah. Just because it was so foreign.

00:50:43:10 – 00:51:00:23
Brolin Mawejje
Was so foreign. When you touch it, because I never felt what the cold is. So it was burning, you know, and, it wasn’t just kind of that nice cold. Oh. It’s cold. It was like burning cold. Yeah. Ears were frozen. I was mesmerized by it. You know, I think that that’s the day I fell in love with snow.

00:51:00:23 – 00:51:23:10
Brolin Mawejje
Because I was so scared of it and so mesmerized by all. Something can come from the sky. I only knew two seasons in Uganda. We have sunny season and rainy season. Yeah. That’s it. Maybe you see some sleet rally once in a year and like if you so slit superstitions will come out. Oh my God. You know the heavens are crying but yeah, no, no snow in my life.

00:51:23:12 – 00:51:40:06
Brandon Adams
That’s crazy. So I brought you on. I mean, this is a we’re at 50 minutes right now, you know, and and the crazy thing is I brought you on to talk about. I mean, you’re one of the 50 most, What did they say? Interesting athletes in the world.

00:51:40:08 – 00:52:00:06
Brandon Adams
Because of where you’ve come from, as to what you’ve done. Olympic snowboarder, professional pro snowboarder. We got into this a minute ago. Like, how did how did you get into snowboarding? Like, how does a kid from Uganda. And you’re the only one ever to represent your country in the Winter Olympics, correct?

00:52:00:08 – 00:52:04:03
Brolin Mawejje
Correct. And was so far hopefully we could change that in the future.

00:52:04:05 – 00:52:06:12
Brandon Adams
How crazy is that? I mean, honestly, congratulations for that.

00:52:06:15 – 00:52:07:14
Brolin Mawejje
Thank you.

00:52:07:16 – 00:52:25:08
Brandon Adams
Am super proud of you for bucking the rules and system the whole way through and just and fighting, you know, thank you. So, so super cool on that. But how does how does that take place? How does a kid come over, not know the language, have to learn the language. Not only where’s the bathroom but where’s my snowboard.

00:52:25:11 – 00:52:26:22
Brandon Adams
Like how does that how does it get to.

00:52:26:22 – 00:52:58:11
Brolin Mawejje
That strap in? Yeah, crazy. I mean, I take it back to look, you know, I don’t know if people believe, but I’m a big believer, you know, I think I believe in God. I believe in luck and circumstances. So by moving to Massachusetts and one of the coldest days during winter, what a coincidence. Because the school that I go to ended up having a program where on every Wednesday they would take kids to local mountain, the local mountain ended up having to be 35 minutes away from the school.

00:52:58:17 – 00:53:17:14
Brolin Mawejje
It was in the shopping valley. So I just ended up in the right school that somehow had kids whose parents and families that were already, into skiing. I didn’t know this, but you know, later on I learned Lincoln was a little bit wealthy and wealthy families get to go to skiing. They go to Vermont, go to New Hampshire.

00:53:17:16 – 00:53:39:14
Brolin Mawejje
And the kid I met day one, like the guy that turns into my best friend, happened to be obsessed with snowboarding because he was so obsessed with snowboarding, he wanted to be an Olympic snowboarder. It’s in Olympics. In 2002, he was inspired by Olympics in Salt Lake City. His family was into skiing and snowboarding and I didn’t know what he was into.

00:53:39:14 – 00:53:57:09
Brolin Mawejje
He was like, oh, you know, we’re going to go to you should come and, you know, join us. We’re about to go ski and snowboard. Yeah. I have no idea. Not coming. The winter finishes because, remember, I come in the middle of a year in the middle of the winter. The next following time, winter comes around, I’m like, I want to try this.

00:53:57:11 – 00:54:01:23
Brolin Mawejje
I’ve just spent a whole winter hearing about skiing, snowboarding, watching snow.

00:54:01:24 – 00:54:03:13
Brandon Adams
What age is this by now?

00:54:03:15 – 00:54:10:20
Brolin Mawejje
This is, 13, 11.5, 12.5. So nine out by 13. I’m like.

00:54:10:20 – 00:54:11:14
Brandon Adams
Okay.

00:54:11:16 – 00:54:33:04
Brolin Mawejje
I’ve been in the country for a year or two. Okay, let me try this skiing thing. My guardian at the time, Susan, her husband, was a huge skier. And at the time, my mother’s not my mother’s favorite client. My mother’s longest client turned into. She turned into family. Because what happens is my mother helps out my mother not to.

00:54:33:04 – 00:54:43:13
Brolin Mawejje
She does a great job. But the East African ladies are so good at being hospice nurses that their patients end up, you know, living longer than what the initial intended date.

00:54:43:18 – 00:54:44:10
Brandon Adams
Of.

00:54:44:12 – 00:55:05:10
Brolin Mawejje
Living is. Yeah, they end up becoming family. Susan ends up becoming my guardian, and her husband was an avid skier. So he’s like, okay, let me take you out. You can learn how to ski. He introduces me to the idea you I can bring you with me. And the school already had a program. So you said, okay, if you go with the school, I’ll introduce you a few weekends.

00:55:05:10 – 00:55:32:09
Brolin Mawejje
This is only two weekends out of that sixth grade year. That’s the first time we went. Okay, There’s skiing. Remember? I had a best friend from fifth grade. Each year he’s telling me about. This is what we do as a family. Seventh grade. There’s a program. There’s a chill program. Chill program is within the schools. And obviously by this time, I have guardians and people trying to figure out during summer, you go to summer camp during, you know, they’re trying to keep you busy because I was a homeless little kid.

00:55:32:11 – 00:55:52:19
Brolin Mawejje
And by being busy, and joining kind of the available programs, that’s how I stay busy. And that winter is the winter. I joined chill, and every Wednesday the busses over pick us up, give you gear, teach you how to snowboard, bring you back, feed you. That was the key part, give you a hot chocolate was great. And food, you know.

00:55:52:19 – 00:56:11:23
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. And did that for a whole winter. And my best friend, his family, they’ll go compete, they’ll go do whatever. They’ll just disappear. Come back. My God, where have you been? I tried it out. One that same season, they start to invite me over. Hey, can you come on a trip with us? Hey, we know you’re not doing anything.

00:56:11:23 – 00:56:33:12
Brolin Mawejje
Come with us. Let’s introduce you. And through that introduction, I started that on my buddy snowboards. Let me try to snowboard. He gets into skating, and of seventh grade, I’m like, okay, I want to get into skating. I got gifted all skateboard, get into skating. And by hanging out with that crew of kids, his, his friends, him, I slowly became family with him.

00:56:33:12 – 00:56:53:12
Brolin Mawejje
Their families were always a sleepover. One kid’s house I’ll sleepover another kid’s house. Just because of the instability with my mom and what was happening, I was moving. I was in transition into Susan’s house. My guardian. I’m moving out of my mom’s so that the program did not split us. The idea is you don’t want child services to take your, you know, your kid.

00:56:53:14 – 00:56:54:06
Brandon Adams

00:56:54:08 – 00:57:18:18
Brolin Mawejje
As that’s happening, snowboarding became the refugee of, like, I mean, you’re you’re having a hard time at home. Let’s go skating. Hey, you know, man, you look sad again. Come over my house. We’ll we’ll take you snowboarding. Yeah. I just happened to be a very homeless, sad kid that really everybody felt bad for. Yeah. And I, I didn’t have money to join the traditional sports.

00:57:18:18 – 00:57:36:19
Brolin Mawejje
I didn’t have anybody to drive me to take you, you know, do this or that, and I just, you know, I was willing to say yes. So my best friend’s family just kept inviting me to trips. And slowly one day, the dad and mother, like, we love having you as part of our family and we’ll love to adopt you.

00:57:36:19 – 00:57:45:21
Brolin Mawejje
And if you could kind of. Yeah, just kind of grow up with the boys. Once again, luck, circumstance. Right place. So my snowboard.

00:57:45:21 – 00:57:47:24
Brandon Adams
How were you at this time?

00:57:48:01 – 00:58:10:03
Brolin Mawejje
By the time they come around, let’s see. One winter. Two winter. By the time they come around to the. Hey, we’re moving the fam. At this time, we’re 1415. So I start snowboarding. I get introduced to snow sports at 13. Yeah, 2 or 3 weekends. 14. Same thing. You know, because the program comes. I only wore runs for 12, ten weeks.

00:58:10:05 – 00:58:17:13
Brolin Mawejje
The following winter he’s getting good at snowboarding. So the family started to plan to move out of the west, move out west from Boston.

00:58:17:15 – 00:58:20:02
Brandon Adams
Just because he’s getting really good at snowboarding.

00:58:20:04 – 00:58:32:03
Brolin Mawejje
Getting good at snowboarding, maybe I do you understand the family dynamics, why they move, but mainly because the kids were getting very into snowboarding and they were that type of family of we follow and support the kids dreams.

00:58:32:03 – 00:58:32:18
Brandon Adams
Love that.

00:58:32:20 – 00:58:50:02
Brolin Mawejje
But if if there were to move, I was going to go back to square one. I was going to be homeless again. Yeah. And at the time I was going to prep school, so I would stay at school for, boarding school, not prep school, but I would go to school. I had a scholarship through the community that collect that collected money.

00:58:50:04 – 00:58:57:00
Brolin Mawejje
I’ll go live at school for a few weeks. I’ll come home when I came home, or either go to Susan’s house or go to my friend’s house.

00:58:57:02 – 00:58:59:02
Brandon Adams
But you never stay at your own home.

00:58:59:04 – 00:59:15:20
Brolin Mawejje
Oh, I was me and my mother by the time I’m six. Man, that we our relationship kind of dies right there and then, you know, lasted a year and a half. There was so much trauma. She kind of, I get kicked out of the house. Okay. Long story. It was.

00:59:15:22 – 00:59:16:18
Brandon Adams
Because you were being.

00:59:16:20 – 00:59:18:01
Brolin Mawejje
Very,

00:59:18:03 – 00:59:20:23
Brandon Adams
Rebellious or was it?

00:59:21:00 – 00:59:48:09
Brolin Mawejje
Well, it’s a mixture of, like, she started being afraid of raising a young male. Oh, that. She was not ready. Oh, the. You know, neighbors are calling police names. I mean, the only thing I could say is, like, she would come home and just beat you for no reason, you know? What am I saying? Beat you, like, slap you like she came home one day and taking a cable like this and whipping you, you know, like you’re in Africa.

00:59:48:13 – 01:00:08:20
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, because it was normal in Africa. Kids would get corporal punishment all the time. Like if you didn’t do something a dope beat, you. So that same lifestyle is what kept us like kind of under key and lock and under the fist. Once you come to America and you go to your over your friends houses and the parents are so nice, you come home, you just getting a whipping after a while you don’t want to come home.

01:00:08:24 – 01:00:22:04
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. Because the only time I’m seeing you is in oh yeah. I learned as I got older society prices you you’re working three jobs. You’re not getting treated well, your job. So whatever was happening, you should come and.

01:00:22:04 – 01:00:23:16
Brandon Adams
Bring that and bring that home.

01:00:23:18 – 01:00:45:21
Brolin Mawejje
At home. And the more you do that, the more it’s cost. More you get beat, the more, we’re hearing screaming over an apartment, blah, blah, blah. Police is coming over. Whoa. What’s happening? Nothing. Oh. Why is the kid’s eyes red? Oh, no. Nothing. You know, you can only brush off what’s happening so long. Yeah, the society in this school stack in consign.

01:00:45:23 – 01:01:08:06
Brolin Mawejje
One day I showed up. I had marks on my back. Now the school every. You know, every day the principal comes checks in on you said. And that creates fear because the more the school gets weren’t involved, the more child services gets involved. Because when I came over on the last boy’s green card. Yeah, there’s an abused kid in the house.

01:01:08:06 – 01:01:23:06
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. And once that gets put in, there has to be a split. So there’s three ways to split it. I go back to Africa, which I didn’t want to do, and I was not going to do, because I knew at that point I was like, oh, this is America. I’m not going back.

01:01:23:08 – 01:01:24:03
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:01:24:05 – 01:01:42:09
Brolin Mawejje
I either get put in child services and you get put in a home like, you know, some orphan home and somebody adopts you or you get moved into a family member, somebody takes you under their wing. My mom was like, I was going to send him home. So I said, no. I ran away from home for a couple of days, and I’s rebellious.

01:01:42:09 – 01:01:58:00
Brolin Mawejje
Definitely gonna say mom. So before child Services could step in generously. And I thought my whole life of this Susan, who was my mom’s client, turned into a family member, her husband and herself offered to take me in and give me a home.

01:01:58:05 – 01:02:02:06
Brandon Adams
So, how close are you guys right now, then?

01:02:02:07 – 01:02:25:00
Brolin Mawejje
Susan, I talked to talk to her as I was coming over. This is I have this is my guardian angel. This is incredible. You know, to two polar opposites. You see, Susan’s a white, you know, lady with, gray hair, all gray blue eyes. You know, the typical. Like, you’re not even picture that. That is like, She almost looks like a southern grandma, you know, sweet grandma.

01:02:25:00 – 01:02:26:13
Brandon Adams
But, yeah.

01:02:26:15 – 01:02:46:18
Brolin Mawejje
She helped change so many kids lives, including my wife. But, you know, from teaching me, how do you eat? How should you walk? How do you know? Because we’re living in Lincoln. Lincoln is a small white town. How should you act around people? How do you disarm yourself so people feel safe and they don’t look at you like a threat?

01:02:46:20 – 01:03:04:10
Brolin Mawejje
How do you talk to people? I wouldn’t ski or have the navigating map to know how to navigate the new environment. I was in without Susan. Without Susan I’m not prepped enough to be able to have another family be like oh we’re so comfortable. Oh my God what a great kid. Let’s bring him into our family.

01:03:04:12 – 01:03:23:16
Brolin Mawejje
Somebody had to prep you from being a kid who was basically on the streets in Africa and roaming around to where is somebody who somebody wants to bring it to a home. And she to this day, I mean, whether I’m like, hey, I gotta figure out, should I go to school? Should I keep snowboarding to should I get married?

01:03:23:16 – 01:03:30:05
Brolin Mawejje
Oh, hey, how are you? Like checking in to everything? Yeah, she’s my everything, you know?

01:03:30:07 – 01:03:31:03
Brandon Adams
That’s awesome, man.

01:03:31:04 – 01:03:44:04
Brolin Mawejje
I have five mothers. I’ve, my own biological mother, I have Susan, I have my adoptive mother, Sandy. And then I have, another mother picked up. Okay, so I’m, I’m a product of community, man.

01:03:44:10 – 01:04:02:07
Brandon Adams
That’s amazing. Man, I love to hear that, you know, and and being open for you to to be open to trusting somebody on the outside that, hey, doesn’t look like you come from a completely different culture, you know, and go, what made those people something that you would say, I trust them, you know.

01:04:02:09 – 01:04:36:09
Brolin Mawejje
Their heart, their approach to the situation. I was coming from hardship, already traumatized. But I think the people who received us, my sister, my sisters, including, my mother, the community that was around us, you know, allowed to see where we were coming from and did not allow us to wear that as a blanket throughout. You know, the rest of our existence, we were able to take what was happening because the chill and going snowboarding was therapy.

01:04:36:09 – 01:04:52:22
Brolin Mawejje
You know, she was she, Susan, because my mother knew nothing about it. Somebody has to sign the release form. Somebody has to middle school you. There’s a release form for everything. You know, you bring it to your mommy, I, I know I don’t want you to go, you know. So the whole year was miserable, but start going under Susan’s tutelage.

01:04:52:22 – 01:05:23:03
Brolin Mawejje
Oh, yeah. Oh, this is good for you. Yeah. You need more outdoor stuff. We’re going to go to, went to a forage camp where you raised goats and. Yeah, chickens for summer, you know, so she understood that I needed. And as a family, we needed rehab to be able to function really well within American society. And she took that on onto herself to really teach us that you need somebody, you need a guardian angel, regardless where you go to teach you how to walk through the new environment you’re in.

01:05:23:07 – 01:05:36:21
Brolin Mawejje
I think that’s what we’re all well, I don’t want to get into, but I think that’s where we’re lacking right now, you know? Yeah, that’s what creates the vision, because you need somebody to. I can’t just come in as I am and be like, oh, this is me. Take me as I am. You know, I slowly need to learn the customs.

01:05:36:22 – 01:05:48:09
Brolin Mawejje
Okay. How do I greet you? How do I greet you? How do I how do I make you feel safe? How do I make myself feel safe? How do I speak? How do I communicate? Somebody has to slowly trickle that information into you.

01:05:48:11 – 01:05:55:18
Brandon Adams
I think to what you’re getting in right there is like a lot of people will say I am me, learn how to accept me.

01:05:55:20 – 01:05:58:00
Brolin Mawejje
By this community.

01:05:58:02 – 01:06:23:06
Brandon Adams
But this is a community, right. And so the world is a community. Yeah. And we all need to kind of learn how to accept each other. Right? It’s not everything goes my way. And it’s where do I been for you and where do you been for me? Right. How do I how am I make this thing palatable for each one of us to feel safe, like you said, or to feel, like we’re heard or to feel like,

01:06:23:08 – 01:06:40:10
Brandon Adams
Now, it doesn’t mean I get everything I want. It just means I have to understand your point of view and decide, like, okay, maybe, don’t do this, but, man, you got to understand where I come from, too. And it doesn’t mean what you think it means. You know, there’s two points to every coin like that. And I love that you said that.

01:06:40:10 – 01:07:00:22
Brandon Adams
Like, you have to have someone that can, you know, take you through. And so as you, as you start to meet people and, let help let them help you transition over. They may not look like you. They may not act like you, they may not do whatever. But you have someone there that can help introduce you to other parts of culture across the world.

01:07:00:24 – 01:07:17:14
Brandon Adams
You know, that’s a really cool that’s a it’s a very mature thing for, for someone. And I really kind of throw that back to you growing up so quickly. You know, I don’t know that we can particularly, in America grow that fast, you know, as kids.

01:07:17:16 – 01:07:18:05
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah.

01:07:18:07 – 01:07:33:09
Brandon Adams
But you got your, your five guardian angels that have kind of helped you along the way, too. That’s really cool. Yeah. So you and your best friend, you’ll move off. Do you are you competitive with him when it comes to snowboarding as you’re going through stuff?

01:07:33:12 – 01:07:54:13
Brolin Mawejje
Oh, man, I sucked. Absolutely sucked. We were just such close friends that there was so patient as a family for me to kind of touch up. The kids were already competing. He was competing at a young age to to make the U.S. team, you have to start competing at a young age. They understood kind of the structure of what it takes.

01:07:54:15 – 01:08:15:11
Brolin Mawejje
So he would take school off to go compete and do homeschooling while still navigating school and figuring out life. So when I move in with a family, I had been trying all different sports. You know, I was just kind of like, okay, I guess I’ll snowboard with the family. But snowboarding was not the reason I moved. I moved in with the family because I didn’t want to lose a family.

01:08:15:11 – 01:08:18:07
Brolin Mawejje
You know, the homies were moving the house, the homie moves.

01:08:18:08 – 01:08:18:24
Brandon Adams
I mean, I.

01:08:18:24 – 01:08:36:01
Brolin Mawejje
Got nowhere to go. So I was like, I’m in. And then once, once he showed up, he was good. His little brother was good. His little, little brother was good. Yeah. So you just kind of fall into the family dynamics of like, okay, I’m at the bottom of the totem pole. You know, though, I’m like, kind of a little older than the little, little brothers.

01:08:36:03 – 01:08:50:10
Brolin Mawejje
It’s okay. Because you know what? Whenever we go out there like, oh, this is our brother. You know, there was so proud of me being a part of the family. It’s like, oh, my brother’s coming, of course. Oh, he. Well, he can’t stop. Well, too bad we can snowball, you know. So they they took those battles on for me.

01:08:50:10 – 01:09:10:16
Brolin Mawejje
You know what I’m saying? Some random person comes up, oh, you’re black. The white snowball. Look, why are you here? You know that like that. That would be my rebounder. You know, my little satsuma. Or I can do better tricks. And, you know, because of a good snowboarders there, I almost borrowed their confidence. You know, I borrowed off their swag off the.

01:09:10:18 – 01:09:28:18
Brolin Mawejje
You know, now, I have a family, I have brothers, I belonged even just back, you know, and you start to like, believe. So it was never competitive because the pack was like to get good at snowboarding. You have to do it as a pack. You show up competing, you’re going to injure yourself. You’re going to paralyze yourself. Are you going to die?

01:09:28:20 – 01:09:45:15
Brolin Mawejje
At least if you want to get to the level that we were trying to get to. Yeah. So you had to do it as like encouraging as a stand as loving. And I’m gonna be very frank with you at that age and through that transition because we moved to Jackson Wyoming, I never heard of Jackson, Wyoming.

01:09:45:21 – 01:10:15:19
Brolin Mawejje
So we moved from Boston, Massachusetts, Middle Boston to Jackson, Wyoming. It’s like moving from middle of Dallas to Middle Waco. Yeah. You know, like living in a it filled. You did not know what was happening. Yeah. Small town Wyoming, one of two black people in the town. But one of the most active towns, a lot of athletes, a lot of, very hardcore skiers and snowboarders at the time.

01:10:15:19 – 01:10:42:20
Brolin Mawejje
Travis Rice, one of the biggest names in snowboard, ends up being one of the biggest names in snowboarding, is starting his precipice of his career is just starting out. And the idea of moving to Jackson with Travis Rice. And that’s when majority of snow is. That is what forced me to be a really good snowboarder. Course the difficulty or terrain, the difficulty of just the snow pack that you had to deal with, and then the learning kind of, pushed on.

01:10:42:20 – 01:11:00:03
Brolin Mawejje
My brothers created, you know, and so they slowly you’re back to surviving. No, I’m not thinking, oh, my God, I got to get good because I’m going to get a sponsor. I never thought about that. Yeah, I was thinking, I gotta get down this mountain because I’m like, I feel like I’m about to die. You know? There’s a lot of snow.

01:11:00:03 – 01:11:09:09
Brolin Mawejje
There’s a cliff here, and you’re seeing your brothers pop off different cliffs. Obviously, you don’t want to be, you know, you don’t want to be a coward. So you’re like, yeah, I’ll.

01:11:09:09 – 01:11:10:00
Brandon Adams
Go, I’ll go.

01:11:10:00 – 01:11:27:02
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. You know, and slowly that turns into oh yeah, oh yeah. And then by the time people lay eyes on you, you guys are just putting around the mountain like it’s nothing, because that’s what you’ve been groomed to know. And then you come back to smaller mountains or smaller resorts and, like, oh, I guess this would go to snowboarding.

01:11:27:04 – 01:11:36:03
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. But it was a surprise. It wasn’t like something I was going for because they were going for it. It was their dream. I was just a participant along the dream.

01:11:36:05 – 01:11:52:20
Brandon Adams
Was there any and you talk about the support system that you that you had and how it kind of, you know, it was a snowball going down, no pun intended, snowball going downhill of like your growth and maturity and your, and your belief in yourself. Right. Was there, as you did start to see you said it took you a long time.

01:11:52:22 – 01:12:17:00
Brandon Adams
Obviously not. You know, because you you quickly, you know, from the time you’re 14 and you start to you’re 18 and competing. Yeah. Okay. So by the time that I mean that’s not a long time. Was there a time where you quickly ramped past your brothers and was and as you did, ramp past them, was there any animosity to,

01:12:17:02 – 01:12:23:02
Brandon Adams
Hey, man, we we brought this guy along, and now he’s, like, leaving us in the dust.

01:12:23:04 – 01:12:43:12
Brolin Mawejje
By now, because, I mean, to this day is that Aki? And we have a middle brother who’s. He’s a Hall of Famer snowboarder. It just maybe timing wise, he just kind of gave up a little bit and did not want to and then came back to it at the wrong time. Lost sponsors. But the brothers kept getting better and better, you know.

01:12:43:12 – 01:12:57:16
Brolin Mawejje
And then as I kept almost living out their dreams, they kept supporting because now one of us has made it because in pro shape, you know, everybody wants to one day will be pro, but not everybody’s going to make it. And then once one of us makes it, it’s like we all made it. We’ve all made it, you know?

01:12:57:16 – 01:13:17:03
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, me making it. They tell me all the time, well, you made it because we made you good. Which is to share. Yeah, yeah. You know, because if I was doing it. So I don’t think I would have kept going this cold mornings, you know, long nights. Huge jumps, like, if you’re staying down, a huge jump and you just about to shit yourself, you know, versus stand out, a huge jump on you.

01:13:17:03 – 01:13:27:13
Brolin Mawejje
But as a god, man, it’s okay. I’m scared. Dude. Let’s go. You know, that’s a different conversation than you forcing yourself through this so you can get to that, you know, the next stage.

01:13:27:15 – 01:13:29:17
Brandon Adams
So you guys did it as a community, in the.

01:13:29:19 – 01:13:33:03
Brolin Mawejje
Media, as a community still still to this day snowboard as a.

01:13:33:03 – 01:13:56:14
Brandon Adams
Community. So I talked to you earlier about who are you. And well you had said that you didn’t, you would wanted to put your name as a pro border, not as Olympic border because there’s a dynamic change between people who go for the Olympics or people who go for the love of the game. Yeah. Basically.

01:13:56:14 – 01:14:06:00
Brandon Adams
Yeah. And you said, I still have love for the game. And that’s why I say pro border, because it’s not just about that. You elaborate on the two differences there just for a minute.

01:14:06:02 – 01:14:39:01
Brolin Mawejje
I mean, when I started snowboarding, it was therapy for me. When I continued snowboarding, my skill sets and timing were just kind of something that just happen to allow for alignment with the Olympics, you know? Right time. I could get the FIS points, I could go chase the different competitions and become an Olympic snowboarder. Chasing the competition side of snowboarding got me better at snowboarding, but as a true snowboarder, I see myself as a lifelong snowboarder.

01:14:39:03 – 01:15:04:15
Brolin Mawejje
And in the industry, you work so hard to get acceptance by from the core snowboarders and you want that pool and love from the snowboarders, because I feel like the Olympics come around every four years right now. We just came off an Olympics. Everybody was aware of what snowboarding is. But after the Olympics and everybody, majority of the main mass kind of moves on to the next thing.

01:15:04:17 – 01:15:34:03
Brolin Mawejje
In snowboarding, there are people that come in to try to gain that glory. They snowboard, snowboard, snowboard, so they can kind of feed off the fame of, oh, I went to Olympics, let me get the media, let me get the sponsorships. But they don’t snowboard. Not no shade, they don’t snowboard as true snowboarders. And then there’s true snowboarders who sandwich in the hand, living a ten room and deep just doing it for the love of the game, who, the core industry of snowboarding.

01:15:34:03 – 01:15:56:15
Brolin Mawejje
They carry the industry. You know, you need your pro pro snowboarders to be like, okay, that’s what you need. You need you need pro snowboarders to be like, that’s the aim. But it’s being accepted by everybody. Like being able to show up to the mountain and the next cog kid, the local kid can be like, yeah, so manual, you know, my mountain all the way to a pro being able to be like, yo, what’s up, yo my mountain?

01:15:56:17 – 01:16:17:14
Brolin Mawejje
And sometimes if you chase one avenue, you lose out on being able to be relatable. So I am a pro snowboarder and I’m going to be a lifelong snowboarder. I’d rather have that be my description than the eight years I tried and chased and got to a competition and, checked it off the list, you know?

01:16:17:16 – 01:16:46:16
Brandon Adams
Yeah, it’s very cool. Like to understand, like the where the heart set for it, you know, and, and I think that’s really what you’re trying to get at is, look, I wouldn’t be where I’m at if I didn’t have that community push me. And, we win together. So even during those four years when the sun is shining on us, I’m still here with you guys, you know, and so trying to just want to make sure I set that, that scope correctly as to as to where and what you’re doing.

01:16:46:16 – 01:17:03:19
Brandon Adams
You know, and what you were speaking about when you talked about why you didn’t want to announce yourself one certain way versus the other. And I think that’s a very cool, you know, perspective for you. Yeah. When you go to another person mountain, you said, my mountain. Does that just mean, like, my home turf?

01:17:03:21 – 01:17:06:07
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, yeah, it’s like surfing or skating.

01:17:06:07 – 01:17:33:00
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Yeah. Like the one I hit all the way all the time. Or this is like my golf course or mascot ramp or or whatever. Like, this is, my local park. Yeah. You know, and so when somebody comes on your your place to you. Hey, have you seen so-and-so take this to that or whatever. And you guys are giving each other tips of where to go, or is it like, does it become does it ever become competitive as did oh, let me show you plays to see if you can handle this.

01:17:33:05 – 01:17:51:13
Brolin Mawejje
Oh no, I mean, you catch me on a good day, I’ll show you where. All the best experience and the best snow is. I spent that. I spent this past December doing that. You get off, you know, you get out of your car, you get off the bus. Because I usually take the bus to the bus of the mountain, and you meet a random stranger you like, yo, you want to go ride?

01:17:51:15 – 01:18:11:00
Brolin Mawejje
Where you out? I grew up riding here. Oh. You okay? And I’m going to show you the thrill and the excitement of what it feels like to snowboard. You know that that’s really the love of the game. That feeling that you’re chasing that high of like, oh my God. Like. I’m free. I can feel, I feel alive, but I feel like I’m playing with death.

01:18:11:00 – 01:18:34:10
Brolin Mawejje
But I feel like, you know I’m floating I want, I want to share that energy with everybody you know. Yeah. The only time there’s competition in snowboarding and I mean, you could look this up and call me if you were wrong. The only time is maybe when people have to flip the switch on. So the Olympics. And I think that’s where there’s a lot of a little bit of an animosity because, competition gets torn down, you know, there’s feelings.

01:18:34:12 – 01:18:55:22
Brolin Mawejje
There’s not even support throughout all the different countries. I mean, I competed for Uganda. The IOC was sending money to Uganda. You got to send me a third of that money. And I was scraping, you know, basically living out of my car in the summer to go to hood and, like, working three jobs. You know, this is not like, oh, Kumbaya, you win the Olympics.

01:18:55:22 – 01:19:16:19
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. You know, some rich kid. No, this is I crawled and worked for every single little inch of my snowboarding skill. You know, it was not just given, and because of that, not too many people compete, you know, because of the high stakes. So if you see somebody just like trying to you know, trying to pass on the stock.

01:19:16:21 – 01:19:24:00
Brandon Adams
But isn’t in general skiing or snowboarding, isn’t that more of a wealthy hobby?

01:19:24:02 – 01:19:26:20
Brolin Mawejje
It is. Yeah. This.

01:19:26:22 – 01:19:47:23
Brandon Adams
And so I mean so hearing people talk about like I’ve had you’re one of the few that I’m not saying you’re the only one, but it would seem like for everyone that has the skill set to become great at, wealthy hobbies, people who are great golfers on tour came from percentage. High percentage were people that came from a wealthy family.

01:19:48:00 – 01:20:06:21
Brandon Adams
You know, they got the best golf courses, the best golf coaches, the best, places to go do and travel and compete and learn. Same for skiing and snowboarding. Like that’s a very expensive hobby to be involved in. There’s travel and who you know and where you get and what access you have.

01:20:06:21 – 01:20:08:16
Brolin Mawejje
And very true.

01:20:08:18 – 01:20:24:15
Brandon Adams
So the there’s a little bit of a juxtaposition there when it comes to where the salt of the earth guys, that kind of the roots, the true nitty gritties, but all probably kind of silver spoon kids, right?

01:20:24:17 – 01:20:46:19
Brolin Mawejje
Majority of them. And I mean, that’s why I speak to the Boston blue collar kid whose parents have to scrape and, you know, he has a hand-me-down from, you know, a ski sale that happened at the end of the season. And that’s what he’s taking into the season. And you know him on his show, but he’s got to scrape up some cash to make it to the mountain, you know.

01:20:46:19 – 01:21:09:22
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, that that’s what I speak on when I say there’s the core. There’s those of us that did not come from wealth but loved it so much that you gained the skill set. That way you have access to the sport. And then there’s those who just have the affordability. I was speaking to a buddy last night, and I was telling him how proud I was, how far took my snowboarding career, and it’s like, you should be proud.

01:21:09:24 – 01:21:28:00
Brolin Mawejje
Why? Because my parents were spending a lot of money for me to try to do it, and I didn’t take it anywhere. You know? So there are those cats who, you know, family themselves are going to throw as much money at it. They have the resources. But the beauty of snowboarding and such an action sport is many works better for some of us that are broken.

01:21:28:00 – 01:21:43:23
Brolin Mawejje
You know, some of my favorite skaters are like, you know, I come from a little bit of hardship. I come from, you know, a broken home. And you could see it in the style. You see it in the just the way the trick pops. Just you see that whole like, okay, this, this is my opportunity and I’m free.

01:21:44:02 – 01:22:06:15
Brolin Mawejje
You know? And that’s that’s how I approach snowboarding. I was community, I was a community boarder, you know, the community I got to go to next come competition. Okay. I’ll give you a job here. Okay. Collect your job. Oh my God. Well, he collected all his money, bro, and did well. Let’s help collect, like 200, $100 here to add on to what he had so he can fly to the next competition.

01:22:06:16 – 01:22:29:04
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. Okay, show up to this. Oh, wow. I did really well. I didn’t expect this. Yeah. You want some money? Okay. Next to I, I just it was a piece mill, you know, milled it together. Yeah. When I was young, when I was a freshman in college, I wanted to go to medical school. And to go to medical school, you have to write an essay to describe who you are, why you want to go to medicine.

01:22:29:06 – 01:22:48:10
Brolin Mawejje
That’s such a complex story that describing my story was so complex that my brother and I decided we would do a project. So we filmed a little, you know, kind of back in the day, homemade film, meet him interviewing me in town, telling my story. And I put that story out there. So that was out in the community.

01:22:48:12 – 01:23:08:00
Brolin Mawejje
That was called Far From Home. Red bull ends up buying the rights to the story, amplifying it, showcasing in a lot of countries. We did a tour, festival tour with it. And that was also part of my badge of. No, I’m not some rich kid who was showing up saying, oh, I’m snowboarding. This is really where I come from.

01:23:08:02 – 01:23:26:02
Brolin Mawejje
He was seeing a lot of people have watched my snowboarding grow, you know, from watching me first come to Wyoming and be like, oh, wow. Well, I guess he’s a part of this family, too. I think a lot of people, I know it in my heart. A lot of people did not expect me out of the brothers to be the, you know, pro snowboarder.

01:23:26:02 – 01:23:49:03
Brolin Mawejje
On the one hand, I mean, all of us are pro snowboarders at that level. But, it was, you know, a bit more or less expected. So every time you did, well, I remember I did well in Argentina and the commute I posted it and the community in Jackson came together and they were so excited to celebrate just that little win, that we did a little raffle.

01:23:49:03 – 01:24:04:16
Brolin Mawejje
I think Red bull gave us some cans, we gave us some products and that from that little rough, I had enough money to pay for coaching, my first coaching and then, coaching. The coach liked me so much and how hard I would show up. And my hard work is, I’ll give you coaching for free for the next two years.

01:24:04:18 – 01:24:25:12
Brolin Mawejje
So it’s it’s how you approach people and what you add into community. My idea is you give me a room to come stay, you find your kitchen clean, you know, you allow me in your house, I’m going to eat off that table. I’ll make sure the parts are washed. You know, I’m not going to just eat and say, oh, thank you so much for the meal I needed that, it’s like, no, I’ll.

01:24:25:17 – 01:24:26:06
Brandon Adams
Do my part.

01:24:26:06 – 01:24:50:08
Brolin Mawejje
I’ve never seen that happen. Okay. Let me. And the more I showed up like that, the more. And that’s why I kind of love the whole description of I’m a personal, but I heart because the community has accepted me, and I rather get the acceptance from the community than from the influencer or the YouTube or somebody being like, you know, the community understands how hard it is to eat shit in the morning.

01:24:50:08 – 01:25:13:10
Brolin Mawejje
Excuse my language to fall really hard, almost concussed yourself and have to go pick up a shift that evening. Yeah, go from that shift. And, oh, by the way, I’m on scholarship at school, and school’s my ticket out. Yeah. So a lot of my peers, they give up on the school to pursue the snowboarding thing. I couldn’t because there was no there was no, guarantee in the snowboarding.

01:25:13:12 – 01:25:17:10
Brolin Mawejje
In school, I’ve always known schools. My ticket to really that for.

01:25:17:10 – 01:25:41:05
Brandon Adams
You had no backup plans. You had to play every plan. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a really cool thing is like as you go, you guys go through and you’re talking about you being a from one side of the coin. Snowboarder had to come out of the mud. The other kids that had the opportunity resources to come up. There’s a meet in the middle at some point where you both have a little bit of respect, like the ones down here.

01:25:41:07 – 01:25:56:22
Brandon Adams
It’s so far. But the snowboarding, when you guys come together and you both are kind of on equal planes, there becomes a mutual respect that you came from this side. And I came from that side, and I didn’t have to come the way you came up. But once we get to a certain point, there’s a mutual respect between the both of us.

01:25:56:22 – 01:25:57:09
Brandon Adams
Is that.

01:25:57:11 – 01:26:21:17
Brolin Mawejje
Oh, yeah. When the respect happens, when we both, you know, say you come from worlds, I come from nothing. We have to compete. We wake up at six in the morning. You’re staring down at icy jump on a cold morning. You have to do your hardest trick, you know. And once you see me come in, I can. I had a hammy down women’s fat back in the day when there was the company called Pink and Fat FAM.

01:26:21:21 – 01:26:41:05
Brolin Mawejje
I had a women’s jacket on for three seasons. I was getting made fun of. I didn’t know I was wearing women’s pants for two seasons. You know, but when I snowboarded going respect it. Yeah, this is different. It’s like. It’s like showing up right now. I could show up, how I am. You can show up how you are.

01:26:41:07 – 01:26:52:07
Brolin Mawejje
We have respect for each other. We strap in going respect the way I snowboard, because in the end of the day, game space game, you know? Yeah, you make time to gain a certain skill set.

01:26:52:09 – 01:26:53:08
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:26:53:10 – 01:27:01:11
Brolin Mawejje
I respect a 16 year old this day that I see head of triple A five in the morning. I can’t do that. So I think that’s how you.

01:27:01:15 – 01:27:21:15
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Close the gap. That’s cool. As you’ve gone through and you done a lot of competing and you’ve gotten through the snowboarding side of it, you opened up. I don’t want to say that that closed down, but you kept that part of your life going. And then you jumped into, like you said, a lot of us come over here and we get into the health and medical field.

01:27:21:17 – 01:27:28:15
Brandon Adams
And you decided you want to take a different direction? Yeah. What was that direction? And how did you make that transition?

01:27:28:17 – 01:27:50:06
Brolin Mawejje
Man, the direction that I took. Because I decided rather than doing our path like medicine and trying to stick to the medical system, which I am endeared to, and I love and I understand, I focused a little bit more on the holistic side of things, on the Dr. and the chiropractic route. Right now I’m studying to kind of gain a doctorate in car practic.

01:27:50:08 – 01:28:20:22
Brolin Mawejje
But I started out in MD, premed kind of route. And over the years, which was a long journey for me, myself getting injuries. My father, at the time on my father right now, had been diagnosed with cancer and has been in remission for the last 20 years. So seeing the process of medicine from different facets, I realize that I personally feel like I can make a difference in the community from this stance.

01:28:20:24 – 01:28:50:01
Brolin Mawejje
From the standpoint of helping regulate the nervous system, helping align and, you know, the way I look at it is your nerves. All your nervous system controls everything bones, your muscles, your cells. If it’s 100%, that means everything else has a chance to get 100% right. And that approach allowed me to look at disease, look at injury and recovery so much more different, and allow myself to also dream on.

01:28:50:01 – 01:29:02:20
Brolin Mawejje
How can I come back and be able to add on to the community that built me into I am both the action sports and the outdoor community, and how can I help some of those families growing families and individuals with like.

01:29:02:22 – 01:29:21:17
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s it’s funny that, you know, going down into someone who’s going to be in the chiropractic side of it sounds to me like, I’m remembering the injuries I had and how I could have got back without having surgeries and shut down. And how can I make not my I don’t want to call it a hobby.

01:29:21:21 – 01:29:45:09
Brandon Adams
It’s not a hobby. I mean, yeah, you that you’re one of your professions. How do I make that long if it’s somebody else’s hobby? How do I make that for them easier in life that they can enjoy those things? If I just knew the the correct way to set somebody or get them back to right, get them back to level right as opposed to like, you know, someone’s sick and it’s different people all the time.

01:29:45:09 – 01:29:56:03
Brandon Adams
You’re really focused on something that goes back to the thing you fell in love with. You know, a fixed spine or, you know, shoulder at a place or, or whatever, right?

01:29:56:09 – 01:30:16:22
Brolin Mawejje
Movement. I mean, I wanted to be a orthopedic surgeon for so long. I want to work with some type of bones. And, you know, I realized I shadowed, I spent, I started working at Mass General because my father, my first father, got cancer. And through that opportunity, I worked for his doctor, still working on Mass General 16.

01:30:16:24 – 01:30:43:24
Brolin Mawejje
My mother was already in the Massachusetts hospital nursing system. My sister’s, within the nursing hospital system. And the more I go through the nursing and the medical system, you realize that the doctor I was shadowing would see a patient that one time for maybe 20 minutes. Five minutes? After the surgery, for example, after my surgeries, I’ll see my surgeon before surgery, during my surgery, and that’s it.

01:30:44:01 – 01:31:06:07
Brolin Mawejje
But when I was going through the other side of the recovery, I’d never see my surgeon again. And what happened is in 2022, in 2020, I blew out my shoulder. I had to improve my skill sets, trying to push. I’m trying to push for the 2022 Olympics when I blow on my shoulder. I mean, I have a gnarly injury scar, which you could see.

01:31:06:09 – 01:31:25:02
Brolin Mawejje
My surgeon was quick to be like, okay, come in, let me fix it. And usually, you know, you’re high end after yours, like, okay, fix it. But at that point I was so down bad that I started to realize the trend. He’s going to fix it. It’s okay. Now what’s going to happen? I didn’t hit me until the country shut down and the surgery was done.

01:31:25:02 – 01:31:53:17
Brolin Mawejje
Everything was done. But I’d worked for years to try to go to the next Olympics. I couldn’t move my shoulder, I couldn’t move my neck. I couldn’t move my midsection. The only person that could move everything I make it work was a chiropractor, and I was, I think, halfway through applications, I was doing an MD, MPH program, and I was finishing the MPH portion, because that’s kind of how I, I wanted to pay for my medical studies.

01:31:53:19 – 01:32:16:24
Brolin Mawejje
And she convinced me that there is more to the body than just understanding the actual location, the actual injury. If you understand the mechanism of the engine, if you understand how the whole intertwining of the body works through the brain, the spine, the nervous system, you can really change more lives than just saying, okay, you broke your knee, let me fix it.

01:32:17:01 – 01:32:35:24
Brolin Mawejje
Go see somebody to kind of make you move. I’ll come back when you need me to fix again. Or give me the latest pill. And I seen a lot of suicide that was happening for my peers where they’re having a lot of concussions. You’re taking too many pills. Kids go down a bad path. You know, opiate addiction was a huge thing within a lot of my peers.

01:32:36:02 – 01:33:03:22
Brolin Mawejje
Within, you know, the snowboarding, skiing, industry. And I realized that I was not going to go down an injury then come out of an injury pill addict. It’s just not something that I just wanted to do. Unluckily, once again. Right time, right place. This lady changed my life. And I believe it. You can influence the body by understanding how to create homeostasis within the body, through alignment, through correcting the nervous system.

01:33:03:24 – 01:33:14:18
Brolin Mawejje
You can correct your muscles, your hormones, your organs, your cells, because everything needs the same information, right?

01:33:14:20 – 01:33:31:20
Brandon Adams
That’s amazing. I mean, I got I want to give you a link to a buddy of mine that I had on here, TJ, chiropractor as well. And, and a lot of the things that you say are very similar. And, it’s really cool to see how.

01:33:31:22 – 01:33:57:14
Brandon Adams
There’s traditional medicine and how someone who talks about realignment and you’re with your body, and the body is a mechanism. That’s the second time I’ve heard it the other times from him. Right? But people, when I tell them about some of these things, they go, yeah, that chiropractic stuff, you know, it’s kind of witchdoctor stuff, right. Or snake oil, what they call snake oil on the earth set free.

01:33:57:14 – 01:34:17:07
Brandon Adams
But fake medicine. And I believe that there is levels of people who can do it correctly. Yeah, right. You get someone who’s really good, you’re going to find someone who’s a believer. You get somebody that stands in is not good at their craft or whatever. It’s like, okay, I can see how this doesn’t work for you or for somebody else.

01:34:17:07 – 01:34:42:17
Brandon Adams
But just like there’s the top doctor in the world, just because somebody does that same exam or that same surgery doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful. Right? So I do love, the chiropractic side of things. Sold. I had a was supposed to have a surgery in my neck for a ruptured disc. And what started when I started going to TJ and I’ve made it through without having to have that surgery, you know, and so still a range and everything else.

01:34:42:17 – 01:35:07:07
Brandon Adams
And, those things like, really kind of play into what you’re saying, like, how do we, how do we fix the body, without cutting the body open, you know, wait, all that to say, like, I’m pretty impressed with, you know, the wide range of things that you’ve kind of gone into, right? We’re talking about kid. That was almost a child soldier to someone who made it to the other side.

01:35:07:08 – 01:35:26:08
Brandon Adams
Had never seen snow. Someone who got into something and became like a professional snowboarder, you know, to somebody who’s decided he’s going to get into medicine and completely is taking it on as a super passion, you know, like, I don’t know that there’s something that I’ve heard of yet that you can’t do.

01:35:26:10 – 01:35:51:01
Brolin Mawejje
And there’s a lot of things I can’t do. But it’s just been a blessing of, being in the right place, right time, the Lord’s blessing and just kind of community and being watched over by a lot of angels. Because, I mean, just to speak on the topic of where people are like, oh, well, chiropractic is sells, a snake sells oil.

01:35:51:03 – 01:36:15:03
Brolin Mawejje
In the 19th century, people were bloodletting, all the way until 1938, people were using Lynch’s. I spent ten years looking at cancer. And when I started out within my cancer studies, and obviously a lot of has changed, but a lot of that is trial and error. So you meet somebody out there in the streets, you be like, oh, you’re about to go get, oh, you got knee surgery.

01:36:15:07 – 01:36:28:12
Brolin Mawejje
And everybody wants to convince you they got knee surgery from Tiger Woods. Doctor oh, you know, name the latest athlete. Yeah he he did this person’s knee. But what are the chances that every single video was going to that top dog?

01:36:28:14 – 01:36:30:16
Brandon Adams
Right. It’s not true. Right.

01:36:30:18 – 01:37:02:06
Brolin Mawejje
Just like any profession, if people that are really good at it, you have people that are really shit on it and you have the in between. People can look at chiropractic and be like, well I hear things are cracking. Okay. Bones are cracking. It’s like, well that’s where you are meeting chiropractic. I’m telling you as an athlete who had to go through psychotherapy, had to go through regular therapy just to intertwine into community, had to go through, sports psychology and sports therapy to try to become a better athlete.

01:37:02:08 – 01:37:33:01
Brolin Mawejje
A lot of that uses in neurology, both those and kind of your brain and realigning and re Snapchatting, creating new synapsis in different ways. If you want to become a high level, say, bobsledder or even Olympian, we spent majority of our time making sure you’re connecting the synapsis, you know, going through the emotions. And once you understand how the body works, you realize that whoever’s speaking on the topic they’re talking on don’t know if they have cancer or that they don’t.

01:37:33:03 – 01:37:54:00
Brolin Mawejje
They’re the type of person who’s going to weigh in. They tell him, oh, you have stage four cancer. Wow. Or what can you do for me, doc? Well, I could give you chemo. You could take out the tumor, and we can pray for the best. Versus if you understood how the body works, you could you could have realigned and done things to where pathology and disease is everywhere.

01:37:54:04 – 01:38:15:13
Brolin Mawejje
I come from one of the biggest disease ridden countries. If you and I went back to Uganda, I could walk through the jungle and you might get sick, would take us maybe a week, might take us a day. If a mosquito from Uganda bites me, I could be okay. You might not be. It’s because pathology is around. But the homeostasis of my body is within tune.

01:38:15:15 – 01:38:39:23
Brolin Mawejje
So that when pathology comes to you, when disease comes to you and your healthy disease does not break down something that’s healthy. So once you understand how disease causes chronic disease, and then there’s a cure disease, there’s disease that comes in because you it’s just like having a room that’s rotten. If the room’s already rotten, of course, termites can easily eat the, the wood.

01:38:39:23 – 01:38:59:00
Brolin Mawejje
But if the wood has already been, you know, kind of, stained and prepared, it’s harder for Thomas to start to eat the wood. You kind of understand. So once you understand what this disease really works, you can change people’s perspective of the problem is a big pharma. B you can’t really educate people in their own body.

01:38:59:02 – 01:39:09:11
Brolin Mawejje
I mean you just kind of sound like oh you’re trying to sell me something. It’s like it’s like a cart, it’s car guy trying to sell you a car. This is a 1960 Chevy and you’re like this Jessica.

01:39:09:15 – 01:39:28:11
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think as you go through a lot of TikTok and stuff that’s out right now, showing a lot of the the videos of people cracking and, you know, the experience they go through, it’s there’s some fear that comes with those sounds that happen with that versus like, oh, I think they’re going to break my neck or I think they’re going to do something.

01:39:28:17 – 01:39:41:09
Brandon Adams
I hear that all the time. Like, how do you trust somebody to snap your neck like that? And I’m like, well, I mean, this is how do you trust anybody to do anything? Like, I have to go put my life in the hands of a doctor. That gives me a pill. Was that pill going to kill me? Is that people not going to kill me?

01:39:41:11 – 01:39:54:20
Brandon Adams
I have to go put my hands and the doctor is going to put a surgery on my liver or my heart or whatever. Is that going to kill me? Is it not going to kill me? Yeah. You know the anesthetist that that puts me down. Is it too much? Is it not enough? You know what I mean?

01:39:54:20 – 01:40:19:23
Brandon Adams
So the anesthesiologist. Sorry. Yeah. Is too much. Not enough. Right? Like everything could kill me at some point. If I’m going to get help from another human being on whatever their field is, I have to put trust in their hands. And so I’ve seen the things that have happened for me, you know, through that part of it and realigning my neck and, and some things where I’ve had, like ruptures that doctors immediately told me, you need to have surgery.

01:40:19:23 – 01:40:34:00
Brandon Adams
It’s a nine out of ten. You need to go now and have surgery and get this thing done. And I’m like, how is a surgeon? Like, oh, we’re going to go through your throat right here. And I’m like, nah, I’m good. I’ll go, is there anything else I can do? You know? And so that’s the thing that I went through for myself.

01:40:34:00 – 01:40:53:18
Brandon Adams
And I guess that’s anecdotal at the end of the day. And I’m telling you, one story that’s about me. But I had to put my trust in somebody’s hands that was, you know, could potentially harm me or not. Right. And so that’s what life is. We’re going to make those decisions. You decide to jump off a cliff, took your own life in your hand that could harm you, could not.

01:40:53:18 – 01:40:55:23
Brandon Adams
You know, that’s every decision we make, though, right?

01:40:55:24 – 01:41:32:13
Brolin Mawejje
You know, everything and then everything. You have normal people. Just like you can have a normal snowboarder. You have a pro snowboarder in my instance, as a chiropractors and a narrow based, nervous system doctor, I spent ten years studying this, both sides, ten years, not just in school, but also I’ve been a high level athlete where I had to turn on my shoulder, I tore my leg, and I had to reconnect and go through the rehabilitation to how do I perform at the same level, not just physically, but psychologically, you know, because there’s the physical aspect of it, but you need to be able to be back aligned into the, you know, the

01:41:32:13 – 01:41:54:12
Brolin Mawejje
psychological aspect as well. And my goal is everybody out there, you know, could have a very professional welder who welds big, you know, skyscrapers, and you can have a backyard welder that puts together two plates. And I as long as I’m the best and you come to my practice to my institution, I’m willing to give you the best approach that I have.

01:41:54:12 – 01:42:04:10
Brolin Mawejje
And I’m going to educate you to make sure you understand that there’s a little bit of a difference. And, each level is needed. Yeah. You know, I hope that I can present that credibility.

01:42:04:12 – 01:42:10:00
Brandon Adams
What’s the end goal? Is it to, have your own practice? Is it like, what’s next?

01:42:10:02 – 01:42:33:12
Brolin Mawejje
The next goal is, you know, I’m starting clinic here in Dallas, so I need patients, to be honest, to get through the credits, and residency. But once I finish residency, I’m hoping I can find somebody out there that can teach me a bit more on the business aspect of, like, chiropractic, because I would love to build a space and a clinic, one in Utah and one in Texas.

01:42:33:15 – 01:42:39:24
Brolin Mawejje
But, you know, one where people can go and get the help for themselves and their families that they need.

01:42:40:01 – 01:42:57:02
Brandon Adams
I got a guy for you, TJ. We’re gonna be calling. You expect to call in before this thing airs? Honestly, that’s that’s really cool, man. I love to hear that perspective on kind of what’s next and where you want to go. And and I’ll do anything I can to kind of help you, through that part of it as well.

01:42:57:04 – 01:43:05:12
Brandon Adams
I want to kind of wrap this up with just a few loose ends. What is the relationship like with your mother now?

01:43:05:14 – 01:43:29:17
Brolin Mawejje
Like she with all my mothers, especially my biological mother. And my whole family is great. I, I had a lot of turmoil beginning. I like to say that life started really, life started really shitty of really bad. But the second half of life, it’s up to me what I do, how I show up, and my intention, whether it’s to myself, my family or my community.

01:43:29:19 – 01:43:50:17
Brolin Mawejje
And I’ve taken the opportunities to recreate, rebuild a lot of those relationships, to strengthen them. So I’ve filled I’ve done the work, and along the way, I’ve brought my family closer and try to bring them to also where they do the work for themselves or identify some of that work that needs to be done.

01:43:50:19 – 01:44:03:07
Brolin Mawejje
And I’m happy to say now man, relationships are great and everybody have. Yeah. And it helps to be a bit more old and not have I do not turn out to be a failure. So I think that also helps you know where.

01:44:03:09 – 01:44:07:00
Brandon Adams
Yeah. What is what’s it like with your, with your sisters.

01:44:07:02 – 01:44:18:19
Brolin Mawejje
It’s amazing. Both my sisters have kids that kind of build in their own little community. So it’s nice to kind of see your own relative kind of have the next generation. I feel like it kind of kickstarts that whole gear.

01:44:19:00 – 01:44:20:00
Brandon Adams
Uncle Berlin, Uncle.

01:44:20:00 – 01:44:25:05
Brolin Mawejje
Brian, you know, trying to be a good uncle. I moved to Texas because, to be closer to my sister and the kids.

01:44:25:11 – 01:44:26:05
Brandon Adams
Where they,

01:44:26:07 – 01:44:44:12
Brolin Mawejje
But then Houston, Dallas was kind of the closest school that I really wanted to attend. They doing great. And then, you know, I keep up with both of my moms because I still had my foster brothers. We talk every day. We challenge each other through life and kind of see if we’re doing life correctly. And.

01:44:44:14 – 01:44:57:03
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah, I mean, I’m in a good place in my life, you know, because, I don’t have everything. I don’t have the wealth of the career of what majority of society chases. But I have the things I mean the.

01:44:57:03 – 01:44:58:18
Brandon Adams
Most, namely the people.

01:44:58:23 – 01:44:59:14
Brolin Mawejje
Here.

01:44:59:16 – 01:45:01:11
Brandon Adams
What’s it like with your father now?

01:45:01:13 – 01:45:24:10
Brolin Mawejje
It’s good. It’s great. You know, I, I think as I grow into that man that, you know, he can envision and he sees it, you know, a little bit of a fragment of himself in me. He grows proud. I was able to step up and help a lot of my younger siblings with it’s school phase, help out where I can, and taking that responsibility on us kind of created that.

01:45:24:10 – 01:45:32:05
Brolin Mawejje
Like, you walk, you go from father son to peers. You know, you’re kind of like a man now. You know, you can have the men conversations.

01:45:32:10 – 01:45:44:17
Brandon Adams
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. I noticed you know, you you go by Brolin, but even on your hat, you have Rouleau. Yeah. Tell me that story.

01:45:44:19 – 01:46:08:00
Brolin Mawejje
Real quick. Below is, below. As my kind of young child nickname, you know, my name is, Brolin because my mother loved Thomas Brolin back in 90s 1990. Was a, Swedish soccer player, and she won an Emmy. Brolin, my biblical name is Baron. Because, you know, in Africa, you need a biblical name. And my wages my family name.

01:46:08:00 – 01:46:22:24
Brolin Mawejje
But Beulah was kind of the, it meant a warrior in, you know, a warrior in chaos, bringing peace. And I always kind of brought, you know, that bow, that low kind of energy that bull in a China shop kind of energy to my family, you know?

01:46:23:00 – 01:46:23:06
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:46:23:12 – 01:46:42:06
Brolin Mawejje
Low to optimistic. I was I’m like, oh, now we can do better. We to do better. Yeah. So I just stuck. And then as I got older, went back to Uganda, realized people, people still remember that, image of me. And as I healed, I took power of that. And, that’s my back to my nickname.

01:46:42:08 – 01:46:48:10
Brandon Adams
That’s cool. Man. So. So, Boulos, now you’re putting that out in front of people now and let.

01:46:48:12 – 01:47:02:01
Brolin Mawejje
Me I put it to close friends and family. So, snowboarding community, you know, Boulos kind of, you know. Well known. And, to my friends, you know, if, you know, you know, kind of thing. Yeah. And if you don’t know, it’s all right if, you know, but.

01:47:02:06 – 01:47:15:21
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Yeah, well, that’s cool, man. Well, I want to, give you a minute. Just kind of tell everybody where they can find you, whether they want to find you on social media or if there’s a website address you want to put out or. Yeah.

01:47:15:23 – 01:47:33:11
Brolin Mawejje
Hey, well, I just want to start by thanking you for this opportunity, for allowing me to come here and share my story with your audience. For, you know, the connection that we’re able to make, and just, you know, from an event randomly in New Hampshire to here. Yeah. So thank you so much. Yeah, it means the world.

01:47:33:15 – 01:47:34:22
Brandon Adams
Been a great story.

01:47:34:24 – 01:47:54:10
Brolin Mawejje
Yeah. When and you can find I mean, you can follow my journey, the Byron Meyer underscore, you know, the. I’m sure you guys will put a the handle there. Not active as much in social media, being that I’m in medicine, I’m trying to finish residency right now, so I don’t really have Twitter or any other handles or Facebook.

01:47:54:12 – 01:48:03:15
Brolin Mawejje
But besides that, hopefully I can, you know, meet people individually in real life and follow my journey. Come see me in clinic. I’ll be based out of Dallas.

01:48:03:17 – 01:48:07:08
Brandon Adams
Yeah. For sure. And, what was the what was the video then? You say far from home.

01:48:07:12 – 01:48:14:21
Brolin Mawejje
Far from home. There’s a movie out there. Far from home. Now, I think a couple of YouTube videos that kind of tell my story.

01:48:14:23 – 01:48:27:23
Brandon Adams
Awesome. Rolling Ruler, thank you so much, man. It’s been a really, really cool story. Love here and being a part of this. And, man, I’m so thankful you came on, man. Really appreciate it. Yeah.

01:48:27:23 – 01:48:35:19
Brolin Mawejje
Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me. And sorry for the long winded twists and turns of trying to piece everything together.

01:48:35:21 – 01:48:40:22
Brandon Adams
That’s good man. You got a lot going on. So. Yeah. Well, everybody, until next time. That’s the blueprint.