Help Karim rebuild his dream
Donation protected
Hi My name is Karim Wafa. I immigrated here as a Refugee 5 yrs ago due to the lack of security and stability back home. After spending countless hours over that last 5 years, I was able to build my dream of owning a restaurant to serve my local community the food of my home country.
A little bit more about me:
I live in El Cajon, CA with my wife and 4 kids. My wife and I worked hard and saved every penny over the last five years, taking no vacations or down time, just so we could start our restaurant. We worked all kinds of jobs, manual labor stocking groceries during the day and driving uber at night and in weekends, working mor than 70 hours a week making minimum wage. After 4 years we had saved enough to have a significant sum of money and with the help of loan from family and friends, we had just barley enough to start our restaurant.
The first few months, we didn’t have enough money to hire full staff, so my family and friends helped out with their time to get us going. Soon as we started feeling confident, the pandemic threw a wrench in our dreams. We did not get enough business to sustain the expenses. Even then we kept our dream going by offering take out and catering.
About the incident:
This Wednesday ( Jan 5th 2022 ), at 2:30 AM a fire broke out in the strip mall where we had our restaurant. I was woken up by a call from a good samaritan and rushed to my restaurant. Soon as I reached, I saw a big fire burning the entire building. There were tens of people, neighbors and others who were trying to use fire extinguisher. The fire department reached soon and started controlling the fire. The fire was so intense that it burned down my entire restaurant and the neighboring stores. It took until about 1 PM in the afternoon for the fire to be completely put out.
It took us months and years of hardworking, giving up all comfort, sacrificing little things in life just to save all I could to start my dream restaurant and it took just hours for all of it to be burned down. My family and I are completely devastated. We are a family with 4 little kids, 8yo, 10yo, 12yo and 14yo. We had dreams of giving them a good life. A life that my wife and I were deprived of. My eldest wants to do get good education and serve this country by enlisting in the Navy. He believes he has to give back to this country which he considers his own. The country which brought his family out of rubbles and help put food on the table. This restaurant would have helped us make it all possible for him to pursue his dreams that now we don’t know how we will.
This country is a land of opportunities and I am hopeful to rebuild my dream, our dream as a family. For this, I am seeking support from my community, so I can build back my restaurant and fulfill the dream of giving my family a good life while serving my community. Please help with what you can. Any help and prayers are appreciated.
References:
Read and see the story on NBC San Diego.
Organizer
Karim Wafa
Organizer
El Cajon, CA
