At a very young age, my life changed. When I was 3, I moved to Florence, Italy because my parents wanted me to be bilingual, and that wasn’t the only benefit I gained from living in Italy. For 6 years I thrived there. I made friends, I loved my school and my house, I learned a new language, and most of all, I loved the environment. But when I turned nine, the only life I knew disappeared. My teachers told me, “We are going to have a one-week break because there’s a little virus spreading.” The virus was anything but little. We decided to go to New York for that one week but my father didn’t come, and just that simple decision had led me to not get to see my dad for 2 years. A figure that had been present my entire life, was gone. I was stuck in New York from the beginning of age nine to the end of age ten. Within that time period my parents decided to break the news to me and my sister that they were getting a divorce. I remember my mom calling my dad over zoom and telling us that no matter what, it was all going to be ok. Tears stung my eyes, and all I could think was, it’s NOT going to be ok! At age 10 and 11 I started to go to school in New York. I felt like I didn’t belong. Relationships had already been made, and everyone was a part of a group but me. Each person was wearing a mask and we were all separated into little pods, so I was only allowed to socialize with 8 people. I felt so alone. Finally, one day, I met this girl at a park. We immediately clicked and I felt like I could talk to her about anything. She was there for me when I needed her and I was there for her when she needed me. We started to spend more time together, and soon became inseparable. At 12 years old, I am still best friends with her and I have never felt more connected and comfortable with someone. I feel less like I’m some kind of stranger at school, and more like I belong. There are still some concepts that I find hard to accept, but, deep down, I know that there’s nothing I can do to change the fact that they are real and eventually I will have to find peace with them.
refugee
Ethnographic Interview, Aedan
Everyone has a different experience with their family. Sometimes it’s a positive experience that leaves you with good memories, sometimes it’s a bad experience that leaves you with irreversible scars, or maybe it’s a mix of both. Assia shared with me the experience she had with her family, and how it was like growing up in her family dynamic. She told me “ it was complicated because I would play with the middle child a lot but since there was such a big age gap between us and the younger sibling, she would get excluded a lot.” But nonetheless she still stated that she enjoyed having siblings because when she would get in fights with her parents, her siblings were always by her side. Like most families, being the oldest came with responsibility. She would have to take care of her sisters when she was at school, and she would have to entertain them. She shared a story with me, about a time when she tried to find a way to entertain her younger sibling, that had a disastrous ending: “When the youngest was little she asked me to build a tent, and so I decided to attach the sides of the tent to the curtain rod, but the curtain rod was high up so I had to stand on a chair. And keep in mind we were alone in the house with our grandma. When I jumped off the chair, my skirt got stuck on the chair and I and fell, resulting in me cutting my chin open.” At first, she was angry with her sister because she wouldn’t have gotten hurt if her sister hadn’t asked her to build a tent, but in a short amount of time, she came to realize that it wasn’t her sister’s fault, because she didn’t mean for Assia to get hurt, she was simply asking her older sister for help. Families are so different today than what they used to be and so when I questioned Assia on whether her parents got angry a lot and if there were strict rules in her household, she responded with this. “Yes, at times my parents could be strict, and my dad had a tendency to get angry. But we have to remember to not compare parents from my time versus today’s parents because there were different rules, so even though my dad got mad a lot he was a good father.” In conclusion, family and relationships within your family, are unlike in many ways, but they are also one of the things that bind us together, and shape us into who we are and who we are going to be.
Deep Observation, by Abigael
I woke up earlier that morning, preparing myself to go to school. Into the school compound, I started marching to my classroom and while standing at the classroom’s door, I discovered that there was new arrangement of desks in the class. It was now two desks facing each other with one side almost forming a circle of most of my classmates. Each group member was busy in their own way. Some were doing class work. The front groups were welcoming their day scholar friends who had just arrived, back benchers were shouting so loud with too much excitement that they couldn’t bare hiding their white teeth. I then realized that indeed most of my classmates were already inside the class waiting for the morning lesson to begin. It was one of the coolest and calmest days, the sky was cloudy and rain seemed to announce itself. The wind was blowing, making the leaves fall off the trees, giving me a strong sensation of embracing what the day could have offered me, as I discretely curved my lips and nodded a yes. I then sat down on my favorite seat near the door, next to the window where I use to observe the nature down the valley from my class. My school is up the hill and I placed my bag on the windows arm as usual. In about five minutes to lessons, the teacher came in, in his black closed shoes with one of his black trouser and a blue t-shirt which had a black round mark on it as design. He held two text books in his hands and of course it was time for our chemistry lesson. Since the students in class had not yet notice the teacher inside, they couldn’t stop conversing, so the teacher silently stood up in front of the class for about a minute and called up for the class attention. They got to be aware of the teacher’s presence, got off their books and pens from the bags and lessons began. Turning to pick my book and pen from my bag, I felt some coldness on my skin, from the escaping wind which was passing through the small openings of the window. It made feel at peace like a bird in the sky, I therefore thought of opening the window after the first lessons to enjoy that sensation. And so, I did. Opening the window, I saw students moving up and down. Some were holding their books heading to the library, others to their classes, while some of them just stood up at the verandah, all in their school uniform of grey trousers and skirts with white shirt on top, since it was a Tuesday. Curiously a boy and a girl student stood outside near the window where I was and started conversing about an interesting fact that pulled me out of my observation back to listening to them. I overheard the girl say, “Last term I use to see you much into books and too serious about studies, what is happening this term? You seem to have lost interest”. The boy responded, “my sister just finished her UNEB exams and she did well, she was very happy and excited about joining a world of opportunities and job employment, but now she is home, jobless, struggling, and her papers does not recognize her. But I wonder, I use to see people who never went to school, who do not even hold any certificate of accomplishment in a certain level succeeding in life. The future seems to treat them well. So you’re right I have just lost interest in putting much of my energy into studies, for fear of struggling like she does”. “But fortune favors the bold,” the girl argued, and we should be courageous enough to seek for opportunities here and there to secure the future. So if your sister keeps home, how will she find a solution to that?” Since it was time for the second lesson, they were sent back to their classes. But just after them, their conversion made me think of giving a summary of it to one of my seat mates to know what she thought about it. Together with my seatmate, I came to understand that their conversion would be fruitful if we picked from it the necessary information and through that we gained some life lessons that could be part of us now. Those lessons are as follows: Our efforts, courage and commitment towards everything we do in life determines who we become later. We should apply skills gathered at school to become more innovative, and we should always acknowledge ourselves to keep on empowering young people around the world. And one of the most valuable lessons is that we should never get discouraged by what we see or listen to. After all, everyone will get a period of success or satisfaction during a lifetime and one of the best ways to achieving a lifetime satisfaction and to secure a future is first investing our energy in studies as young people, because we never lose by learning something new. It was a blessed day and this conversation made my day special.
