by Susan Kuklin
I started speaking English really well, and I started making friends. I fell in love with football. Not soccer, American football. I begged my mother to let me go out for the team. She would not allow me to play. She thought it was too violent. She said, “You can play soccer. You can play baseball. You can wrestle. No, no, no. No football.”
My dad decided that there would be more opportunities for us in a bigger place. Amarillo had two hundred thousand people — not too big, not too small.
The next year, we moved to Amarillo. My dad still didn’t speak English and he didn’t have a degree. Remember, he was a self-taught carpenter. But he could get a job at Tyson’s meatpacking company. Since the twins were in school, my mother got a job cutting meat at Tyson’s too. She hired someone to take care of Hei Blut Laura Paw, who was still too young for school.
We lived in Amarillo for more than four years. During that time, I did well in school, making honor roll every year. I connected with my teachers who were Americans and made friends with all kinds of people — whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.
In 2011, when I was a freshman in high school, some of my soccer friends and I drove to Omaha, Nebraska, for the weekend to attend Karen Martyrs’ Day. Every year we celebrate our leaders that gave their lives for our people. We have a memorial, a soccer tournament, and concerts. Omaha has a large Karen population, and the celebration was held there from 2009 to 2012.
I stayed with an aunt and cousin. My cousin worked for Omaha Public Schools, in the Migrant Education Program. She told me that there were lots of opportunities in Omaha, and if I were to live here, there were lots of migrant programs to help kids go to college. Then I met other Karen kids in Omaha who had scholarships for the university.
Back home, I told my parents that I would like to move to Omaha. I told them that I wanted to go to a university, and that there were more scholarship opportunities in Omaha. My parents quickly agreed to move. It was not difficult for them to make this decision. They had crossed the world just so me and my siblings would have more opportunities. This was one more risk they were willing to take.
For the first month, we stayed with one of my dad’s cousins, and then we found an apartment. There was a Tyson’s meatpacking plant in Omaha too, so my dad was able to transfer. My mom, who had worked in Amarillo, was looking forward to staying home to take care of the younger kids. After a while — I’m not sure how long — my dad changed jobs and cut meat in a plant in Fremont, Nebraska, about an hour’s drive.
One morning, during our second year in Omaha, my dad woke up and said that he felt numb. Then he couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t speak. My mom woke me up. “We need to call an ambulance.” I didn’t want to wait for an ambulance, so we got him into the car and I drove to the emergency room. I was worried during the drive because I didn’t know what his condition was. The doctor told us that he had had a stroke. Luckily we caught the stroke early.
The hospital stay was very expensive — almost thirty thousand dollars for three days. My dad’s job had provided health insurance, but it barely covered anything. A white lady from Valentine, Nebraska, helped my dad get Medicaid to take care of his continuing medical bills. Her name is Sarah. She was a social worker from Lutheran Family Services.
I was elated when my dad was released from the hospital. He began doing rehab. The Lutheran Family Services and another group, the Migrant Education Program, provided him with an English tutor. The tutor was a Vietnam veteran and really clicked with my dad. They talked a lot about wars. My dad was grateful to him and they’ve stayed friends. But we still needed to pay the rent and buy food. My mom’s very courageous. Even though she depended on my dad, she always knew that she could step up and provide for our family. She got a job working on the production line at a meatpacking company called Hormel Foods.
My dad was angry at the whole situation. He always took pride providing for his family. And besides, he never liked Omaha as much as I did. He thought it was too confined, not like Texas, which was wide open and big. He felt cramped in Omaha. I don’t know how to explain it. He didn’t have a lot of friends, because he’s introverted. His brother lives here, and they see each other, but they don’t talk much. They are quiet people.
My parents had been happy in Texas, where they had friends and good jobs. They moved to Omaha, where it is very cold, and very flat, and where they had to start all over again, for me. They moved here just so that I could pursue a scholarship and go to a four-year university. My parents had moved to America because they wanted their kids to have a better future. They came here knowing they would have to work at harsh jobs, like meatpacking, where you stand eight hours a day, get a fifteen-minute break, and do the same thing over and over and over. There was pressure on me to study hard. If I didn’t win this scholarship, my parents would have moved for absolutely no reason.
During that same year, my junior year in high school, I heard that the Susan T. Buffett Scholarship paid full college tuition for students who lived in Nebraska. If I could get this scholarship, I wouldn’t have to take out loans for school. Not only did you need to have good grades — I had good grades — but you had to show that you were involved in the community.
I joined Thrive, an immigrant leadership club that comes up with projects to help the community. Thinking back to how hard it was when we first arrived in America, I knew firsthand what refugees go through adjusting to a new country, a new culture. For my project, I joined a group of students who helped newly arriving immigrants. The plan was to let the refugees know that there were people in this community who cared about them. We partnered with Lutheran Family Services and the Omaha Fire Department and got a grant from the Migrant Education Program to buy groceries, clothes, and toys for newly arriving families.
Our first family were Karens. A firefighter helped us with donations of furniture and beds. We picked up the family at the airport, took them to their new house, and showed them how things worked. Then we did follow-ups — went grocery shopping, set the kids up in school, and went to the doctor’s. I stopped by their apartment once a week to teach them English. It gave me satisfaction, knowing that I made someone’s transition a little bit easier. It would have been wonderful to have had people come to our house when we first moved here; just play games with us or take us to a museum or the movies. We had no one. We had to go grocery shopping by ourselves. We had to make friends on our own.
While I was in high school, I became even more involved with the Karen community. I got a job as a translator for the Omaha Public Schools and the local hospitals. They paid me to translate at parent-teacher conferences. My second job was a cook at the Salween Thai restaurant in Omaha. My third job is as a receptionist and mentor to freshmen who have Buffett Scholarships. These jobs continue.
At the end of my senior year, I received the Outstanding Migrant Senior Award. It’s a huge honor that is given annually to one migrant student of the Omaha Public School system. My mom couldn’t come to the ceremony, because she had to work, but my dad and siblings were there. They were very proud.
I got the scholarship! During the daytime, I attend the University of Nebraska, Omaha. I take classes like Human Relations, Human Rights, Geography, Economics. Someday, I hope to work for the United Nations.
My parents are very strict with us about religion. Every Sunday, they wake us up early to go to church. We’re Baptists. They are less strict about me dating, but they always remind me that education comes first. They say, “Remember why you’re here. Remember your goals. Remember what you want to do for your community and family, and then make decisions, thinking about your goals, thinking about what you want to do in life.”
Mom still works at the meatpacking factory. She understands English but is so shy she doesn’t speak. My younger brother and sisters came here when they were very little and are not comfortable speaking Karen. Mom understands what they say when they speak in English, but she responds in Karen. We call our language Karenglish. I sometimes think ba
ck to my days in the camp, when my greatest pleasure was playing marbles under the house. Now I come home and see my younger brother and sisters playing video games on their computers.
My dad told his tutor that he wanted to be a citizen, so he taught my dad American history. My dad learned about all the presidents, the Constitution, and how the government works. He took the test, passed, and became a citizen. Because they were all under eighteen, my siblings became citizens through my dad. My mom was working and couldn’t take off time to take the test. She’s not a citizen; she’s a resident. Although she worries a lot about paying the bills and the mortgage, she says that she’s happy now. She has had to run since she was a little kid. Now she has a real home.
By this point I was over eighteen, so I had to become a citizen separately. I took the test and passed it. I thought about all the obstacles my family overcame to come here: the language barriers, moving around to find work, adapting to a new culture, making new friends. Becoming an American citizen was a very proud moment for me. I never had citizenship in any country that I had lived in. My ethnicity is Karen, but I had never been to the Karen state in Myanmar. I was born in Thailand, but I was never a citizen of Thailand. I never had an ID, so I couldn’t travel to other countries. For the first time in my life, I felt that I belonged to a country. Yes. When people from other countries ask me where I’m from, I say, “I am from America.”
When you see photographs of emaciated children whose rib cages, arms, and legs look skeletal, whose bellies are bloated, and whose huge round eyes have a faraway look, often they are children from the world’s youngest nation, South Sudan. This northeastern African country has faced floods, droughts, famine, and war. Constant war.
Sixty-four ethnic tribes populate South Sudan. The largest group are the Dinkas, who live primarily in the western part of the country, followed by the Nuers, who live to the south, in the Upper Nile Valley. On July 9, 2011, when the country won its independence from Sudan, ancient tribal hostilities reemerged. As of this writing, civil war rages on. Entire villages have been burned to the ground. Many citizens have been killed. Many people have been forced to flee to refugee camps in neighboring countries. This war has no end in sight. Millions of people are on the run. There is no time to recultivate burned-out crops. Run. No time to rebuild destroyed homes. Run.
One such runner was a Nuer child named Nyarout. As a young girl, she followed the cultural traditions of her people. As a woman, she adopted the lifestyle of an independent American.
Nyarout says, “All that I hold inside me is here in this book. Now somebody like you can read my story and know about people like me, people who lived through hell. Many people like me are still living through hell. You need to know this.”
When I have a bad day, a sad day, when I feel like I’m going to cry, or think I’m going to do something stupid, I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. Then I have Nyarout in the mirror and Nyarout out. Nyarout out talks to Nyarout in the mirror. I say, “Nyarout, are you stupid? Why are you sad? You can do this!” I tell the mirror Nyarout, “If you want to cry, go ahead. Get it out. Go loud. Cry it out and you will feel better.” After that, I take a shower, put on my makeup, put on my clothes, and go out. I feel better.
In Africa, we didn’t have to work at jobs eight hours a day. We didn’t have bills to pay. We didn’t have to come home from work, clean the house, cook, do the laundry, and take care of the children alone. Sometimes I feel like I want to give up on life because this is a hard life. Then I think, whaaaat? In Africa, we didn’t even have clean water; we didn’t even have food to eat. Here in the U.S., I work in a clean place; I come home and sleep in a good house, in a good bed. I don’t have to cook with wood, because I have a real stove. Then I feel stronger. I look at my American-born kids and think about my mom, and about my family still in Africa.
I was born into a big family. My father had three wives, and each wife had six or seven kids. My mom was his youngest wife, his last wife. We lived in a village called Nasir, not far from the Ethiopian border. We lived in a large compound surrounded by a fence. Four houses were inside the compound: one house for each wife and her kids and one for my father. I slept with my mamma. The houses were made with our hands, using palm leaves. It wasn’t like the houses here in Nebraska.
When a man has a lot of kids and a lot of wives, he can’t provide for them alone. The wives worked to bring food to the table for the family. The wives had a nice relationship. That’s why me and my siblings love one another. If you see us, you would never know that we have different mothers.
To be honest, I do not think it’s right for a man to have two or three wives. A long, long time ago, when my country wasn’t developed, our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers, and then our fathers needed more than one wife to help grow food, take care of the hens, and have kids. The man had to marry other women to have more kids because so many infants got sick and died. There were no hospitals to go to.
But today, in a big city, or here in the U.S., where we have everything, why does a man need a second wife? Now his wife can have ten kids, and they will all live. I believe men got addicted to having more wives. And believe me, even though they had two, three wives, they treated them all the same: when a wife is new, they treat them good; when a wife gets old, they look for another one. You know what I mean?
Our compound had a separate cookhouse outside. My mom cooked her food, my stepmoms cooked their food, and then they brought everything to one table. It wasn’t a “table-table.” It was a cloth set on the ground under the mango tree.
We all ate together, but we were separated by age. If you were ten years old, you ate with the other ten- or eleven-year-olds. Older people eat fast and the young people don’t eat fast. If you ate with people who were not your age, you would not have enough time to put much in your stomach. That’s why they separated us by age.
The Nile River was about ten minutes’ walk from the house. Wives and grown daughters brought water from the river in big containers that they carried on their heads. Every morning, we’d take a cup of the water and wash our faces. Instead of a shower, we just went to the river and swam. No bathroom. We’d just go in the field. During the daytime, people were not inside the house; we sat under the mango tree, enjoying the fresh breeze. We little kids spent all day in the river, swimming and playing. When I came home, my eyes were always red. My mom said, “Don’t open your eyes when you are under the water!”
“But I want to see everything,” I’d tell her.
If we were sick, there was no medicine like we have here in the U.S. My father gave us some green thingy that we chewed and then spit out. I don’t know the name of it, but it made us feel better. When I had a fever, my mamma wrapped me in a blanket and put me in the sun. I’d sweat and sweat and sweat. My whole body be wet. And then, after probably maybe ten minutes, I’d come out and felt better. The fever broke.
When I was little, I had a bad cough. I don’t know if it be asthma or what, but I could not stop coughing. I couldn’t cry, either, because crying made it worse. I coughed until I couldn’t breathe, until I passed out.
My daddy tried everything to help me. He even took me to the city to get some shots and some pills. Nothing helped. I tried and tried and tried not to cough, but every time I ate something, I coughed more. I became very, very, very tiny, like all my meat was gone. I was only bones. My father called me Nyaluot, which means “tiny” in Nuer, my language.
One day, my daddy said, “Well, you know what? I’m going to kill her.” He said that to us.
“What? You’re going to kill me?”
“Yeah, I’m going to try something because I’m tired of this coughing.”
He got a little, tiny knife, like the knife they use when you have surgery, and he said, “Lay down.”
I said, “You going to cut my throat?”
“No, no, I’m not going to cut your throat. Just lay down.” And then he made the older siblings hold my hands and le
gs. He started cutting my chest. I was crying and screaming because it hurt. There was a lot of blood. After that, every morning and every night, he took a cloth with boiling water and put it on my chest and my back. It hurt. In one week, guess what happened? I felt better. I felt good. And the cough never came back again. I asked him, “How did you imagine this? How did you know cutting is going to save me?”
He said, “Everything is about trying. You try things. If you think this is not working, try another way to do it.” I’ll never forget that. If you’re strong, you try different things. If one doesn’t work out, try something else, just like my daddy did.
I was about seven years old when the war started, too young to remember much. I remember hearing gunshots. There was lots of confusion because everybody was running. Kids got separated from their families. The lucky kids, like me, stayed with their families. We ran to a refugee camp in Ethiopia called Etang.
After two years, the Ethiopian people started fighting with themselves, so we left Etang and went back to South Sudan. Our home was destroyed, and we had to rebuild everything. We stayed in our new home for only a year because a new war started. When the second war started, I was in school with my brother Michael. Michael’s the son of my father’s first wife.
One day, David, my older brother from my father’s second wife, came to the school and collected us. We started running, back to Ethiopia. This time I was not so lucky, I was separated from my parents. We didn’t know where they were, and there was no time to look for them. Gunshots came from everywhere and from nowhere. There was dust. It was smoky; houses were burning. We ran for our lives. Gunshots don’t recognize the kids. Gunshots don’t recognize the older people. They hit anyone. They hit everyone.