DEPARTED FROM
Gedaref, Sudan
ARRIVED IN
Atlanta, Georgia
YEAR
1991
AGE
9
NOW LIVES IN
Lynnwood, Washington
TRANSCRIPT
My first day in America my family’s sponsor came and picked us up in a small car. I remember surprisingly my whole family fitting in it and as soon as I got in the car seeing the large buildings. That was absolutely shocking to me because I had never seen that before. Then we came to a neighborhood that was another building after building, noticing there was a lot of Eritrean families that lived in the same neighborhood. The sponsor had provided the home for us. And I remember the first meal I had was top ramen and it was the most disgusting thing that I had ever had and just being sick from it for a couple days just getting use to the American food.
I don’t remember that much because I was so young but I do remember waking up every Saturday morning so I could just watch Tom and Jerry with my brother.
The hardest thing for me was that I didn’t know the language and I couldn’t speak so me meeting the kids from the neighborhood for the first time and then for them making fun of me because I couldn’t speak back to them just goes back to me feeling out of place.
One thing that I noticed that was really weird to me was going to school for the first day and seeing the kids didn’t have uniform. In Sudan we all had to wear uniform and it was a form of discipline.
In Sudan everybody looked like me, everybody talked like me, all the kids knew me. I think that’s what I missed the most about it.
