Station 8

Station 8 audio

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual violence. Discretion advised.

The United Nations Refugee Agency reports that in addition to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-issued quonset huts and tents, onsite renewables such as solar mini-grids are vital for refugee camps, “enabling refugees to pursue education, businesses and social enterprises, spurring innovation and exponentially enhancing the safety and well-being of people and communities, until such time that they can return home.”

Narration transcripts

Lily Nguyen (English)
The stories my mom would always tell me would be about the foods she would eat at home. That’s how she shows her love, that’s how she shows affection, is through food and feeding people because in a Vietnamese household we don’t say, “I love you,” or show affection through hugs and physical or verbal ways, but by service. And we don’t say, “I love you,” but we know it whenever they say, “Are you hungry?” or, “Would you like to eat something?” or, “I’m making something today. Would you join me?” And she would talk about the food that she would grow in her house while she is cutting up food for my family. And she’d talk about the coconut trees in her yard, the guava trees and mango trees. And she would just pick them off the side of the road too. Just growing in the streets, and then eating them on her way home from school. And the street food she’d talk about a lot.

Lena Ross (English)
I would feel like my culture is more based on the Japanese side because it’s my mother who’s Japanese. She was a stay-at-home mom; my dad did not want her working. She was just always at home. She spent a lot of time with us. My dad would really just work and come home…and just not really want to deal with it. So it was with her every day, she drove me to school, she made my lunches, she taught me right from wrong. She taught me about her lifestyle growing up, and every year we make sure to visit home and spend time with my grandmother. Even though she doesn’t know English, I feel like you can still communicate with her regardless of the language because we share that same culture that my mom passed down to us.

My mother was born in Japan, and my father is from Oklahoma. My mother’s journey to America started when she met my father in Okinawa, Japan. He was in the military, and they had dated for some years before getting married and moving here. I was born within the first year of her living here. She didn’t know much English. She was technically not legal for a year living here. [slight laugh] She didn’t have a license; she couldn’t communicate with anybody. So for the first, I want to say, five years, it was a struggle for her living here. She was really just stuck at home alone every day, with just me and my sister.

Sang Rem (English)
I didn’t speak English when I first got here. A lot of funny stories because we have a lot of cultural differences. I think some of the things that I said may be mean to some people. [laughs] I didn’t mean it, it’s just that I didn’t understand the culture. One time, my very first ELL teacher—it was Monday morning—she was like, “Good morning, Sang. I missed you.” I was like, we never really say those things in Burma. And then she would say, “Do you miss me?” I didn’t respond to her, so she would say, “Do you miss me?” I was like, it’s been two days ago, why would I miss her? And I was like, “No,” and then she was laughing, and I was like maybe this is American thing. I just told her, “Yes, yes, I miss you.”

Sang Rem (Falam, translated)
Oh distant moon, the crescent blade shining down
All alone, no older siblings nor younger
All alone, shining down across cordillera
All alone, no older siblings nor younger

Lily Nguyen (English)
A lot of my friends growing up were all Vietnamese, partially because that’s what we were familiar with. Not that we only kept to ourselves there, but we all gravitated to each other, like little mice looking for warmth. When it comes to the community itself, it’s very large neighbors. There’s a north Oklahoma City versus a south Oklahoma City division because we all went to the same schools but different temples or churches, so our community would be largely based on that. And while school would be an important way for us to socialize with our peers, I think my parents would want us to spend more time with our spiritual community. Which is interesting.

So then I have friends from both areas, where I’d just meet them at my place of education or I’d meet them through familial or friendly terms. And then I noticed that it’s not just that my friends all look like me and they’re all Vietnamese. It’s actually just because there’s a large population in north OKC, where they all settled here. All their reasons are different; it’s not just one thing that brought them here. Some people came here for better housing, their family might have already been here so they came here and settled so they could be together. Because being together is a very Vietnamese thing, people in Vietnam would live with multiple generations in one home. And wherever your family is, that’s where your home is. They really believe that.

Watimbwa Babingwa (Swahili, translated)
I want to tell the story of Congo. Back home is the place where I was born, and it is a nice place. The neighborhood was very nice. Even though there was war, the neighborhood was very nice, we had community. Neighbors would come to gather and talk about ideas and have fun, like playing soccer, and that did help us to think more. When I think of back home, I think of those good memories.

I’m in America. How I was raised back home helps me be a good person here in America. I always thank God for the way I was raised. That is the story I always wanted to tell.

Edith (English and Swahili, translated)
When we were in Congo, life was so good. We used to live with my aunties, uncles, my siblings, and all our neighbors; it was so great. During holidays we used to celebrate. We came together as neighbors, as family; we eat together. But when war started, they started killing people.

[translated from Swahili] When we were in Congo, life was really good. We would play. We had family there: aunts and uncles and siblings. I was 11 years old when the war started. I saw my neighbors die. Then we just had to flee. Some other people were coming from Congo. But that time we were in Goma.

[translated from Swahili] That is how we connected with this group that was fleeing from another place through Goma. We decided to go with that group. When we were on our way, we would have to walk over dead bodies. While we kept going, we saw people with guns shooting people. I don’t know if they were rebels or the army because they didn’t have uniforms. It was a lot of people, children and mothers. Some of the mothers were raped in that process. It was very sad. And where we had come from, you just have to walk. It’s such a long distance and some people were carrying their children. Some people were wounded but they still had to walk. It was very sad.

And that is where we start refugee’s process. They helped us, in Kenya, they took us to school. In Congo we speak Swahili and French, and in Kenya they speak English—British English—and Swahili. At that time I was 11 years, but they took me to [a school program]; it was like a kindergarten. And I was 11 years! Because I didn’t know English I had to start from there. But God help me I finished the primary school, elementary school, and I start high school in Kenya. And that is when our attempt to come to the U.S.

[translated from Swahili] But home is home. And God helped us until we reached the country called Kenya. When we arrived in Kenya, we didn’t know anyone. We started the refugee process. God helped us. Life wasn’t that good, but we went to school. We were older but since we didn’t know English they put us in kindergarten with little children, even though we were past that grade. We finished our studies and had to keep living that way until we came to America.

Watimbwa Babingwa (Swahili, translated)
When I was very little, a small child, I did music in church. When I was little, we would sing in church and we enjoyed that, singing in church, when I was very little. We would go play and take a bath in the lake. When we came back from the lake, we would take a trip to other villages to see a movie.

Those are memories that make me happy. It’s inside me. Back home taught me the right thing. I am thankful for the lessons I received back home, the playing and the movies. I pray to God for my country and for the leaders who are running the country. God help them so that they can bring peace to the country. I am happy, and I thank God for those memories, and God bless you.

Lena Ross (English and Japanese, translated)
It was around when I was four that we all decided to move back to Japan. From what I remember, she was really happy. She’s married, and she has kids, and she’s back where she was from. But my father didn’t do well living over there, and it got to the point where she just gave up and moved back for him. So from age 10, that’s when I was back here, it was really hard assimilating to the schools here. While I did go to an English school in Japan, I wasn’t educated properly, so I was behind when I moved here.

[translated from Japanese] Even though I am half Japanese, it was with studying Japanese and English that I was able to improve. However, it was difficult as I felt I lacked in both languages. As a child, my father did not like Japanese being spoken in the household, so until I was an adult, I did not have many opportunities to use Japanese. After high school, I returned to Japan, and when living with my grandmother, I learned the language for two years to be able to speak with her.

My mom still wasn’t really fluent in English, so me and my sister would help her a lot with learning new terms or the way people say things. They recently moved back to Japan. My mom was losing her culture and her language and just not happy here. I feel like she gets some hate for marrying a foreigner, and for sure me and my sisters get discrimination for being half. Whenever I’m here in America, I’m not seen as being half white, I’m seen as only Asian. And whenever I’m in Japan, I’m seen as only being American. There’s always going to be that feeling different. But I feel that I get more discrimination here in America than I do in Japan, because I feel like my culture’s more on my mom’s side than my dad’s.