I Can Make a Change in Someone’s Life
My name is Istar. I was born in Somalia. My parents migrated to Ethiopia when I was five. Most of my other siblings were born in Ethiopia. The refugee camp that we lived in was on the border between Somalia and Ethiopia.
Ever since the civil war happened, it was never safe for my parents to stay in Somalia. Everybody was migrating to other places, so my mom’s family moved to Kenya. But then her and my dad moved to Ethiopia to get into the refugee camp.
I remember it like the very moment we first moved there. We lived in tents for about a year. I remember those moments a lot, when everybody would just play outside together because there were no houses. Everybody just shared tents. And I used to see a lot of little kids, but then when each family started building their own houses, that kind of slowed down because everybody just stayed at their place. But still, it was fun. Walking to school was a lot of fun, too. I used to walk to school for an hour. That was one of my favorite memories. I hated it at the moment. It was very far and that was the only school in the entire camp. But I would do anything to go back.
We stayed at the refugee camp for about eight years. Then we moved to the United States. We first came here in May of 2016. And a couple of months later, I turned thirteen.
There are a lot of people my parents lost during the civil war that we just recently found again. But it was very sad when we were coming over here and we still did not get their contacts. We didn’t find them. We were leaving Africa, and we still didn’t know where they were. But then very recently, we found a lot of family members.
It was hard for my parents, especially my mom. She lost so many people in the civil war, like her mom and her little brother. She grew up without a mother. And when she talks about it, I just don’t think I could ever survive that.
We came over to the US not knowing where we were going. We didn’t speak English. My dad and my older sister did, but no nobody else knew anything. We just came and we didn’t even know the name of the state we were going to. We just ended up here and we finally came to the realization we’re in Utah.
There were a lot of people coming from a church to the apartment that we moved into. I don't know the church name. They would always bring people stuff and help them. So a lot of people just used to come and bring us anything we needed. I really wish that I had their contacts. I could tell them how grateful we are, because at the time we didn't speak English. We would just take whatever they brought us. They used to bring everything you could name, like diapers, cleaning supplies, blankets. At some point they would even help with paying for rent and utilities. They just did everything. They made us feel more comfortable being there than anyone else did.
Our first year in America, I went to a charter school. I was in eighth grade. It was literally two minutes walking distance from our apartment. And it was an international charter school. That school is a big part of who I am today, because I never felt like I was in a new environment. It was a lot of diverse groups of students from Asia and mostly just Africa. And we were all figuring out what we were saying to each other because not all of us spoke the same language. We were all from different parts of Africa and we were all new to America, but I still was able to make friends as we were talking. I don’t know how we were communicating. But we were all talking even though we didn’t know English. It was amazing.
My love of poetry also began when I was in eighth grade. That was still my first year in America, when I didn’t know what I was saying. But there was an assignment for a class and what I did was just memorize my verse and I read it for Poetry Out Loud. I did not know what it meant.
But the entire class did it, and the top three were picked. I was picked from that class. Then we performed for the entire school, but you had the option to choose what poem you wanted to do. And I always was so interested in African American history. So I always picked up poems related to that and I would read them. I did not know what the words were, but I would just memorize it, watch YouTube videos, and get a little bit of background history on the poem. And I read it at the school competition.
At my house, it has always been a competition to be the better kid. I always wanted to compete with my older sister, at school and our religious classes and just everything. She’s very smart and I could just never compete with her, but I always wanted to be better and try harder. I would be in a lot of competitions at school like for Poetry Out Loud, and win prizes and bring them home, but my sister actually is the one who taught me how to read and write in my language. She’s five years older than me, and when I was five, I think she was in third grade already. And she taught me how to do that. She taught me pretty much everything that I know.
My sister pretty much raised us. The older daughters are always just second moms. That’s just how it is with almost every Somali household. When we lived in the refugee camp, my mom would work outside. And my sister is the one who made sure we went to school and ate and everything. Then by the end of the day, when my mom would come back home, there was nothing much my mom could do with us because it would be too late. Playing a lot when we were little was just never an option because we knew our mom was always trying her hardest. So we never just let her take all the responsibility. We would do anything to help her where we could.
I live with my older sister here, but I come over to my mom’s place almost every morning and drop my little siblings off to school and then pick them up. I also have a younger sister that drives, but she also goes to school. So on the days that she can’t, I just come and take our siblings to school.
I work now for Intermountain Healthcare as a CNA and I am finishing my pre-nursing health sciences. I love my job. I love what I do and it is helping me know that this is what I want to do for the next ten years of my life. I want to become a labor and delivery nurse and then a midwife, and so I go to different floors sometimes to shadow around and see what other options are there.
It’s more about helping people than having somewhere to go work at.
It's always good to see that I can change somebody's life. Everybody's worst days are when they're at the hospital, and people have nightmares about coming to the hospital. So I always love that I can make a change in somebody's time at a hospital. People will tell you, “Thank you for doing this for me.” And that lets me know I'm making a change in somebody's life.
Before that, I had another homecare job. And it was a similar thing, just helping people with special needs. With that job too, I loved it, and that’s what also helped me decide that I wanted to go a little bit up and get a CNA job. I just always knew that I love making changes in other people’s lives, especially when I’m able to see the changes that I’m making.
Eventually, I’m going to get my MD, but I just want to work my way up the steps so I can have a job and then be able to pay for school. In Africa, both my parents always pushed us to make sure that we do get an education at the end of the day, no matter what’s happening. Where I’m from, the reason why there was a civil war is because of tribalism. So the tribe where my parents are from, the people there do not get an education. They get discriminated against, so they don’t have the opportunity to go to school. My dad always says, “People like you back home can’t go to school because first of all, they wouldn’t be accepted, and if they do, they end up dropping out because they don’t get treated the same. So just make sure you take advantage of every single little thing you can learn.”
So I do it for that reason. I want future generations of my family, and just anybody that has to come over here and find a new life like me, to have a better living style. And I told my little sisters that they need to keep going too, so I tell them, “It’s going to be hard, but you’ve just got to keep going. It’s going to get better.”
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