So, we're finally graduating. But...not on the same day and not at the same place. So "we" have graduated so to speak but It's more like I graduated and here's my friend who also did the same thing a couple days ago. This uniform element is missing for the class of 2020 but all in all, I'm proud of myself and my peers. Thinking about it this has got to be the most realistic way to enter life. Anyways I did it mom :)
0 Comments
Friday May 8th 2020.
College is coming up in the fall and although senior year hasn't gone according to plan, the stress of college very much has. Personally, I’ve kind of had a struggle in committing to a specific Educational Institution. Although I know exactly where I want to go and I'm pretty sure that's where I am going to be located and everything it's still super hard to click confirm and everything. Stuff like this really makes you wonder if you have commitment issues. A Whole Middle Aged World On a hot day of the many hot days waiting in line at a Kenyan airport, my six-year-old world would implode. It all started that morning when I woke up to hectic household packing, chock-full of mixed feeling of excitement, hope, and fear into the unknown on our much-anticipated journey into America; all emotions of which I was oblivious to. You see, my family, a lot like all the other families around me were in a mad dash of sorts to go to this great and exciting place called “America”. My mom had been going through countless appointments, interviews, waiting in lines spanning miles, outside parliaments and a million other little sacrifices for this day, this moment. Of course, I didn’t know that then, only of the lines I always fell asleep in and the seemingly constant immunizations I now greatly feared. All that gratefully behind us, we eagerly packed what we could of our belongings. It was quite a scene. All of our neighbors turned out to help us and everyone was sad but happy for us and then again they were sad but eventually, they were happy again and it was just this cycle of sad and happy we were all consumed in. After I said goodbye to all my friends, aunts, uncles and cousins I wouldn’t see again I sit on the end of twin bed in the room I shared with my older brother and tearfully said goodbye to my pet turtle who I had creatively named “deen deen”, meaning turtle in Somali. Although the sky was a calm grey when we arrived at the airport It was crowded and well, hot. That’s all I can say about it really. I mean, other than the fact that we waited outside and not in an actual airport with red sand everywhere for hours. Also, it’s really not important that there was this monster machine in front of us that scared me so badly I retreated to the safe confines of my older neighbors’ lap the whole time. Amal, her name was informed me it was called an “Airplane” in English. I’d seen airplanes before but, never one this close and it was just so shiny looking and intimidating to me. I felt so small. “Airr-blane” I repeated the word back to her testing the sound out and silently wondered what all the “a” sounds were about in English. Were all the words aa sounds? “Aaamerica”, “aairblane" would I end up always sounding like a sheep? My mom tearfully said goodbye to everyone who came out to as the airport official waved us towards the plane. As the line got smaller and smaller It finally started to sink into my mind that I wouldn’t see anyone again and even if I did It would be years and years later and I’d probably forget everything because I’d be so old. So, I became way too sad for a six-year-old as I held my mom’s hand tight and took one last look at all I’ve ever known. My first impression of the plane was It was just a bigger nicer and quite literally cooler bus. I didn’t really take in much except the seat I didn’t get to sit in due to my mom’s superstitions of the window flying off mid-flight. So, ticked off and jealous of my brothers I sat in the middle seat and waited for sleep, which came much much later. Time didn’t exist in the twenty-three hour-long flights we took on our journey to America. I moved around lots of times. I chatted with my brothers who just couldn’t seem to get over the menu. I had a strange experience in the bathroom. I even saw snow for the first time in Amsterdam. It was night but it was raining white. Of course, what I saw was from my view of the Airport(indoors). That being said, none of that compared to the strangest thing of all I saw, white people. Like the plane thing, I’d seen them before but, not so many and not all at once. It was crazy, walking the shiny airport floor that faintly smelled of what I would later know as disinfectant I saw so many different kinds of people. From black, white, brown, Mexican’s and even Irish people I saw such a variety of many humans for the first time. I probably looked like an idiot staring at everyone I saw but I didn’t care, I was experiencing human creation. When we landed in New York City I lost my mind. I’ve always loved cities and prior to seeing New York, I’d only ever known Nairobi as the largest city I’d visited. But that quickly changed as I lay my eyes upon the grand skyline of the city. I was speechless and that was only the view from the airplane my tiny brain couldn’t even fathom the views from the ground. After a rather comical encounter with the escalator on my mom’s behalf I quickly rushed gluing myself to the large window. It was beautiful. I stayed there through all the delays and after a couple of hours, a government worker drove us to a hotel to stay until she could rearrange our flight. I liked her, not because she smiled at me really widely or gave me candy but because she gave me more time to take in this new and strange place I already loved. The whole way to the hotel I didn’t look anywhere but the infinitely tall building, colorful cars and the never-ending seas of people we passed. My neck hurt from trying to take it all in. At the modest hotel room, my family shared I did much of the same except this time it was from a bay window looking down on manhattan. Manhattan, where people were ants and the buildings they built giants. I loved manhattan. That day, after trying more different things than I’d done my whole life, I decided I liked this America place. While it was so new, shiny and incredibly great It also reminded me of home. Cities to stare at still existed here and frantic kids escaping from the hold of their parents ran around here just the same as home. And while it was true that the people and things here looked odd and different, they were still much of the same things and people. In the end, no matter where I went, no matter how scary it seemed I knew I had my family. And in this new world, I’d never forget where I came from. If highschool is the best time of my life, It seems I'll have a very colorless life.
Little Boxes rant: Some people just know. They know what school they'll go to, what major they'll study, where they'll hang out, who they'll hang out with, what car they'll drive, what job they're gonna get, they know all the way down to what room number they'll reserve. They have their life after high school planned out. I, am by far not one of those people. I want to be. We all want to be. But I just don't know. I don't know which school to choose, what job I'll have, I don't even know if my FAFSA went through. Which state will I choose? North Dakota? Minnesota? Am I confined to just those? The date is Friday February 14th valentines day and I've just ordered my cap and Gown on the very last day. I don't want to do my pre-college-algebra homework either. I like to think I'm not a very last second person but I just am. I'm lazy when I don't have the family background to afford to be. I'm planning my life in a world of school violence and climate change. When did life become so tiring? Feeling: Uncertain. Kinda Mad. I no longer have my senior year. I don't get to have my last school event, my last class, my last gathering of friends within the walls of Moorhead High. I don't get to go home early before the rest of the school nor do I get to participate in any so-called activity student council matter created for us if any. I don't get to have a grad party or any sort of social Gathering. And the one year that so many of us are looking so incredibly forward to and keeping in the back of our head as we struggled with every test score or hardship we've had to face academically or just in real life Is no longer ours. If I were an athlete I'd be extra sad. If I were anybody who used school as an escape for my home life I'd be super sad. To Graduate is something so major and I no longer have that luxury... but I do have my life. We are living in a pandemic and people are dying quite literally every minute of every day. Life is an incredibly precious thing and it's not as if other classes haven't had to deal with not having their senior year ( Hurricane Katrina/ Any War.) I think in this time of great sadness that we may feel at not being able to wake up everyday and go to school, especially at the end of our senior year we should be grateful for what we do have and the people around us. We should stay indoors and make sure this virus doesn't ruin our college experience or our summer or any other thing that we were looking forward to. Sitting around to argue and think about what we don't have is something that we are allowed to do but it shouldn't be everything that we do. Covid-19 might have ruined our senior year but that doesn't mean it has the right to ruin anything else for us ever again. Let us all take a role by making this world a better place simply by just sitting at home.
|