Survivors:

Family Histories of Surviving War, Colonialism, and Genocide

Edited and with Introduction and Background by Al Carroll

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Wars, From Border Wars to Civil Wars and Revolutions

Background: Afghanistan

My Family History by “Zainab Ali”

Background: Bangladesh

The Story of My Mother by Afia K. Hoque

Background: El Salvador

The Journey by Karen Morataya

El Salvador by Tania Velasco

Background: India

Family History by Gunpreet Randawa

Family Tree by Harpreet Randawa

Background: Iran

Growing Up Iranian by Sarah Ghods

Persian Born But American Bred by Sarah Ghods

Background: Nigeria

Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War by Infeyinwah Onuorah

Background: Pakistan

Mrs. Karmatay by Saira Din

Nani by Sanam Shaikh

Background: Vietnam

Vietnam by Matt Emmer

Part Two: Colonialism

Background: Ethiopia

Ethiopia by Beza Kumbi

Background: Namibia

“For a Better Future, I Shall and Will Suffer” by Vetondouua

Karuuombe

Background: Palestine

Family History by Dylan Crawford

Background: Puerto Rico

Family History by Kaitlin Jung

Background: South Africa

My Family History by Nontobeko Masilela

Part Three: Genocide

Background: Cambodia

Family Paper on the Khmer Rouge by Somnang Hua

Kim Siek Chhour’s Journey Through the Khmer Rouge by Sally Nguon

Background: Greece

My Family and the Pontian Greek Genocide by William Papageorge

Background: Poland

Poland by Arkadiusz Klonowicz

Background: Rwanda

Family History by Marie Claire Kayitesi

Part Four: American Indian Stories

Background: Navajo Nation

The Navajo Weaver by Brenda Chevarillo

Background: Pawnee Nation

Rebuilding a Lost Connection by Carlton Gover/Carlton Shield

Chief/La-Wa-Te-Ah-Ku Lak-Ta-Chu-Le-Shaadu/“He also gives Shield

Chief”

Background: Bolivia and the Quechua Nation

Childhood Story by Lineth Cobarrubias

Appendices:

Consent Form

Guidelines to Family Histories

Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank first and foremost the families of

these students for sharing their stories with us all. Of course I

also wish to thank the students themselves for their interviews,

writing, and research. The faculty and staff of Northern Virginia

Community College, at Loudoun campus in Sterling, Virginia

deserve credit as well for creating a learning environment that

allows for the sharing of such histories.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support

and patience while I am constantly researching, teaching, and

writing. It was from my parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and

other relatives that I heard family stories all my life. Like

many others, we rely on these stories to tell us who we are and

where we came from. For the survivor families in these accounts,

remembering is important.

It should be to us all.

Introduction

History is all around us. I constantly tell my students and

readers that all of us, quite literally, make history every day.

Our actions, those of “ordinary people,” create the history that

will be taught tomorrow. I am a passionate believer in family

history, oral history, and genealogy. All three are central to

what I teach and the methods I use to teach. For those of us who

teach at the college level and especially in humanities and

social sciences, there are incredible resources, namely our own

students.

Like many history professors and historians, I believe

strongly in history from below, the practice of teaching,

researching and writing from a bottom up view rather the history

of elites. Getting students to know their family history and oral

history is an important part of my practices. Oral history, and

history broadly speaking, tie the individual to their family and

community. That community includes both the local area and the

nation, both the nation they live in and the nation(s) their

family is from. I include nation to mean what Benedict Anderson

famously defined it as, a community of like minds united by

common language and culture. Nations can be political units,

ethnic groups, or some mix of the two. One can speak of nations

within nations, such as American Indian tribes.

Family histories also remove any sense of history being

remote. Hearing stories of family members right in the center of

major events, often literally struggling to stay alive, makes

issues like war and peace, colonialism, and power struggles

between nations or between elites and those struggling to get out

from under their domination...suddenly such issues seem very

immediate, and so real.

Northern Virginia Community College serves four of the most

northernmost counties of Virginia, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun,

and Prince William, essentially the suburbs of Washington, DC. In

one study after another, Loudoun County, the one I teach in, is

ranked the wealthiest county per capita in America, followed by

Fairfax. Average income per family in the county tops $100,000.

One might not think of these communities as home to refugees

from dangerous and traumatized nations. Such a thought would be

wrong. These counties are home to survivors of the most heinous

kinds of atrocities.

The volume you hold in your hands was largely written by the

children and grandchildren of these survivors, often telling the

stories of their elders and loved ones describing why they fled

brutality of the kind no one should ever have to bear. In most

cases, the students did not know of these hardships and

atrocities first hand, as they only experienced them from hearing

about them from their immediate family member. In other cases,

the stories have been passed down, carefully preserved for

several generations. In still other cases, these students heard

of their family member's experience for the first time because of

writing these student papers. While all of these stories are

important to preserve, it is the last type I am most proud of

having a role in, helping to build ties between generations.

There are few places in the US that can compete for

diversity with Northern Virginia. That fact surprised me when I

first moved here, not expecting to live in a small Virginia town

and yet be able to go to Afghan, Burmese, Indian, Peruvian,

Salvadoran, and Thai restaurants within a population of fewer

than 20,000. I quickly found myself teaching with this incredible

resource, students from such a variety of ethnic and national

backgrounds.

One might not think of Virginia suburbs as a center of

multiculturalism, but one would be wrong. Less than two decades

ago, the counties of Northern Virginia were overwhelmingly white,

with also a longstanding Black presence going back to the

earliest colonial times. It was in Virginia that some of the most

restrictive racial purity and control laws were passed after

Bacon's Rebellion. Most of the Native presence had also been

erased or removed over a century before American independence. In

a treaty in 1646, the English took most Virginia land, forcing

Indians to pay tribute. The Native population dropped over 90%

from war and disease and all Indians legally became subjects of

the Crown.

Virginia's colonial laws enforced white supremacy. All white

males had to be armed, but no nonwhites could be. No white

servants or workers could be hired by nonwhites. Natives and

Blacks were both classified as “Negroes and Other Slaves.” All

white women bearing mixed children were heavily fined, and the

children sold into slavery. Most women found guilty could not pay

the fine, and so faced a prison sentence instead. All nonwhites

were barred from office, testifying in court, and voting, and

each racial group could only marry in the same racial category.

Some of these restrictions lasted until the 1960s.

Other minorities largely were not in Virginia until

recently. But today over 160 ethnic groups call Northern Virginia

home. One in ten Virginians are foreign born, and one in nine

Virginians speak a primary language that is not English. These

numbers are likely several times higher in Northern Virginia than

in the rest of the state.

Having Washington DC nearby has made Northern Virginia a

magnet for well-educated immigrants. The medical centers also

draw a high number of highly skilled immigrant doctors and other

medical professionals. Research centers also bring in many highly

educated scientists and other scholars. And contrary to the image

many immigrant haters have of immigrants as poor, these skilled

immigrants are precisely why Loudoun and Fairfax Counties have

such high standards of living.

There are stories of survivors all around us, and their

stories are of the utmost importance to tell. The genesis of this

book came from a US History I class I taught. I became determined

to gather these stories after a young Sudanese student's essay

told the story of her grandmother escaping from slavery. Not slavery

as in exploitation, or the silly hyperbole of a conservative

complaining about high taxes, but literal slavery, an African

woman being bought and sold in the late twentieth century, abused

and without rights, and finally having to escape in as dramatic a

fashion as any Black American slave over 160 years ago.

That student, though, declined to have her story included,

and ethically we must respect her wishes. About half of the

students I approached are not included in this book. Many had

moved on in their academic careers after the semester and their

college email addresses were no longer in use. Others, for

personal reasons, fear, shame, or worry about affecting

relatives, did not want the stories they told to become public.

Among the stories students told to me in family histories

for class, but not included in this collection:

A Peruvian student told the story of his uncle taking part

in anti-insurgent campaigns, and his uncle’s memories of guilt

following his part in the execution in the field of a rebel

commander.

A student told of his ancestor’s life on death row before

being executed for murder, and the family’s shame at being

related to him. Some family members still refuse to speak of it

many decades later.

A survivor of the civil war in Burundi turned in a family

history describing a relative who had to flee for their life to

the United States.

A Salvadoran student described her father fleeing El

Salvador following the civil war of the 1980s. It was after the

military dictatorship, so he did not fear reprisals from death

squads, but from others in his village for being in the military.

A Guinean/Togoan student describing her grandfather’s life

as the village leader, married to multiple wives.

A Ghanan student described her grandfather being arrested by

the British for being part of the independence movement.

A Japanese-American student listened to the story of her

aunt's experience in the US internment camps in World War II.

A student with one Choctaw parent and one Mexican-American

described the family traditions on both sides and the prejudice

he’s faced.

A student from southwestern Virginia describes a small

community’s accounts of themselves as Cherokee descendants who

had to hide their ancestry from outsiders for many generations.

This student is pursuing an anthropology degree, and I strongly

urged her to study her own community.

Here in this collection we have other stories of surviving

civil war, of seeing families torn apart and then reunited, loved

ones lost, atrocities witnessed, relatives that had to flee, and

the survivors that brought their children and grandchildren to

the US. We have stories of living through long periods of

colonialism and still uncertainly not knowing if your people will

ever be independent. We have stories of outright genocide, entire

peoples in Cambodia, Greece, Poland, and Rwanda facing whole or

partial extinction.

And finally we have the stories of American Indians here in

northern Virginia, who have faced both colonialism and genocide,

and whose descendants are still in this land in spite of

everything done to the contrary. After almost entirely being

driven out of Virginia in colonial times, today one meets

similar, if not exactly the same, Native people if one knows

where to look.

The immigrant stories confound the stereotypes that bigots

have of them. Most immigrants to the United States, both the

families in this collection or elsewhere, are not from the

poorest of the poor. Most are middle class in their home

countries. Northern Virginia especially tends to draw quite a few

highly educated immigrants, both in the faculty and in the

student body and the students’ family members. One frequently

meets the offspring of immigrant doctors, business people, and

high level bureaucrats.

The American Indian stories also confound many people’s

expectations of the area. Most of Virginia’s American Indian

population began to be ethnically cleansed as far back as the

earliest colonial times. Most every Virginian and other Americans

knows the (largely false) legend of Pocahontas and her dealings

with Jamestown. What far fewer know is that, upon her death and

that of her father Powhattan, the English colonists began an ugly

war that, along with disease, killed nine tenths of the Powhattan

Confederacy in one generation. The Anglo-Cherokee War and the

French and Indian War wiped out or drove away nearly all

remaining Native people in the state. As mentioned before,

Virginia passed a strict series of racial purity laws, the first

in what would become the US, barring interracial marriage or even

contact, and classified all Indians in a rigid racial hierarchy.

There are today eight very small state recognized tribes in

Virginia, collectively less than 8,000 people on less than 2,000

acres. The ranches near where I grew up in Texas each had more

land individually than those eight communities do altogether.

Yet Natives in Northern Virginia persist and thrive. Most

Natives in northern Virginia came to the DC metro area for work,

the same as many others. One Lakota I knew in graduate school

works in the Department of the Interior, as does a Choctaw

student who attended my class. The latter gave me the gift of a

White House proclamation for Native American Heritage Month.

But the Native population of Virginia is shifting. As in

much of the rest of America, the Native population of Virginia is

increasingly from Latin America. It seems likely that the largest

numbers of Natives in the area are not Mattaponi, Renape, or

Cherokee, but Ayamara and Quechua from Bolivia and Peru, Pupile

from El Salvador, and Maya from Guatemala and Mexico.

If one wants to go to Native powwows, the closest are at

Washington DC universities. Virginia state-recognized tribes are

mostly further south and east in the tidewaters region or close

to Richmond. But the largest Native dances to be seen in northern

Virginia are diabladas (devil dances, as the first Spaniards

called them) and morenadas (dark skinned dances), both performed

by Bolivian and Peruvian heritage groups in the area at festivals

in the summer. These celebrations have both mestizo (mixed

ancestry) and Indian people, but the latter are by far the

majority. Both dances are indigenous to the Andes, though some

theories claim the morenada has an Afro-Bolivian origin.

The structure of this collection is to group these accounts

based on the experience of their family member, war, colonialism,

or genocide, plus a separate category for American Indian

accounts. Each account also has introductory historical

background material on the nation of origin. The appendices

include the release form each student signed, as well as the

guidelines give to all students in my classes writing a family

history paper. Each student's bibliography is at the end of the

essay. In some cases, the essay has no bibliography, reflecting

when I had not yet required them for student family histories.

There are a number of recurring themes in these essays. One

of the most prominent is gratitude that America is a haven for

refugees. Another is how many of these students appreciate the

struggles and discrimination that their mothers and grandmothers

went through as women. Finally a number of these students

describe their family member literally facing down evil. In a few

cases, the family member largely avoided the great struggles

going on in their nation, and that also is worthy of note.

More than a few works on oral history point to the

limitations of the genre. Someone wanting exact data, of the kind

put out by government and other institutions, should not rely on

oral history. For analysis at a macro level, an average

untrained person does about as well as one would expect. Some

interviewee accounts are astonishingly insightful, while others

may not know very much. These persons herein reflect very much

the societies that produced them, and sometimes an oral history

account may even show that person lazily reproducing falsehoods.

One example that particularly stands out in this collection is a

student's family member's story of “sex slaves” held by a rebel

group during the Salvadoran Civil War, likely a government-spread

rumor.

But for a micro view of personal and societal attitudes,

worldview, and detailed daily life, oral history is outstanding.

Oral history is often a study of memory, how these events are

transmitted and remembered by members of a population, rather

than exact reproduction. The mind does not record events like a

camera or tape recorder. For studying what participants feel

about what they went through, their perceptions and how they pass

them along to family and other loved ones, oral history is ideal.

There certainly is room for many more studies like this one.

At just one community college, teaching perhaps 1200 students

over the course of three years, I found eleven families of

wartime survivors, five of modern day colonialism, and five

families with members who survived genocide, plus an almost equal

number of survivors who chose not to be published. Had I chosen a

different focus, there were any number of other collections that

could have been gathered. Indeed, I argue and hope that other

professors and even secondary high school teachers reading this

should seek to gather family histories. Not just of the families

of survivors such as these, but also military veterans,

activists, immigration histories, studies focused on a particular

ethnic group, and women's history are all possible collections

that could be gathered by teachers at schools.

Ideally, I would like to see the writing of family histories

become standard practice in all US history survey courses, as

well as other history classes. I could easily see a professor

gathering veterans’ accounts either for an antiwar collection or

for remembrance of service, or a combination of the two. Ethnic

studies certainly could benefit from gathering students’

accounts. Most of the Latin American student essays were gathered

in my Latin American classes, as most American Indian essays were

in my American Indian classes. Some students chose to share their

family experiences with their classmates, making events like the

Salvadoran Civil War and Iranian Revolution seem every bit as

real as any newsreel. I could also easily see women’s studies

courses requiring every student to interview their grandmothers

about their lives when younger to see the dramatic differences in

women’s lives. Imagine students hearing about the days when

abortion was illegal but sexual harassment was not.

Remembrance is important. Teaching about it is even more so.

Part One:

Wars, From Border Wars to Civil Wars and Revolutions

War- Armed conflict between two or more nations or groups

within nations.

Border War- A war fought between neighboring countries over

territory, resources, or for political advantage.

Civil War- A war fought within a nation between two armed

sides.

Revolution- An uprising with the intent of overthrowing the

established political and/or social order of a nation.

That wars have played a huge role in American and world

history is self evident. What is often less known to much of the

American public is just how often the American government,

American corporations, or other American individuals played a

role in starting or continuing many wars in other nations, often

fighting wars by proxy.

The irony of that is it is often the United States that many

of these war refugees flee to. More than a few of these accounts

are passionate in their conviction that America was and is a

sanctuary for those fleeing persecution and hardship. Wars

certainly bring out the best in American society and the worst in

many American elites and that part of the populace that

uncritically supports them.

Background:

Afghanistan

All of the names in this first family history essay are

pseudonyms, invented to protect the identity of relatives still

in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was little known to most Americans prior to the

Soviet invasion in 1979, and got renewed attention following

September 11. A final phase of the Cold War, fought by proxy, led

to what the CIA calls blowback, unintended consequences resulting

in the creation of a Frankenstein monster, a creature turning on

its creator. Afghan mujahadeen, trained and armed by the US

government, became the Taliban, allies of Al Qaeda, itself

created by a former longtime CIA asset, Osama Bin Laden.

Afghanistan's history of conflict with the west goes back

much further. Both the British and Russia under the Tsars invaded

in the nineteenth century and were badly beaten. Even Alexander

the Great invaded Afghanistan and failed badly in his attempt to

conquer this area of dozens of hardy peoples, tribes that occupy

the rugged terrain, high mountains, and valleys that one must be

resourceful and strong to live in.

This essay by “Zainab Ali” gives us a view from an Afghan

minority of the underlying historic causes for conflicts within

the nation today. In the United States we rarely hear about

Afghan people as other than one solid monolithic group,

“Afghans.” The news media usually splits Afghan people into two

groups, sharply defined, “US allies” and the Afghanistan

government against the Taliban and assorted miscellaneous

militias opposed to the US military presence for vague supposed

anti-American reasons.

Peoples within Afghanistan have fought each other for far

longer than they have fought outsiders. That makes up fully half

of Zainab Ali's essay. The essay also comes from a woman

describing the daily struggles of Afghan women. The US plays far

smaller a role in her life than one might suppose. The lack of

rancor towards the US, even while opposing all the violence a US

presence worsened, also may surprise some.

The first Afghan immigrants to the US probably came in the

1920s, but most arrived as refugees from the 1980s on, coming by

way of Iran or Pakistan. Though San Francisco has the largest

number of Afghans in the US, Afghans also have a substantial

presence in Northern Virginia of over 20,000 people.

My Family History

by “Zainab Ali”

As a child growing up in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan,

I’ve overcome many battles in the fight against discrimination

towards my particular ethnic group. I was wondering and wanted to

know the reasons why our people were the main target of

discrimination compared to other ethnic groups. I became deeply

inspired to search for my own historical roots. I remember, my

parents were barely talking about their parents and their

grandparents’ legacy and their history. Deep down inside me,

there was a desire to know my family heritage.

Unfortunately, due to harsh political and social uprisings,

many Afghans evacuated the country. Our family was one of the

many who evacuated; we headed to find refuge in India.

Fortunately this research paper and the interview of the oldest

members of our family gave me another opportunity to find out

more about our legacy. I‘ve discovered that there were three

main components to why my tribal group was cruelly discriminated

against, including a difference in ethnic/tribal group, a

difference in religion and a difference in our language.

The ethnic mix gave Afghanistan great cultural variety but

also created lots of social and political problems between the

groups. There are many different tribal groups that make up the

Afghan population. The main tribes include the Pashtuns, Tajiks,

Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Turkomans. Pashtuns are the majority, then

Tajiks, and Hazaras are the third major ethnic groups. Dari and

Pashto are Afghanistan’s two official languages. The majority of

the Afghan people speak the Dari language. Educated people often

read, write, and speak both languages, Pashto and Dari. About 99%

of Afghans are Muslim. There are two major sects of Islam, the

two Shia and Sunni. Most Afghans are Sunni, and the Hazara people

are mostly Shia Muslims.

I am from the Hazara tribal group. Our peopIe speak

Hazaragi. Hazaragi is a language that is a mix of Persian,

Turkish, and Mongolian languages. For centuries, the Hazaras have

been treated the worst of all the ethnic groups. Many non Hazaras

called us the descendants of Chinese and Mongolians because of

our facial features. This is one of the reasons that Hazaras have

been discriminated against. There were times that Kushans’ and

Mongolian’s armies invaded Afghanistan. The ancient Chinese

constructed the once large and magnificent Buddha’s statues in

Bamiyan province, later demolished by fundamentalist Muslims

known as the Taliban. Therefore, Pashtuns and some Tajiks were

discriminating against Hazaras and they were saying that Hazaras

should leave Afghanistan and go to their original countries such

as China and Mongolia. A great Afghan author, Khalid Hosseini,

has written captivating stories of the struggles Hazara people

have faced in the book The Kite Runner.

Historians found out that Hazara people are a mixed group of

Mongols, Kushans, Persian, and Turkish armies that invaded

Afghanistan throughout its history. Moreover, historians have

discovered that the Hazara people are not the only mixed ethnic

groups, all other ethnic groups that live in Afghanistan are the

descendants of Aryans, Macedonians, Mauryans, Kushans, White

Huns, Arabs, and Mongols that once invaded Afghanistan. Another

reason that Hazara people are getting discriminated is their

culture and language. Historians proved that Hazaras’ cultures

and languages are a good mix of Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian

one. The third and major reason that Hazaras are discriminated is

the religion that Hazaras are practicing. Hazaras are mainly Shia

Muslims, which was not welcomed by the majority population of

Sunni Muslims. Shia Muslims believe that only a descendant of

Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Hazrat Ali, can be the rightful

spiritual leader of Islam. Sunni Muslims accept the authority of

Islam’s other spiritual leaders as well (Afghanistan 96). Hazaras

and their religion are the minority in Afghanistan. That is one

of the main reasons that since the eighteenth century they have

been greatly mistreated by Pashtun rulers who were Sunni Muslims.

Before the eighteenth century, Hazaras were living free

without being controlled by any other ethnic group. There were

many different tribes living in territories of Hazarajat and some

other parts of Afghanistan. Each tribe led by a principal

chieftain to whom tribute was paid. Unfortunately, the Hazaras

couldn’t enjoy their freedom when Pashtuns reigned in power in

the eighteenth century. Pashtuns rulers forced Hazaras to pay

lots of tax, and follow their laws. However, the Hazara leaders

were rejecting Pashtuns’ orders. At that time, Abdur-rahman was

in power from 1880 to 1901. He was against Hazaras’ culture,

language and religion. Therefore, Abdur-rahman made a plan to

destroy Hazarajat, and its people. With the help of some

fundamental, conservative Sunni people, he raised armies of

Pashtuns. Abdur-rahman and his armies fought against Hazara

people, accusing them of being atheist. The Pashtun politicians

were persuading all other ethnic groups that Hazaras are

practicing a wrong sect of Islam; therefore they deserve to be

attacked, killed, and robbed. As a result, the Hazara regions

became surrounded by many armies. Thousands of Hazaras have been

abducted for slavery to the Pashtuns’ regions. The Hazaras have

suffered from years of genocide and thousands of women and girls

have been raped by Pashtuns. Consequently, thousands of Hazaras

evacuated to the neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran.

Thousands of other Hazaras escaped to the deep mountains of

Hazarajat to hide.

My great-grandparents and grandparents are the survivors of

those massacres; they escaped to those mountainous regions. Since

then Hazaras mostly lived among the mountains and valleys of

central Afghanistan that called Hazarajat. The climate of

Hazarajat was harsh, cold, and dry. The poor soil and lack of

water of Hazarajat made life hard for its people. Hazaras used to

live in other great provinces of Afghanistan like Kandahar,

Bamiyan, and Helmand. Later they were forced to those Hazarajat

regions. The harsh climate, and terrible system of agriculture

and irrigation of Hazarajat left Hazaras poor, jobless, and

hungry most of the time. To earn a living some families, mostly

men, were going to other cities like Kabul especially during

wintertime. They were working in low-paying jobs and joining the

army. Mr. Ghulam was one of those victims too. He left Behsood

for Kabul to find work to feed his family. He was a laborer. He

worked as a janitor in Kabul Airport and Kabul Education

Ministry. The last ten years of his life he delivered mail, until

he came to America in 1990.

During the revolution of Pashtun against Hazaras, my great-

grandparents “Murudali” and his wife Uzra fled to those

mountainous parts of Hazarajat. Murudali and Uzra were from part

one of Behsood a city in the province of Wardak. Murudali and

Uzra had a small farm of wheat and potatoes; they raised a few

animals too. Murudali and Uzra had three children. Two of their

daughters passed away as toddlers because of lack of nutrition

and medications. My grandfather “Qanbarali” was born around 1920,

and he was the only child my great-grandparents had. Murudali and

Uzra had a small flat-roofed mud-brick house. They were very

poor. At times they starved because they couldn’t get enough food

from their farm and their animals. As a young man Qanbarali also

learned how to raise animals and work on the fields.

Young Qanbarali got married to a girl from the same area.

The result of their marriage was one son and two daughters. He

moved with his family to Jinjishka to avoid the harsh climate of

Wardak province. Jinjishka was a small village in the Province of

Samangan, Qanbarali bought some land for farming in Jinjishka.

After living for a year in Jinjishka, Qanbarali was drafted in

the army, so he left everything behind and went to Kabul, the

capital of Afghanistan. However, two years later he returns home

to visit his family, he finds out that his wife and his two

daughters had passed away while he was gone. People were poor,

there weren’t any developments such as schools and clinics.

Medicine was practiced at a destitute level. People were dying of

starvation, diseases, and harsh labor. Animals like camel,

donkeys, and horses were forms of transportation. My grandfather

Qanbarali married Kimya, my grandmother, a year later around

1934. One year later, my father “Moosa” was born in 1935. After

that Qanbarali and Kimya had three more daughters, Durdana,

Nikbakht, and Ghulbakht. However, Noorali was forced to serve in

the army for twelve years instead of two or three years because

of his race, language, and religion.

Meanwhile, Qanbarali sent “Moosa” to homeschooling to learn

reading and writing. At that time ladies weren’t allowed to go to

school, my mother was illiterate. Women's rights had been

neglected. Women were working in agricultural work, raising

children, milking the animals, and some other handicrafts like

carpet and felt making. As a result of going to school, Moosa

become a teacher, and he started teaching children in that

region. Moosa married Masooma, a young girl, around 1955. My

mother barely knew anything about her parents, because she was a

toddler when she lost her parents.

My parents moved to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, to

give us an opportunity to go school. I have three brothers and

four sisters. My father stressed the importance of education,

made sure we were studying hard. We were fortunate that we went

school. There were many other women that weren’t allowed to go

school. As a young girl, I loved reading and playing with my

friends. Holidays were my favorite time of the year, since we

were being rewarded with good food and nice clothes. As I grew

older, the society become unsafe. My sisters and I couldn’t go

anywhere without my mother. In the city of Kabul, small

percentages of women were professional, technicians, and

administrators, but still their rights were neglected. Women were

often denied their rightful inheritance.

In 1993, I finished high school. At the same time the civil

war was getting worse. I grew up during the Afghan Civil War. I

have many horrible memories from the war. At first, the civil war

leaders were fighting to get rid of Soviet armies from

Afghanistan. After the Soviet armies left Afghanistan in 1989,

the civil war leaders and their armies started fighting with each

other over power. As the war got worse, the discrimination

between ethnic groups of Afghanistan got worse too.

In 1990, the Pashtuns kidnapped my brother Kamal. He

disappeared one day coming from work. My parents were looking all

over Kabul for him, bribing the Pashtuns armies to find him.

After two weeks of search, we located him in a prison locked with

other Hazaras. They had abused him physically and mentally

repeatedly until he was released with a population exchange

between Pashtun and Hazara. As a result of abuse, he got brain

damage.

In 1993, the civil war got even worse. My family and I left

in November of 1993 for India. We stayed as refugees there for

two years and got sponsored by my oldest brother to Canada. I

stayed two years in Canada, and got married there and came to

America in 1997. Getting out of Afghanistan was a blessing; I got

to see India, Canada, and America, my dream land. Right now, all

of my siblings are married and have families of their own in

Canada or the US.

By mid-nineteenth century more than half of Hazara

population was killed or forced into exile. Unfortunately, even

now there are lots of social and political issues between all the

ethnic groups in Afghanistan. I will share my family history with

my sons. I will advise them to learn from their family history

and embrace their culture and religion. In addition, my advice to

my children would be to remain strong in their education, keep a

good balance in their spiritual and material lives, and they

should take good care of their health.

Bibliography

Bjorklund. Ruth, (2012). Afghanistan: Enchantment of the World.

Scholastic Inc.

Kishtmand. Sultan Ali, (2000). The Historical Events and Political Notes.

UK: Jacket Print

Loyn. David, (2009). In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and

American Occupation. Palgrave Macmillan.

Monsutti. Alessandro, (March 27, 2009). “An Anthropological

Perspective on Rural Rehabilitation in Afghanistan,”

http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/colloqpapers/21monsutti.pdf

Mousavi. Sayed Askar,(1997).The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical,

Cultural, Economic and Political Study. St. Martin’s Press.

Background:

Bangladesh

Bangladesh lies in the subcontinent of South Asia,

surrounded on nearly all sides by India, except a small portion

bordering Burma. Historically, the region was called Bengal or

Bangla, and for most of its history was mostly Hindu, though

often in conflict with Buddhist kingdoms. Islam was introduced to

the area by Muslim merchants and missionaries in the twelfth

century, eventually becoming the majority religion in the area. A

succession of sultanates, Hindu kingdoms, and Portuguese and

British colonialists ruled.

Upon independence from the British, India was subdivided

into India and Pakistan. Pakistan included both a Western

Pakistan and Eastern Pakistan on opposite sides of the

subcontinent. Discrimination and neglect of the eastern part by

those in the western part of Pakistan contributed to discontent.

Most of Pakistan's leaders were from the western region. A

movement for autonomy was brutally crushed, with at least tens of

thousands killed and over a million refugees fleeing to India. In

March 1971, the eastern part revolted, later aided by the

government of India. In December of the same year, Pakistan

conceded defeat and Bangladesh was born.

In the US, Bangladeshi immigrants number a bit more than

160,000 as of 2007 and live mostly in Los Angeles, Dallas,

Chicago, New York, and New Jersey. In northern Virginia and

Washington DC the Bangladeshi community is strong as well, with

an annual festival at Northern Virginia Community College's Ernst

Center.

Afia Hoque’s story is of her mother as a child during the

Partition of India. It largely did not affect her except for some

memories of warplanes flying overhead. This makes for quite a

contrast with the stories from Indian and Pakistani families who

recall incredible violence all around them. Her story focuses

instead on the daily life of Bangladeshi women.

The Story of my Mother

By Afia K. Hoque

My mother, Afia Khatun, was born on Friday, August 28, 1963

to Shaira Khatun and Muhammad Abdus Sattar in Sylhet, Pakistan

which is now a part of Bangladesh. She is currently forty-eight

years old. She is a wife and a mother of four. My mother is a

private person, so when I asked her to be the subject of my

interview, she kept smiling out of shyness and told me that she

didn’t remember that many things from her past. After telling her

several times that it was important that we know her history, she

finally agreed, though reluctantly.

Muhammad Abdus Sattar, my grandfather, was a businessman who

owned a multi- purpose store which specialized in hardware

material, groceries, and a small pharmacy. He had been married

twice before. Both wives passed away due to illness. After his

second wife passed away, he decided to marry again so that his

twelve children would have a mother. He married Shaira Khatun,

who also had two children from a previous marriage and was now a

widow. They had three children together after their marriage.

Muhammad Abdus Sattar passed away seven months after his youngest

daughter was born. My mother was their second child, so she never

got to meet her father. She was two years old at the time her

father died, and doesn’t remember anything about him. She also

never met any of her father’s relatives. Shaira Khatun remained a

homemaker while her eldest step-son provided for his younger

siblings.

Afia Khatun grew up in a house that was a little bigger than

the average homes in Bangladesh. Her family was not too wealthy,

but not poor either. My mother grew up with electricity, which

helped her family to complete tasks at night. One of the

downsides of having electricity was the fact that Bangladesh uses

the method of power shedding, which means that the electricity of

some parts of the country will be turned off so that other parts

may have some as well. In these cases, they would have to burn

several lanterns in order to see at night.

My mother started going to school when she was four years

old because when she was little she would cry to go to school

with her elder siblings. So her mother talked to the headmaster

of Kishori Mohan Girls School and they let her start school at

age four. She remained at that school until she graduated high

school. Her relationships with her elder siblings were mostly out

of respect, since there was a big gap between their ages. When

she wasn’t doing homework, she played with her youngest sister

and her niece. They used to play tag, hide and go seek, and cops

and robbers. During my mother’s childhood, her family owned a

parrot. She was very fond of this bird because it used to call

her name a lot. Like most children who were scared easily, my

mother had a fear of spiders and snakes.

The Bangladesh Liberation War took place when Afia Khatun

was about eight years old. Although no one close to her was hurt,

she does remember the sounds of warfare. She remembers seeing the

planes shooting and hearing the sounds of missiles flying

overhead. “It was very frightening.” she said.

When Afia Khatun was about ten years old, her uncle passed

away from throat cancer. It was a very emotional time for her

entire family. My mother was very sad when she narrated this

event to me and my siblings. “He was my mother’s closest brother.

They were like best friends. They loved each other very much.”

While everyone else around Afia Khatun was grieving, she made it

her duty to take care of her grandmother. Afia Khatun would check

on her grandmother every few minutes to see if she would need

anything. Three days after the death of her uncle, Afia Hoque fed

her grandmother her last meal. She went up to her grandmother,

who was sitting under a tree, and gave her a plate of fruit.

Seeing that her grandmother didn’t need anything else, Afia

Khatun then went on to complete other tasks. A few minutes later

the news came that her grandmother had fallen to the ground

unconscious, never to awaken. Afia Khatun had been the last one

to see her grandmother alive, and it is a memory she still holds

dear to her heart.

While Afia Khatun attended school, she developed many

friendships. One of them was with Bahar Choudry. They were best

friends ever since they were little. They were always playing and

talking together. They would share everything with each other.

They would go to each other’s homes. It was through Bahar Choudry

that Afia Khatun would meet her future husband, who happened to

be Bahar Choudry's elder brother.

My mother was very studious. She would always be one of the

top ten students of her class. She was always interested in

learning new things. She would always aspire to become a doctor,

which was what most of the other girls in her class would dream

of becoming. She graduated high school and started college.

The role of women in Bangladesh was substantial but largely

unacknowledged. Women in rural areas were mostly responsible for

most of the post-harvest work, cooking, and for keeping

livestock, poultry, and small gardens. Women in cities relied on

domestic and traditional jobs, but in the 1980s women

increasingly started taking jobs in manufacturing jobs,

especially in the ready-made garment industry. The women with

higher education worked in the government, health care, or became

teachers. Female wage rates were typically ranging between twenty

and thirty percent of male wage rates.

On an average day in Bangladesh you would see that the

markets were mostly filled with men or men accompanied by their

wives. It was not typical for a woman to go shopping by herself.

Gradually, over time, this changed. When my mother was growing

up, she used to see women going to the markets all by themselves

in order to provide for their families. My mother also remembers

her elder sisters going out to vote during elections. “The women

were allowed to do everything,” my mother recalls. “There wasn’t

really any discrimination towards women, at least none that I can

recall.”

In the Bangladeshi culture it is usual for the family to

suggest the spouses for their children. Marriage generally is

made between families of similar social standing. Most of the

time a woman is to marry a man of a somewhat higher status, be it

money, education or lineage. Towards the late twentieth century,

the financial standing of a family came to outweigh the family

background.

While she was in college, my mother, who was nineteen years

old at the time, received many proposals for marriage. Since my

grandfather passed away, Afia Khatun’s eldest brother took care

of all the proposals that came for my mother. One of the

proposals came from Afia Khatun’s best friend’s brother. Since

both families knew each other very well, Afia Khatun and her

family decided that he was the right man. Afia Khatun had

finished two years of college when both of the families made the

final arrangements. Shirajul Hoque and Afia Khatun Hoque wed on

July 2, 1982.

Shirajul Hoque had already been working in Los Angeles,

California for a couple months before he went back to his country

to get married. He applied for a visa for his wife and then six

months after getting married, the new couple arrived in America.

The first place Afia Khatun Hoque went to was New York, to visit

some of her husband’s family. They flew back to Los Angeles,

California after a week.

When my mother was still in Bangladesh she had heard many

things about America. Many people had said that America was a

beautiful land and that there was a lot of opportunity. When Afia

saw America for the first time in person, she couldn’t believe

that she was really there. She saw new plants that she had never

seen before and new kinds of people. One of the things that took

her breath away was the sight of how many cars were on the

highway during traffic. She hadn’t seen anything like it in

Bangladesh.

Adjusting to the new country was somewhat complicated.

Learning the new language was one of the most difficult tasks for

Afia Khatun Hoque. She managed to get by using the most common

phrases in English. At first she stayed at home while her husband

went to work. After a couple months Afia and her husband started

a weekend business of selling merchandise on the beach. Every

weekend during the warmer seasons, they would go out to the beach

to sell their merchandise. They decided to close down that

business and start a dry cleaners agency. While my father worked

at his day job, my mother ran the agency. She would take the

customer’s clothes and get it ready to be sent to a dry cleaners

since there weren’t any washing machines or dryers there. She did

this all by herself, day after day, until they both decided to

sell the business because my mother was becoming very lonely.

On their free time they would enjoy themselves by throwing

dinner parties, and going to different tourist spots. Coming to

America had a big impact on my mother. She was thrilled to be

able to use electricity whenever she wanted to. But the new

country also affected her health. After coming to America, she

started getting allergies to things that never were a problem in

Bangladesh.

Family has always been a priority for my mother. After

moving to America, she kept in contact with her family by sending

them letters on a weekly basis. She also went and visited them.

Sometimes she would call them, but the phone bills would be very

high. That’s why she would write to them instead.

Six years after coming to America, Afia Khatun Hoque had her

first child. It was a very happy day. After their daughter was

two years old, the family of three moved to Virginia in order to

be closer to some of Shirajul’s relatives, as well as look for

better opportunities. They drove for four days from California

all the way to Virginia, stopping at hotels along the way to get

some rest. When they arrived, the first thing they realized was

that there were a lot of trees. They moved into a townhouse, and

a month later, Afia’s son was born. While Afia took care of her

kids she started babysitting to earn a few more dollars on the

side in order to meet ends meet. Three months after moving to

Virginia, Afia and her husband became naturalized citizens.

Five months after my brother started school, I was born. My

dad had to work two jobs in order to make enough money. Afia

started to babysit more children so that she could help make

money. Eventually my dad resigned from his second job because he

received a substantial raise. Three and half years later, my

youngest sister was born.

When I asked if she could have done something different in

her life, she thought for a moment and said, “I wished I had made

more of an effort to learn English soon after I came to America.”

In my family, my mother always encouraged us to focus and make

extra effort in our schooling. She always tells us that she wants

us to be better and have better opportunities than she ever did.

Not being fluent in English made the first many years in America

a bit more difficult than it needed to be, especially when she

would be at work. She would have learned the new language sooner,

but she was surrounded by people who, like her, would and could

only speak in their own native language.

My mother is no stranger to hard times. Growing up without a

father was a challenge in itself. But when I asked her about the

most difficult moments of her life, she said nothing is more

difficult for her than witnessing the hardships of her own

children. She told me that being a mother, or a parent for that

matter, meant that your feelings, pains and happiness would

become an extension and reflection of that of your children. At

this point I realized what she was getting at. You see, my older

brother has severe allergies. His sensitivity to foods has gotten

to the point where he is now limited to just a handful of foods.

If he ate anything outside of his restricted diet, his skin would

become inflamed and severe itching would ensue. Even with his

strict diet, he still itches uncontrollably. It has made things

very difficult for him. I can see the sadness in my mother’s eyes

whenever she eats something that he cannot.

When I asked my mother what the saddest moment of her life

was, she looked at me with her watery eyes and said the day her

mother passed away. My grandmother had passed away on March 23,

2005 because of heart failure. My mother told me that she regrets

not doing more for her mother. “I wish that I had done more for

my mother. Sometimes I think about all the small things that I

could have done to make my mother more happy and comfortable.” My

mother knew that she had done good things for her mother, but she

always knew in her heart that she would never be able to repay

her mother for going through all the pains of motherhood and

raising her.

Towards the end of the interview I asked my mother, “What

was the happiest day of your life?” She thought about it for a

moment and said that the happiest moment of her life was when

each of her children were born. The scariest moment of her life

was when she and my father were driving on one of the roads on

Malibu Mountain, “I kept thinking that we were going to die

because the road was open and it was very easy for someone to

drive right off the cliff,” she said as she was shuddering at the

thought.

I really enjoyed having this interview with my mother.

Although I can sense that she held off on telling me a lot of

things, I found that there was much to learn from her life

experience. Hopefully if I continue this dialogue with my mother,

she might become more comfortable telling us the many stories

that make up her life.

Bibliography

Primary Source: Afia Khatun Hoque, Mother

The War for Bangladeshi Independence, 1971,

http://countrystudies.us/bangladesh/17.htm

“Bangladeshi Immigration,” http://immigration-online.org/30-

bangladeshi-immigration.html

”Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War,”

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/

2011/05/20115983958114219.html

”A Country Study: Bangladesh,”

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/bdtoc.html

Background:

El Salvador

El Salvador lies on the southern Pacific coast of Central

America, the smallest, most heavily populated, poorest, and often

the most dangerous place in the region. Most Americans know the

country, if at all, by the civil war in the 1980s that threatened

to draw America into it in a final phase of the Cold War.

Such a view ignores more than a few things. Outside

interference in the nation goes back quite far. El Salvador was

entirely American Indian people for most of its history, and

nearly all Native until very recently. It owes its independence

to a Conservative Party that opposed the Liberal Party during

independence struggles, leading to the breakup of a Central

American federation.

In 1932, the notorious Matanza (massacre or slaughter)

drastically altered the country and its society. A failed feeble

series of protests and an uprising by some Salvadoran Indian

farmers led the military dictator of El Salvador, Maximiliano

Hernandez Martinez, to crush the indigenous people with great

brutality. Up to 40,000 were killed in only a few months. The

military singled out Indians who wore traditional dress. The US

government played some role, apparently knowing of plans for the

massacres in advance, and offered to send US Marines to aid the

Salvadoran army.

This trauma changed the identity of Salvadorans forever.

Virtually overnight, most Salvadorans no longer publicly admitted

to being Native. Native dress virtually disappeared, and Native

language use in public sharply dropped. Today most Salvadorans

claim to be mestizos, when likely the great majority are still

entirely Indian in ancestry.

For most of the twentieth century, the nation was run by the

Fourteen Families, a small number of wealthy elites who treated

the nation almost as their personal plantations. In the 1970s,

much of the population supported an uprising by the Farabundo

Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The rebel group is named

after of one of the best known indigenous leaders and a martyr of

La Matanza.

The FMLN included Marxists, perhaps one twentieth of its

members. In the thinking of US President Reagan and other

hardline anti-Communists, any Marxist presence at all meant the

organization was Communist dominated. Thus the US government

aided first a Salvadoran military dictatorship and then a corrupt

right wing dominated limited democracy trying to crush the

uprising.

The Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s killed at least 75,000

people, almost all of them civilians murdered by the military.

The US supplied weapons, training, and aid, as well as bombing

the nation from US bases in the Panama Canal Zone. Central

American wars finally came an end in 1991 with the Arias Peace

Plan.

Most Salvadoran immigrants in the US today originally fled

from the civil war and government atrocities. There are over one

million Salvadoran-Americans and resident aliens in the US.

Northern Virginia, Washington DC, and its Maryland suburbs have

an especially high concentration of them. One of every twelve

Salvadorans in the US, over 130,000, resides in the area, making

up one of every six immigrants in the area.

Both Morataya's and Velasco's stories focus above all on the

hardships of entering the US, without papers, by coyotes

(smugglers). There is a recognition of the extreme brutality of

the civil war. For them, the war was not about surviving between

two armies, as anti Communists of the times claimed. It was much

more about surviving government repression.

Both stories have the feel of tales told by parents with the

aim of remembering, teaching their children to be grateful,

reminders of the family's hardships. Morataya's story is one

small episode in her grandfather's life, compared to Velasco's

as a long dramatic tale of her grandparents' entire lives,

The Journey

By Karen Morataya

My father struggled to remember the tears streaming down my

grandmother's face that Thursday morning in 1977. A war in his

native land of El Salvador was beginning to brew. The military

infested country was being run by its vicious militia. You

couldn't even walk into a grocery store or an innocent candy shop

without having confrontation with the army men, who according to

my father, loved to take advantage of their position. They would

jab or take down anyone they felt needed a good, solid slap in

the face. You could've been a crippled old man, but if the

militia didn't like the hair style you wore that day, they would

give you a pair of scissors and make you chop it all off right in

front of them and have you sign some sort of document stating you

would never let your hair grow that long again.

My grandmother urged my father to leave El Salvador; the

land of the sweet mangos, the land of joyous music and happiness,

where listening to Beatles and Jose Luis Perales was considered

cool. She begged him to leave this bright, sunny land for it had

turned into a war zone. The militia fought against the FMLN, a

guerilla organization. The country wasn't safe anymore, and my

sweet, innocent, loving grandmother told her only son to leave.

Knowing my grandmother, I could imagine her choking on these

words. It was an unspoken secret that everyone knew, my father

had always been her favorite out of her eight children.

He didn't want to go. My father had always been a kind man

who put his mother before anyone else. His older brother, my

uncle, was fifteen years his senior who lived across the country.

He was the only boy left, who would be the man of the house? Who

would help my mother buy scraps of meat or bring the fruits? They

grew up poor, in a remote town near the coast. You had to travel

two hours to get to at least somewhat of a decent city, just to

get to a bank. Who would help my grandmother go? She was getting

too old to travel that far.

Yet, against his wishes and listening to his mother, he was

where she wanted him to be. In a remote, claustrophobic room

filled with twenty-three others, listening to a man the people

call the "coyote." The coyote was a tall, lean man, looked to be

in his late thirties. A thick, black mustache covered almost his

entire top lip. His eyes were fierce but bored. His speech seemed

rehearsed, making my father think, how many times has he crossed

the border before?

The rules were simple. "Don't fall back or you'll die."

At first my dad thought he was exaggerating. But when the

coyote began to talk about how they'll sleep in the woods for a

few nights and that the animal coyote hunted at night in search

of prey, my father began to think otherwise.

Another thing that the coyote said had stuck to my father

in the most frightening way possible. "If you fall back,

oversleep, or get lost, you might as well just consider yourself

dead and feed yourself to the animals. I won't be coming back for

you. That's a promise." His tone was assertive, just by the way

he said it you could tell that he meant every word... as if he

left someone before.

It felt like my father simply blinked that he was

already boarding on a large, brown truck the size of a UPS truck.

Fitting in twenty-three other people was a challenge. The air

felt tight, breathing seemed like such a hard task. My father

could remember pulling his knees close to his chest, trying to

restrain himself from flooding tears. Everything he had known,

his friends, his family, his school, everything was gone in a

matter of minutes as they hit the road. He contemplated asking if

he could simply give up, tell the coyote to turn the truck back

around and let him keep the hundreds of dollars he paid him for

the expedition.

But my father knew better. He kept his mouth shut good and

stared at the eyes of everyone around him. Would he see these

people again? Would any one of them get lost in the remote, hot

desert? Would the lady crouched next to him, with her long, brown

locks, be sitting next to him in the next twenty four hours?

Would he be alive in the next twenty four hours? He shut his

eyes and drifted off to sleep, trying to erase that thought.

When he woke up, the coyote was opening the back door of the

truck, whispering to everyone that it was time for bed and to

pull out something warm to keep them safe from the frostbite they

would endure in the dead of night. My father zipped up his coat

and pulled out a blanket from his backpack. He couldn't fit a

pillow in his bag, so his backpack would have to do.

Laying on the cold, sandy ground was surprisingly not

so uncomfortable, or maybe he was too exhausted to notice the

difference between a soft bed and the hard, cold sandy desert.

The next two weeks were the same routine, come pile

yourself in the truck, lay low for eight hours, get out, and

sleep out in the wilderness. The food was something he had never

grown fond of though. He was beginning to miss his coconut juice

and pupusas with cheese, but this was not a time to be asking for

favors. He had to settle with the three tortillas and medium

block of cheese he got.

He had also grown used to touching death's fingertips

every now and then. He had almost overslept one night and had to

run a good half mile to finally see from afar the coyote's cowboy

hat. He only allowed himself to sleep three hours a night after

that, just to be on the safe side.

The journey was only two weeks, but he felt like this was

to be his life now, running away from the desert heat, making

sure to watch your back from predators, and to keep up with the

coyote.

But alas, on the fifteenth night, the coyote said that this

would be the last night they would be sleeping in the desert.

They would arrive to the border mid-morning, and to Los Angeles

by the afternoon, or so that was his goal.

My father could feel the relief of the people around him.

Luckily, for this journey no one was left behind. All twenty

three made it out together. My father says now he only realizes

how lucky they all really were.

The coyote advised them all to get their rest, but no one

could sleep. Excitement had erupted into the air and everyone was

beginning to make plans on what they would do as soon as they

would arrive to the states. The lady with long brown locks said

she would try to find work as soon as possible, to send money to

her three children back home. Another man said he heard the

construction business gets paid well. He would try to see if he

could get a job there.

My father turned away from all the chatter and saw the

coyote smile and shake his head, almost as if only it were that easy.

My father looked down. It wasn't like he hadn't planned on

what to do when he got to California. He had an aunt that was

going to take him in and help him find work. But the look on the

coyote's face made him think that finding a job would be so

farfetched. But he had to try, right?

The discussions and excitement lasted till morning.

Exhaustion from sleep deprivation kicked into my father's system,

so he decided to sleep the entire last car ride until the coyote

told him it was time to wake up.

He woke up when the coyote opened the back doors for the

last time and my father crawled out. It was sunset but you could

still see the buildings clearly. My father remembers saying he

had never seen a place so beautiful. His heart filled with joy

and pride? He wasn't sure. This would be his new home until God

knows when. But looking around, unto the vast tall buildings and

beautiful sunset he knew he wouldn't mind the least. In the past

thirty seconds he had grown to be fond of the new country.

He would wait until morning to worry about his next step to

his journey, but as of right now, he focused on the breath taking

scenery. In the end, he realized, it was all worth it.

El Salvador

By Tania Velasco

“A heart’s wound can be healed but the scars never fade

away; reminding you of the struggle and courage to survive as a

Velasco woman.” -Rubidia Velasco

These words are not just any words that go through one ear

and out the other. These words are words that women in my family

live by every day in the struggle to become more than the average

Salvadoran woman. We live beyond the words to prove to ourselves

that no one can devour us to pieces without us fighting and

rebuilding ourselves to become stronger, courageous, independent

women. With the grace of God we learn to survive and build our

history the only way we know how, through our HEARTS.

My family’s history begins in the small Central American

country of El Salvador, more specifically in the state department

of Cabanas. The state department was named after Honduran

politician Jose Trinidad Cabanas, who helped lead the Liberation

Party in 1852 (Bernal). El Salvador is the motherland of over 6.3

million people in the year 2000, with a growth rate of 2.1% each

year and growing. The main language is Spanish and 95% of the

citizens are Roman Catholics. The population is primarily 90%

Mestizos, 1% Indigenous, and 9% Caucasian (Superintendent of

Documents). After declaring independence from Spain on September

15, 1821, my family’s existence began as true Salvadorans.

According to my grandmother, Maria Bernarda Velasco viuda

(widow) de Velasco, my great-grandmother Teresa was a servant to

the Velasco household. The Velasco family was a highly respected

family who owned miles of territories that harvested fruits,

vegetables, and herbal medicine, among other agriculture that

were exported and traded within the country and outside the

country’s border lines. Teresa was only a servant with a

reputation to stain the whitest of white dresses, but was able to

catch the heart of my great-grandfather Pedro Velasco. He was the

youngest of six siblings and the cherished one of the family. But

not even he or his money could tame the wild heart of Teresa.

My great-grandparents were never married, but they managed

to have four children together before Teresa ran off like a

Jezebel to another man and followed him to a neighboring country.

She gathered her children in the woods before she left and told

them to pick fruit while she was going to go and catch a chicken

for dinner. As the day turned to night, my grandmother and her

brothers began to feel as if something horrendous was occurring.

They gathered their fruits and ran home as fast as their feet

could take them. When they reached their home, they saw their

father with his head down and smoking a pipe of tobacco in front

of the fireplace; and they knew right there and then that they

would never see their mother again until years later that loomed

like eternity. From that hurtful day, my grandmother’s heart

began to break. As a child she was never shown maternal love and

was never taught about womanhood.

As years began to pass my grandmother Bernarda turned

fifteen when she met my grandfather Gonzalo, better known as

Chalo. She was smitten and won over by this man who was much

older than her by three decades and who had children by other

women. Even though we are told as young girls to never fall in

love with a man who has children. Even if it hurts you to let go

you know in the back of your mind that it is the right decision.

But Bernarda couldn’t let go.

Chalo was a poor man. He was a father of two young boys,

both by other women in his life, when he saw Bernarda from a

window and was stricken by Cupid’s arrow. He knew he could not

approach her like any other woman for she was the only daughter

of Don Pedro, one of the wealthiest men in town. How could this

poor barrio boy be able to provide for the daughter of a wealthy

man and renounce his bachelor ways? He decided to man up and ask

Don Pedro for the hand of his beloved Bernarda. There was one

condition for Chalo to marry Bernarda. That condition was to

forget about the other women in his life and reject them so that

Bernarda would be the only one for him. He said yes and did what

he was told. They were married within a month’s time and lived on

her father’s land. Married life was not a fairy tale that

Bernarda dreamed of. Something within Chalo changed once they

were married. He was no longer the charming gentleman that she

met. Instead he began to harden and become distant from her.

Marriage in El Salvador is typically informal; usually the

man and woman set up a home and have children without a civil or

church commitment. Therefore their bond is easily broken when

they decided to separate. But now the man has to pay child

support. He can no longer abandon his children like in the olden

days. Once married in a church, that bond is inseparable (Gomez).

My grandparents were married in a Catholic church and after my

grandfather passed away, my grandmother never remarried or even

thought of being with another man, for that is a crime against

the church and the bond of her marriage. I believe that her heart

began to heal once my grandfather passed away.

In my eyes, I believe that he was a good man, but not a

great man that he would earn my praise. Yes, he was a hard

worker. But at the same time, he was an abusive man, a raging

alcoholic who would raise his hand against his wife and children.

He allowed for the older boys to beat the girls and make them put

up with their brothers’ nonsense with their many women and

mistreatments.

My grandmother’s wounds were caused by the abandonment of

her mother, the abuse of her husband, the deaths of her children,

the ungratefulness from some, and the life of being just another

battered woman in El Salvador. But with the passing of years and

her faith she was able to heal most her wounds. But the scars are

not only in her heart, but also in her outer appearance and her

trips back to her own memories.

My mother was child number six out of fourteen children that

my grandmother birthed. Her name was Rubidia Velasco. A prideful

woman, whose life has been hard with many obstacles that she

faced from different abuses, even those that are unspeakable.

Unfortunately, all of her sisters have also experienced many of

the same abuses that have gone unreported and over time the

traumatic events in their lives have taught them to be harsh

amongst their own daughters and each other. Rubidia began her

life in El Limpo, a small town in Cabanas where she lived amongst

nature and her siblings without a care in the world. But that

soon changed in the year 1980, when El Salvador had one of the

most horrific civil wars known to man.

A war that should never be repeated for the sake of humanity

was the war that Rubidia and her family lived through. Some of

her brothers were military soldiers who fought during the war,

while her eldest sister was the reason for the decline of their

riches. Her sister Maria Flor was married to a guerilla fighter,

and a high ranking one who was hunted by the government and

murdered, his body in shreds. The only way to prove he was dead

was to identify him by his teeth. Her husband led the guerrilla

fighters to Rubidia’s childhood home, searching for the boys to

massacre and to rape the women. But the family was warned by an

unknown source the day before the attack and was able to flee

before blood was shed. From that moment on Rubidia’s life changed

in the blink of an eye.

El Salvador’s civil war spanned over a time frame of twelve

years and took over 80,000 lives, including 12,000 in 1981 alone.

The tactics that they used to terrify citizens were partial

decapitations, mutilations, random shootings in busy markets,

rape and murder of children and women. It all started in the year

1979 when the FMLN, a group consisting of five subgroups who were

tired of the repression against them and who were looking for

political and economic rights, gathered together to fight back.

The FMLN was now a threat to the military dictatorship.

“Archbishop Oscar Romero from San Salvador was a man known for

his opinions on military oppression and needed to be taken down

before he could influence the peasants,” according to the

government. But his influence was much stronger than the military

thought because once Archbishop Romero was assassinated during a

mass he was conducting, it led to the revolt of the poor and the

beginning of El Salvador’s civil war. By 1992, over 40% of the

population fled the country and approximately 20% had come to the

United States. In 1992, the government and FMLN signed a treaty

that produced a cease fire, with the hand of the US overseeing

the agreement (Gomez).

Rubidia’s family moved to a town named Ilobasco, best known

for the wooden artwork that is produced there. At the tender age

of nine, Rubidia would leave her home and catch the train to the

capital city, San Salvador, to work as a servant to help her

mother take care of the younger siblings that kept coming year

after year. She would work from sunrise to sunset, taking the

train miles from her home to earn a few coins so that she could

buy herself some clothing and food. The danger at that time was

high, for she could have been murdered or taken as a sex slave

for the guerilla fighters, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

By the time she turned fifteen, she had served many families and

survived two deadly earthquakes and long distance travel. She

was not cared for as a child and her heart’s wound began to

deepen. She witnessed her father beating her mother, her own

beatings from siblings and parents, and the reality of poverty.

One day she was sewing herself a dress when she looked

outside her door and in front of her was the young man who wore

white see through pants and oxford shoes. She looked up into his

hazel eyes and was shocked when he raised an eyebrow at her. She

blushed and looked down quickly. She never would have guessed

that in years that that same young man would one day be her

children’s father, as well as both her disgrace and happiness.

One year she was offered the chance to come to the United

States on a work-permit status to be a servant to a wealthy

family in Washington D.C. She was too in love that she gave up

the opportunity and gave it to her sister Maria Orfilia instead.

The second wound was near. After giving up the chance to come to

this country legally, she found out she had another opportunity

to come. It was a hot day when she and her older brother arrived

to the US embassy and only three people were ahead of her when

her brother went off to get refreshments. Out of the corner of

her eye appeared that young man again and asked her if she was

really going to leave him. Her knees buckled and her stomached

knotted and she took his hand and left the embassy with only two

people in front of her. When her brother returned, she was

nowhere to be found. He cursed them both when he found out what

had happen.

When Rubidia turned seventeen, she found out she was

pregnant and was banned from the house like many of her sisters

as well. She went to live with her hazel eyed lover, but knew it

wouldn’t last because of the volatile relationship that was

between them. He abandoned her and the child, the biggest cut a

mother can receive, the rejection of her son’s father towards her

son. She had no luck with love. She thought she found love with

an older man which we call “B.” He loved her passionately, but

there was something holding him back from loving her completely.

We say he was a coward, but I think there was an evil force that

separated B from my older brother.

I dare say that El Salvador is known as the passages of

demons and evil spirits according to many who believe in

witchcraft and voodoo. There is even a small town close to my

mother’s town where rumors swirl of humans that can change into

animals and not be killed by human’s hands. Many hauntings and

scary things happen after midnight in El Salvador and many

rituals are conceived as well. There’s been known cases of people

getting sick and when they go to the hospital, there is nothing

wrong with them according to the tests. But I know for a fact

that evil lives amongst us. My mother had a good friend who was

killed with a spell, by a woman who confessed her wrongdoings

while the lady was on her deathbed. There was no cure for her,

and even a healer said it was too late to reverse the wrong. As

religious as we can be, there is always that knowledge that there

are people who want to see you worse off by any cause to make

themselves feel at a better advantage than you.

Rubidia became pregnant again at the age of nineteen. She

had two young boys with only a year and a few months between

them. She went back to work as a servant and met my father. He

was a poor humble man who had children from another marriage, but

was able to unfreeze my mother’s heart and teach her that there

are other choices out there. She realized that El Salvador could

not give to her what the United States could if she had the

opportunity to come and be able to support her sons and one day

bring them over as well. That day came at the end of November in

1990. Her sister was able to gather enough money for her to take

the long journey over illegally and take the risk for a better

life. She was able to gather her strength that fateful night when

she departed from her boys, the only thing she lived for and the

reason she was crossing the Rio Grande.

My brothers were only two and half and thirteen months old

when she laid them to sleep and left without seeing them for more

than four years. Her eyes tear up each and every time she recalls

that night. She seems able to taste her tears and feel the wind

slapping her face as she started her journey. Her beloved nephew

begged her not to leave for she would forget him. Unfortunately

it truly was the last time they would see each other because in

the year 1995, he was the first teenage boy to be killed due to

gang-related activities in their town.

As she started her journey there was a surprise in store for

her. She was crossing the border with child. She had no idea that

she was pregnant nor that it was a little girl. Just like many

before her, in order to cross the border there are normally

groups of people traveling together. She was one of the two women

who were traveling within a group of sixteen. There was the risk

of rape each and every night, the fear of being left behind to

die or to be bitten by a poisonous snake.

According to data collected by Aaron Terrazas there are over

1.1 million Salvadorians living in the United States since 2008

and the numbers keep growing. About three quarters of the

population in the United States were eligible to be naturalized

in the year 2008. The majority of the Salvadoran communities

reside in California and Texas but many have also relocated

themselves in Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C, and New York.

They work in labor and services including construction, cleaning,

and farming. The men’s population is higher than the women’s

population of immigrants in the states (Terrazas).

With the water up to her waist, she crossed the Rio Grande

with her belongings over her head. She was to be picked up in

Texas and driven to Virginia where Maria Orfilia resided with her

family. Once there, she found out she was pregnant and was taken

to an abortion clinic without her consent.

While the doctor examined her she felt unease. The doctor

asked, “Are you ready?”

She looked up, “Ready for what?”

“For the abortion, do you not know? That’s why you are

here!”

“No!!!!” she screamed.

She grabbed her items and waited outside for her ride. She

swore to God that she would live for her children and that no one

will be able to separate her from them. “In our family abortion

is murder, no matter how poor you can be an abortion is never the

answer. You take that leap of faith and face the consequences

head-on. No abortion will be accepted and if you do you are a

MONSTER!”

Her wounds began to heal the day a little girl arrived in

her arms. My mother had me on August 6, 1991 at 7:07PM and I

weighed 7lbs.7oz. I am the future for the women in my family. I

am the first generation, along with my brothers and cousins. I am

the one who carries the sorrow of those before me, the light to

their existence for a better world for our family’s women.

Growing up as a child I had to learn how to swallow my pride

and learn to be obedient. It was not easy for me to spend so much

time away from my mother because she worked various jobs at one

time in order to support her boys back home as well as her

family. She would leave around six in the morning and wouldn’t

come home until ten at night. I was raised to defend myself and

to never underestimate my instincts. My mother raised me to be

humble, but proud to care for other people in our community, to

extend a hand in the time of need. I was and still am the

translator of the community, the secretary, the problem solver,

and the hope. When I look back to my childhood I am happy to see

that my mother’s harsh way of raising me was for the best.

I am proud to say, “I’m not a statistic, nor am I gang-

banging chola. I’m an educated young lady with values and morals.

But yet do not put up with nonsense from anyone at any angle.” I

was taught from the beginning that you are to wait until marriage

and that no man can keep you back from your future.

My mother puts stress on education as if it is the last

thing on Earth. “You learn both languages, how to read and write

and you go to the university and prove to all that my daughter is

the one to watch!” My mother was so proud as letter of

acceptances came through the mail, but my choice to attend a

community college and earn an Associate Degree and move on to a

bigger college made her the proudest.

Some days I go back in time and remember the discipline, the

screams, the bipolar attitude of my mother, and I smile. For now

I know that our bond will never be broken because we are bred to

be unshattered. My wounds are not deep enough like others, but

with time new ones may come and old ones will heal. The Velasco

women are here on Earth to suffer and survive and to fight back

those demons and the memories that we want to erase. I will heal

the wounds of the generations before me by setting an example

about education and living life to the fullest with no regrets.

But my number one priority is to fade away the scars on my

mother’s heart so that she can live her life with no more pain,

but with the happiness of having her family here with her so that

it can grow and she can see the new generations of Velasco women.

Bibliography

Carlos Bernal. “Cabanas El Salvador.” Elsv.info.elsv.info.

October 26, 2010

Background Notes on Countries of the World 2003; Sep. 2003 El Salvador,

p.1-9, 9p

Julia Gomez. “Countries and their Cultures.” Everyculture.com,

2011

Aaron Terrazas. “Migration Information Source: El Salvador.”

Mpi.com, January 2010

Rubidia Velasco, personal interview.

Maria Bernarda Velasco de Velasco, personal interview.

Background:

India

Describing India, the Indian subcontinent, or South Asia, is

more akin to talking about a region or series of cultures than

the monolithic one most Americans and westerners know simply as

“India,” with cliches about convenience store and hotel owners.

In terms of diverse cultures, India is more akin to Europe than a

single European country. India has dozens of different cultures

speaking twenty-two state recognized languages and by some

estimates as many as 415 languages and dialects.

The Indian subcontinent was a series of many kingdoms and

chiefdoms until the third century BCE. A series of empires saw

most of the region united. Hinduism dates in the region from the

seventh century BCE, and Islam from the tenth century CE.

European conquerors first came in the seventeenth century, first

Portuguese and then French colonial cities competing with the

British East India Company. The failed Indian Rebellion of 1857

led to direct British rule of almost all of India. The French had

already been driven out, the Portuguese limited to the city of

Goa.

An independence movement confronted the British

continuously. Part of it was Muslim nationalism and revivalism.

By the time British rule came to an end in 1947, Muslim sentiment

in favor of a separate nation was powerful enough to win the

concession of the British. Later resentment of the domination of

Pakistan by those in western Pakistan would lead to a revolt in

the east of Pakistan, successfully establishing Bangladesh.

The authors of both essays are from Sikh families from the

Punjab. Quite a few Indian-Americans in Northern Virginia are

Punjabi, and there is a large successful Punjab Festival every

year in Manassas. The Sikh religion began in the fifteenth

century, the Sikh Empire winning control of the northern region

of Punjab for the first half of the nineteenth century. The

British conquered the Sikh Empire in the Anglo-Sikh Wars.

Indian immigrants first came to the US in large numbers in

the California Gold Rush. A second wave came from Punjab at the

start of the twentieth century. The largest waves coming to the

US came after the end of immigration quotas in 1965, and then

with the technology boom of the 1990s. Asian Indians now number

nearly three million, almost 1% of the US population. Virginia

has the seventh most Indians of any state, slightly over 100,000,

the great majority of them in Northern Virginia.

Both accounts gives us a look at a faith most Americans know

little about, Sikhism, its basic tenets and beliefs. As Sikhs

caught in the middle between Hindu-Muslim hostilities, the

families experienced some of the worst of the mob violence during

the Partition of India. Both families apparently still hold

strong hostility towards British rule more than five decades

after that rule ended.

`

Family History

by Randhawa Preet

Before I begin my family history and the interview of my

grand aunt, I would like to remember her at this moment and thank

her for all the things she has done for my family and I

appreciate her. My aunt actually passed away two weeks ago in

India. As I began this paper, it never crossed my mind to think

that she would be leaving so soon. But I am proud to have had the

opportunity to interview her about her past and my culture as

well before she departed.

Sikhism is the world's fifth largest religion, but is yet

unknown to many people. Sikhs have a very strong background and

have endured many events in the past 500 years. Fortunately, its

young history has been passed down generation to generation

successfully, but has yet to be introduced to other cultures and

choice of religions. I interviewed my Grandaunt, Prakash Kaur

Virk, since she is the oldest member of my family and has gone

through all of the hardships growing up.

Kaur is the middle name of most Sikh females, and its

meaning is “Princess.” The men, on the other hand, hold the

middle name Singh, meaning “Lion.” My aunt was born in Lahore,

Pakistan, which back then was India. She was born in 1925 into a

wealthy family, where her father was an officer in the Indian

Army while her mother was a housewife and a mother of eight

children. She was the second youngest. She did not have any

education whatsoever. She only learned housework and prayers. She

had the entire Granth Sahib (Holy Book) memorized by the time she

was married. She actually devoted herself to God before marriage,

which is called Amrit Shakna. Her parents set up an arranged

marriage with a well-known priest of a little village nearby in

1942. Her husband, however, was from a poor family but he was

respected all through the land. Her role was to attend to her

husband and perform all the housework. After a year of their

marriage, she gave birth to my uncle and her only child, Davinder

Singh Virk, in 1943.

In Sikhism, God is one, “Waheguru.” God is also nameless and

imageless, meaning that there is no idol or shrine at all to look

up to. It has ten disciples who all laid out the foundation of

Sikhism and were either from different religions or were Sikh to

start with, but spread the religion and fought for Sikhs. It is

made up of the Khalsa, a group of Sikhs. There are many universal

teachings of Sikhism, but there are the Main Five K’s, which

include Kase, Kara, Kangha, Kaccha, and Kirpan.

The Kase is the keeping of one’s hair as untouched, meaning

without cutting it. It is used as a symbol of spirituality and

simplicity that one does not need to change their appearance for

acceptance. A Kara is a steel or iron bangle that is used as a

reminder for us Sikhs to restrain any action that requires

violence. The next K is for Kangha, which means comb in the

Punjabi language. This comb is used as a hygiene tool for the

Kase. A Kachha is an undergarment, which is a sign of chastity.

The last K is for Kirpan. The Kirpan is a sword that is always

worn to the side of the hip and always concealed. This sword

symbolizes dignity and struggle against any injustice that has

happened in the past.

My grandaunt was a victim of abuse from the nearby gangs and

the British Raj. In the Sikh religion, alcohol and drugs are

prohibited, and so are gambling and stealing. But with corruption

it turned the purest into murderers and prayers into words of

war.

My aunt witnessed the murder of her husband on the way to

India. In 1947, India and Pakistan went to war with one another,

and coincidentally that same year, the British left the country

leaving it for “independence.” This so-called independence only

ignited a war between two countries that were once one only

because of unclaimed boundaries and religious wars between the

Hindus and the Muslims. In India, most of the Hindu population is

in the south and in between as well, while all Sikhs are in the

northern population. The Muslims are also in the northern part of

India and in Pakistan as well. Keeping this in mind, the way

these three religions were geographically located, it made it

hard for the Sikhs to avoid any violence.

One of the Five Ks include wearing a Kara, which means to

refrain from violence. While my grand aunt was on the train

traveling from Lahore, Pakistan to Pataila, India, she was with

her husband and her four year old son, my uncle. The train was

beyond crammed, so packed that they could not move their feet

since people literally covered the entire train floor and roof as

well. The reason my aunt and her family had to evacuate Lahore

was because a group of Pakistani civilians and gang members

attacked and set the entire city afire since the majority were

Sikhs. Every single Sikh and Hindu was driven out of the city, so

they boarded the next available train to India. She and her

family had nowhere to go. Back then there wasn’t any type of

internet that could alert them to where to live and stay at, so

they left it in Gods hands my aunt said.

The train was attacked. There was nowhere to run at all. She

remembered it like it was yesterday. As she spoke her voice

quivered. The details, the visuals, and the emotional cries she

heard still bother her after fifty-five years. Her husband was

murdered right next to her. She said that the women and children

were left alone, while girls were taken away to be sold as sex

slaves and raped to death. Upon her arrival to the Patiala Rail

Station, she was speechless, with her son next to her side. She

had nowhere to go and finally found a deserted farm where she

raised her son and taught him what she knew. Not only was she

educated in housework, but also in farm work as well. She knew

how to plow the fields and, with the scarce food they had, she

managed to start up a small farm. She was a widow who was alone

with no help at all.

As she continued with her story, her voice changed from

feeling hopeless and sad to outrage and anger. She claims that

the British ran away from their problems, that they caused them.

The so-called British Raj took over India in 1858 and left

in 1947. They actually came into the picture to save India from

the control of the East India Company. But to the people, the

hopeless people, their motive was left undisclosed to the public.

Soon enough, the British looked at the people as servants. My

great aunt was very hostile towards the British. Because of them,

her husband was not able to make enough money. Her husband was

not only a priest, but also a peace activist that rallied the

Sikhs towards starting their own country, called Khalistan.

Khalistan is a movement that many Sikhs follow and some

actually believe that Punjab and part of Pakistan is a separate

country called Khalistan. The British noticed these revolts and

riots and couldn’t do much. By that time, many people had

revolted against them and their Raj. While the trains kept

arriving back in India with corpses, the British never

communicated back with the country. These attacks lasted months,

starting with the wintery weather of January 1947 and ended

August 1947. The British Raj exited India around spring,

according to my great aunt and many other scholars. The country

was in the worst state ever and the British Raj never returned.

The British claim that they were the ones who got India their

independence and that after their exit, India was at a state of

peace.

Unfortunately, this interview ended earlier than I had

wanted it to. My grand aunt suffered from Alzheimer’s after

witnessing an argument between her grandsons and how they wanted

to split up and live in separate houses. After three nights of

talking to her over the phone, I was able to get this much

information, but not as much as I wanted to.

I would like to let the world know of the injustice the

British did to my family. This seems to be the case in many other

ethnicities as well, but I’d like to let the world know that

independence is only achieved when one’s heart is in the motive,

which in this case, the people of India put aside their

differences and finally got together to overcome decades of pain.

Bibliography

Chandrika Kaul. "From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in

India 1858-1947." BBC News. BBC, 03 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/independence1947_01.s

html

Shirin Keen. "The Partition of India." The Partition of India.

N.p., 1998. Web. 04 Oct. 2012.

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Part.html

Kuldip D Neelam. "The Partition of India in 1947." The Partition

of India in 1947. VBulletin Solutions, 12 Nov. 2009. Web. 04 Oct.

2012.

http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/1947-partition-of-india/27499-the-

partition-of-india-in-1947-a.html

Prakash K Virk. "Life in the Shadows of the British." Personal

interview. Sept.-Oct. 2012.

Family Tree

by Harpreet Randhawa

My grandfather has always been interesting to me, but I

never took the time out to get to know him and his past. He had

left his home and family just to come in raising my sister and I.

His homeland is in Punjab, India. He is my eldest family member I

have remaining. Its hard to imagine my life without him since has

been with me my entire life. I had the gift of interviewing him

about his past and being a Punjabi Sikh.

The religion of Sikhism is known about by very few people,

but is still the 5th largest religion. It was founded during the

15th century by Guru Nanak, and based its teachings of accepting

others, praising god, respecting yourself, and equality of

everyone. My grandfather, Kirpal Singh, is a devoted Sikh for 83

years, shared with me his experiences and upbringings.

My grandfather was born in Punjab, India November 4th 1930

into a farming family, which isn’t rare in Punjab, who supplies

India with 67% of its wheat and 48% if its rice. He was always

upper class compared to the other villagers. His parents were a

farmer named Kalvant Singh and his wife Surjeet Kaur. He always

was ahead of his class during school, prompting him to because a

schoolteacher. All through his upbringings, his parents instilled

the ideas and beliefs of Sikhism in him. He practiced prayer

multiple times a day and studied the holy book, Granth Sahib.

While in college at the University of Punjab, he met the love of

his life, my grandmother. The irony of the relationship my

grandparents had was they both share the same first same Kirpal,

except my grandmother’s last name is Kaur. They had three kids,

two sons and one daughter. The two sons, being my uncles Kulbir

and Billa, were the eldest and youngest of the three. The

daughter, my mother Saroj, was the middle child. All children

were born 5 years apart in Punjab.

Sikhism is a polytheistic religion, believing in a

“Waheguru.” He remains nameless because there is no higher

individual to praise, rather a spirit. Sikhism is a cross between

Hinduism and Buddhism, and is structured on the ten saints who

molded the religion. The main points of the religion are called

the five K’s; Kaccha (undergarments), Kara (Bangel), Kangha

(comb), Kase (Hair), and Kirpan (sword). The Kaccha represents

chastity. Kara represents a restraint of violence. Kangha

demonstrates hygiene. The Kase is keeping your hair untouched or

cut to represent acceptance in ones appearance. Kirpan is used to

symbolize dignity and a warrior spirit Sikhs have.

British soldiers who were occupying the country bullied my

grandfather as a child. The British had occupied India for 1858

to 1947, when finally India received its independence. Prior to

British occupancy, Punjab was forming its own country made for

the Sikhs with their own language, Punjabi. When British left,

India promised the Sikh people their country that desired,

Khalistan, but this promised was never fulfilled. India was now a

super country with the additions of Punjab and other similar

countries. After being denied nationhood, Punjab was also hit by

the partition. The partition was when India and Pakistan had to

split the land the British had controlled. This destroyed

millions of families and businesses. Families would be separated

between the Punjab state of Pakistan, which is dominantly Muslim,

and the Punjab state of India, which is dominantly Sikh.

While the partition was occurring, anti-Sikh Riots were

going on and my grandfather just was becoming a young adult. He

had just finished high school the same year and was planning on

going to teaching school. The entire state of Punjab was put

under curfew. He recalled a particular memory that still haunts

him today. He told me he was sleeping at night when he heard

large fire works go off. These weren’t fireworks, he said, they

were gunshots. They were coming from the house next door. My

grandfather climbed a fence to look over and noticed a group of

Hindu men invading a house armed at hand and shooting the men of

the house. One of those men shot was a good friend of my

grandfather.

Senseless killings were occurring in Punjab to the Sikhs. An

estimated number of 8,000 Sikhs were killed through Oct. 31, 1984

to Nov. 3 1984. These riots occurred due to the assassination of

the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, by her two Sikh

bodyguards. The Sikhs did not approve of Gandhi because she would

discriminate the Sikhs. She accused the Sikhs of holding weapons

of mass destruction in the holiest site, the Golden Temple and

sent an military force to destroy the site of worship. Her

successor and sun, Rajiv Gandhi, swore to take revenge on the

Sikhs. He was famously quoted for saying “When a big tree falls,

the earth shakes.” Which was meant for the Sikhs to feel his

pain.

Once tensions settled down, my grandfather became a

principle at the same school my mother taught English for

elementary kids. The children always respected him because he had

a very deep voice and stood well over six feet tall. He was also

the villages wealthiest farmer. He owned 4x more acres than the

next person who had just 10 acres. He taught in that elementary

school for 34 years after finally moving to America in 1992. My

father, Nirjit Singh, sponsored them to come to America along

with my mother, now known as Saroj Randhawa, who just had my

sister, Preet Randhawa. My grandfather did not have any form of

retirement, even though he was in his early 60s. He worked two

jobs, one at a gas station and one at a toll both. He always

worked the night shift allowing him to take care of my sister and

me while my parents were at work.

Now in 2013, my grandfather is 83 years old and still very

well and alive. He is without his loving wife who passed away in

2010. This caused him to go into a slight depression because he

would always depend on her for everything. He is still a proud

Sikh and constantly visits his homeland of Punjab. He receives

his payment by pension and has his own insurance plan. He spends

majority of his days going on long walks with our dog and

watching television dramas.

India’s current state as a country is amazing. It has a

thriving economy, a growing population, and one of the largest

militaries. After centuries of remaining a third world country,

India is finally looking to the future and becoming more

westernized. Religious tension still is part of India. Hindus and

Sikhs have had a long line of disagreements and neither is

willing to talk things out. Though the Khalistan movement has

died down quite a bit, it still is a topic of discussion for the

youths of Sikhs around the world. Many are opening their eyes and

noticing the discrimination Sikhs receive from the Indian

government, which is mostly Hindu.

My grandfather suffers from dementia and I was not able to

keep his attention for a long time and he did not remember

everything very clearly, but from the information I have, it was

more than enough. He was raised like a true Punjabi man with

dignity and pride within himself. He suffered the toughest of

hardships and found the will to fight through and become

successful as a human, father, and a man. He gave me the

motivation to learn more about my religion and culture and become

more educated in my history. He taught me to respect everyone and

to never be afraid to be myself. I hope to one day fight for the

Khalistan Movement and give my people their land back.

Works Cited

Bahadar, Banda S. "Sikh Independence Deserves International

Support." Washington Times: The Washington Times LLC. Oct 07

1999. Pro Quest. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.

Kaul, Chandrika. "From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in

India 1858-1947." BBC News. BBC, 03 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Nov.

2012.

Keen, Shirin. "The Partition of India." The Partition of India.

N.p., 1998. Web. 04 Oct. 2012.

<http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Part.html>.

Neelam, Kuldip D. "The Partition of India in 1947." The Partition

of India in 1947. VBulletin Solutions, 12 Nov. 2009. Web. 04 Oct.

2012.

Virk, Prakash K. "Life in the Shadows of the British." Personal

interview. Sept.-Oct. 2012.

Nani

by Sanam Shaikh

Which people in your life mean the world to you? Most of us

have a few, including parents, friends, and siblings. Mine is my

grandmother. I know much about her life, but always felt that I

could learn more. This interview has given me the chance to

receive the answers to many aspects of her life that were still a

mystery to me, and for that, I am very grateful. Sitting back and

reminiscing with our parents and/or grandparents past is not good

enough; we must take action when we still have the chance. Family

is the one thing that remains constant in our life, and we should

absorb as much knowledge as we can to figure out where we come

from. My grandmother is the epitome of this rather large and

controversial family of mine, which would make her the absolute

best candidate to share her story.

Akhtar Jaan, or otherwise known as “Nani”, nicknamed after

her large collection of grandchildren, was born October 10, 1932

in the small village of Poonch. She was brought into a household

of a mother, father, and ten children. “It was very crowded,” my

Nani told me. “All of us used to play together in the yard, with

not much, but we still had loads of fun.” She smiled as she spoke

about the good old days as a little kid not having a care in the

world. “We used to make all of our toys out of dirt” She laughed,

“Mum would get so mad at us for that. My favorite game growing

up was hopscotch. We would use the rocks out by the rivers to

draw it out.” With all of the happiness and Kodak moments my Nani

was sharing with me, I did not want to have to get to the tough

questions, such as the hardships she endured as a child.

Along with the happiness, I was curious as to what

difficulties came along with living in Poonch. “What

responsibilities did you have as a child?” I asked.

“Everyone worked very hard, regardless of what age you

were,” my Nani explained. “We all woke up at 5AM every morning to

do our chores. We were responsible for milking the cows and

feeding the other animals.” She told me how she was taught to

milk her first cow when she was only five years old. “Life was

hard, yet simple,” she stated. The children were taught to be

self reliant and learn at an early age how to care for

themselves, plus their younger siblings. “Since my father was in

the military, he was always away.” She played with her fingers as

she spoke. “My mother was so busy all the time taking care of the

house and all of us children. We learned to care for each other

most of the time.” Coming from a small immediate family, hearing

this was extremely foreign to me.

During her childhood, what had intrigued me the most was her

schooling. I have heard that she has not attended school for most

of her lifetime through different family members, so I just

wanted to put this often rumored subject to rest. She laid down

the truth right away, “I stopped going to school when I was

eleven,” she said strongly. “I stayed home to take care of my

little brothers and sisters.”

My Nani carried on with her story as I was trying to take

all of it in. “I still learned to read and write. Besides it

wasn’t very fun anyway,” she said. “There was a five mile walk

just to get to school! My feet were always sore and hurting. I

hated going!” she said with her eyebrows raised. “Our school was

one small room filled with countless students. We all shared our

books and chairs, since they were scarce. Even after all the

terrible things she continued telling me about her school, I was

surprised to see how at the age of seven, she did not possess any

excitement for school at all.

“Did you have any dreams or goals for yourself? Like, what

did you want to be when you grew up? Wasn’t that motivation to

keep going to school?” I asked concerned.

“As much as I hated school back then, I wouldn’t think twice

if I had a chance to ever go back,” she told me. “I was young and

dumb, school wasn’t very important to me back then.” Even though

my Nani regrets taking school for granted, I felt a little upset

and angry with her. My belief about Pakistani women in general is

they should consider school as a major blessing within our life

which is not always promised. Many women in the twenty-first

century are still not allowed to attend school in Pakistan.

(Mansoor)

Throughout my Nani’s childhood, she went through many ups

and downs, but that wasn’t enough to prepare her for all the

adversity that was yet to come. Once my grandmother turned

thirteen, there was often talk about her getting married soon. “I

wasn’t surprised,” She told me. “My sisters were all married

around the age of twelve and thirteen.”

“But, didn’t you feel you were too young?” I asked eagerly.

“Well obviously,” she said with a surprised look. She told

me how she was really scared and nervous, especially since she

had never met the man who she was going to spend the rest of her

life with. They were forbidden to meet before the marriage since

it was considered unlawful in arranged marriages. “I wasn’t

allowed to see him. The first time I laid my eyes on him was our

wedding day.”

As strange as it sounds to hear my grandmother say this, it

is quite common for this to happen in Islamic marriages. It is

not of course to this extent but arranged marriages still exist

to this day in age. Dating is still not socially acceptable

within Pakistan, so most of the citizens in the country usually

are in semi-arranged marriages. Semi-arranged marriages consist

of the families introducing the boy and the girl, and then the

couple has the last say, on whether they want to go through with

a marriage or not. (Haq)

“What I was most worried about was my wedding night,” my

grandmother continued to speak about her life changing

experience. “I just remember feeling sick and my thoughts

racing,” she said. “He was much older too…twelve years older.”

I felt my heart in my chest as she kept going on with her

story. Even though I was well informed before this interview that

my grandfather was older, I never was fully aware of the exact

age difference. “What did you think of him, when you first got to

know him?” I asked feeling uncomfortable as she unfolded through

every detail.

“He was a sweet man, very kind and sweet. I miss him,” my

Nani said. I could almost sense the pain my grandmother was

feeling just speaking about her deceased husband. My grandfather,

Tassadaq Hussain Khan, was a soldier and fought in many different

wars, including the most famous, Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.

(Globalsecurity.org) This war, also known as The First Kashmir

War, was fought between the two newly independent nations, India

and Pakistan, over the state of Kashmir. This was also only the

first of four wars fought between the two countries.

The pain and suffering started in my grandmother’s home when

a tribal rebellion broke out in Poonch, which was only southwest

of Kashmir. Nani was rushed out of her comfortable home in the

village into the big city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, just in time

before the Pakistani Army entered Kashmir to help resolve the

conflict. Nani became extremely depressed during the time of the

war, as she would sit at home alone praying that her husband

would come back to her safe and sound. Fortunately for her, he

did, with minor injuries, and always a good story to tell. After

the second time he went away due to war, she had faith that he

would always return.

As years passed, my Nani grew older, and decided that she

wanted to start a family. “How old were you when you wanted to

have children?” I asked eagerly.

“I would say about fifteen, but I didn’t have my first child

until seventeen,” she said. My Nani always gets so immediately

upset when she ever speaks about her first child. Unfortunately,

in the years my Nani was having babies, it was very common for

the babies or even the mother to die due to childbirth and other

complications involving birth. My grandmother’s first daughter

was diagnosed with rheumatic fever at the age of one. This

disease commonly affects joints, skin, heart, blood vessels, and

brain. (Children's Hospital) She explained how it was “a common

disease”ring that time. I believe she says that in order to make

herself feel a bit better. She doesn’t seem to dwell too much on

this subject, since my Nani is the proud mother of a whopping

total of nine children. My grandfather was very absent during the

time their children were growing up. My Nani was became the

single parent who was raising the children on her own. Despite a

missing father in their lives, my grandmother always strived to

give her kids the absolute best of everything in life.

As her children grew older, so did Nani and her husband. My

grandfather had passed suddenly in his early forties due to heart

problems, leaving his rather large family behind. “That was the

hardest thing I ever had to go through” Nani said. “He was fine,

and then all of a sudden he became very sick, and was not getting

any better. His heart was not strong. It finally gave up on him

when he had the heart attack,” she said while clearing her throat

over and over. She helped describe the day of his death one of

the most devastating days for her and her children. She said that

her third youngest, my mother, was the most affected, because of

how close her relationship was with my grandfather.

My grandmother was left to care for a family completely on

her own, yet she was a very strong woman and never backed down

from a challenge. She used his pension and had some property of

his to survive on. Nani never worked in her life but careful

economic pre-planning by my grandfather helped her to live a

comfortable and nice life. My grandfather seemed like someone who

was truly selfless and a giving individual. Unfortunately he had

passed long before my existence, so I do not feel the pain of his

death like my mother and grandmother does.

My Nani faced loads of difficulties in her life, yet she has

much to show about her successes in life as well. To start off

with her children, many of them have made her proud by becoming

doctors, entrepreneurs, and educators all over the world. She

looks back at her life and recalls “It had its ups and downs, but

it’s my life, and it is a good life.” I couldn’t have summed that

up better myself. Nani is truly an inspiration and great role

model for all of my family members aspiring to be strong women

like her one day. Our relatives share more than brown eyes and

the same hair. It is so rewarding to be able to sit and learn

about our ancestral history. Through discovering our own roots,

we become aware of who we are as an individual, and understand

more about our unique purpose in life.

Bibliography

“Family History Sample Outline and Questions” UCLA.edu. UC Regents

2012 http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/familyHistory.html

A. Ibrahim. “A Brief Illustrated Guide To Understanding Islam”

Islam-guide.com. Darussalam, Publishers and Distributers 1996-2002.

http://www.islam-guide.com/

“Islamic Marriage Philosophy” Muslim-marriage-guide.com. 2007-2011

http://www.muslim-marriage-guide.com/islamic-marriage.html

Muslim Student Association of Colorado State University. “A Brief

History of Islam in the United States,” Colostate.edu

http://www.colostate.edu/orgs/MSA/find_more/iia.html

“Indo-Pakistani Conflict of 1947-48” Globalsecurity.org. 2000-2012

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/indo-

pak_1947.htm

Haq, Masooma, “Arranged Marriages a tradition in Pakistan”

Theepochtimes.com. Epoch Times Staff. 2008

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/arranged-marriages-in-

pakistan-persist-4983.html

Mansoon, Rukhsana, “Pakistan: Women facing slavery,

discrimination and exploitation – Socialists fight women’s

oppression worldwide,” Socialistalternative.org. 2006

http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article16.php?id=180

“Rheumatic Fever” Chw.org. Children’s Hospital and Health Center.

2012 http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21659/router.asp

Personal Interview courtesy of Akhtar Jaan. Sanam Shaikh. July

23-30, 2012.

Background:

Iran

Iran is known to most Americans today for its ayatollahs and

other leaders making provocative statements. Many Americans and

westerners have a hard time seeing the nation and people as

anything but a threat to them or Israel. Iran or Persia is one of

the oldest civilizations in the world, at several times empires

stretching over much of the Mideast. Classical Persian culture

has accomplishments to rival any other ancient tradition.

Islam came to Persia with conquest in the seventh century,

but the nation was not primarily Shiite until the fifteenth

century. Persia was under the Umayyed and then Abassid

Caliphates, later the Mongols, Timurid, Safavid, and Qajar

dynasties.

Persia was facing western invasions as early as the

seventeenth century. The British, French, and Russians each took

pieces of territory. The discovery of oil led to the division of

Iran into three colonial spheres of interest. The nation was

entirely occupied by the Ottomans, British, and Russians during

World War I.

In 1921 a military coup put the Pahlavi Dynasty in power.

Reza Shah ruled for sixteen years until overthrown by a British-

Russian invasion. The British then put his son Mohammed Reza Shah

Pahlavi into power. A democratic movement put Mohammed Mossadegh

into power after World War II, until he was overthrown by (yet

again) the British, this time with the aid of the CIA.

Mohammed Reza came back into power, ruling an authoritarian

state with great brutality until overthrown by a popular Islamist

revolution in 1977. The Shah's state was secular and westernized,

persecuting Muslims and other dissidents. It was only at this

point that Iran came to the attention of most westerners who, not

understanding the root causes of Iranian conflict with the west,

often caricature all Iranians as incomprehensible fanatic

Muslims.

Most Iranian immigrants came to the US in the aftermath of

the Revolution of 1977. Many were students studying in the US.

Many others were dissidents, especially from religious minorities

like Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. Still others fled Iran

because they were tied to the Shah's government, and much of the

Iranian-American community has a romanticized view of the Shah

for that reason, ignoring the many political prisoners, deaths,

and torture his regime carried out.

Many earlier Iranian immigrants to the US were often

labeled Arab or Syrian upon entry. The first documented large

wave of Iranians came in the 1970s. Iranian-Americans and

resident aliens number over one million in the US, over half of

them in California. As a group, they tend to be highly educated,

with many professionals. Iranian-Americans number nearly 15,000

in Virginia, nearly all in northern Virginia, and number about

28,000 in the northern Virginia-Maryland-Washington DC area.

Sarah Ghods took two US history classes with me, turning in

a family history paper each time, one on each side of her family.

I considered integrating the two papers together into one, then

rejected the idea. For all accounts in this collection, these are

their stories, and I am determined not to remold them other than

minor grammar occasionally. Both family histories also stand

alone quite well, and are confusing if melded into one. Some

sources were used for both essays, so the bibliography is

combined into one.

Growing Up Iranian

By Sara Ghods

After a brutal two year revolution that ravaged the country,

on February 11, 1979, Iran officially became an Islamic Republic.

My uncle, only seventeen at the time, recounts the vivid memories

that changed him and his family’s life forever. During the late

70s in Iran, many people were angry; poverty was high and job

employment was low. The only people that the economy was not

affecting were those that were worked for the Shah. At that

point, the country was in trouble. There was a lot of tension.

The Shah, by many, was recognized as being a brutal and corrupt

leader; he arrested and killed thousands of people who were

against his regime. He was also against those who did not believe

that Iran should undergo a process of Westernization; he replaced

Islamic laws with more Western ideals. He forbade traditional

Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes, and the veiling of

women; police forcibly removed and tore chadors from women who

resisted his ban on public hijab.

By this point, many people were not happy, because they

believed that Iran was becoming, culturally, more westernized. So

people thought that the best way to rebel was to stage a

revolution. Many thought, at that time, that was the best thing

to do. The Shah knew that his people were unhappy, but instead of

trying to help alleviate the problems, he passed laws banning

protests against his regime, and would arrest people otherwise.

These laws made the Iranian people even angrier. Protests ravaged

the country for months, until there were more protesters than

security forces, and the Shah decided that the best thing to do

was to flee the country. And, finally, on February 11, 1979,

Ayatollah Khomeini was named the supreme leader of the Islamic

Republic of Iran.

My uncle said he remembers like he it was yesterday. He was

at home, watching the Ayatollah get off the Air France flight. On

TV, he said, they showed hundreds of thousands of people

celebrating his arrival. He told me that he could hear the chants

coming from his window, and when he looked out there were crowds

of people cheering and holding pictures of the Ayatollah; he said

it was like a big parade of people. But life after that, my uncle

says, was never the same.

When the Ayatollah came, he removed almost all the

Westernized laws and implanted traditional Islamic laws and

banned anything or anyone having to do with the Shah's regime. He

believed that Iran should be based around the Quran. As for the

Shah, he fled Iran, and first went to Egypt, then Morocco, the

Bahamas, and Mexico. And when he started to get sick, that is

when he went came to the United States. This caused an uproar in

Iran, as well as the United States. Iran demanded the United

States give the Shah back to them for trial and execution, but

President Carter refused. Therefore, this is what led to the

storming of the U.S embassy and taking the 52 American diplomats

hostage for 444 days. The people in the United States were angry

at Iran, so the Americans started begging President Carter to

send the Shah back, but he did not. The Shah, seeing the turmoil,

decided that the best thing for him to do was to leave the United

States. He left, and went to Panama, and then finally back to

Egypt where President Anwar El-Sadat was a very good friend of

the Shah and took him under his wing. By this time it was March

of 1980, and the Shah was dying, and on July 27, 1980 the Shah

died from of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. President Sadat gave him a

state funeral and he was buried in the Al Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo,

a mosque of great symbolic importance.

My grandfather was a high school principal during the Shah’s

regime, my two uncles were in high school, and my mother was in

college in the United States. When the revolution began, my

family’s life was completely uprooted; schools were closed

indefinitely and it was not safe to go outside. My uncle even

stated that at one point, anyone who was for the Shah was shot

and killed. No one could speak of the Shah, and those that were

for him could not publicly state that, because it meant risking

their lives. When the Shah fled Iran, my grandfather was fired

from his job. Because his high school taught Westernized values

and customs, they blamed him for allowing that to happen.

Therefore, they fired all who worked at that high school, and my

family had to rebuild their lives. This was very common during

the first few months of the new regime; they were firing and/ or

killing people who were against the new regime and who were pro-

Westernization. A year later, the Iran-Iraq war started, and with

the new Islamic laws in place, that meant that both of my uncles

had to join the army. This meant that they had to risk their

lives for a government that they wholeheartedly did not support.

That is when my grandparents made the bold decision to sneak my

uncles across the border into Pakistan.

They first started out in the city called Zahedan, which is

southeast of Tehran, near the Pakistan border, and then went into

Pakistan on a cargo vessel. There were many who helped people

like both of my uncles escape, for the right price. My uncles

fled into Pakistan, stayed there for about a month until the

Pakistani government gave them political asylum, and from there

they went to Paris, Madrid, and then finally, they were granted

asylum in the United States and flew to California where my

mother was studying. It took two long arduous years until they

finally reached the United States. They spoke only Farsi, barely

any English, and no Spanish or French. So it was very difficult

for them to survive in different countries for very small periods

of time. My uncle said that they could only survive on the money

that my grandparents and my mother were sending them. My uncle

stated that he would not be who he is today without going through

the difficult experiences he had to go through in life, and that

he is very grateful for being here. And to hear his difficult

story of survival really had an impact on my life.

Being first generation Iranian-American has affected my life

in many significant ways. Growing up, I always had the strict

foreign parents with accents, my house was always filled with

pictures and books of Iran, and it always smelled like Iranian

food. I could never go to any sleepovers unless the hosts were

Iranian, and I could never be a part of Brownies, because I

always had Farsi school every weekend. I also always had the

"When I came to this country" speech from my parents whenever I

got a bad grade, or did something wrong. So to tell you the

truth, I hated it growing up. I wanted my parents to be the cool,

understandable, funny American parents. I hated going to Iran

over the summer, when instead, I wanted to go to the beach like

many other kids. I hated how my life was always based around

culture and heritage. But hearing my uncle's story, and both my

uncles and my parents struggle to live and adapt to this country,

has made me realize that I am very lucky. My family came to this

country to live a better life for themselves and their kids.

Without my families struggle and what they went through, as well

as my upbringing, I would not be the person that I am today.

American Born but Persian Bred

By Sarah Ghods

Iran is a country in southwestern Asia that is home to over

79 million people. The name “Iran” is derived from an ancient

Farsi word that means “Land of the Aryans,” has been used since

the late 1920s. Before that it was known as Persia. Iran is also

home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations. The first

dynasty in Iran formed during the Elamite kingdom in 2800 BC,

then later the Iranian Achaemenid Empire ruled the Persian Empire

from 55-330 BC. At the Empire’s greatest extent, under Darius I,

the civilization stretched from the Aegean Sea and Libya to the

Indus Valley. There were two more subsequent Persian empires, the

Parthians and the Sassanids, before the Muslim conquest in 651

AD. Persian post-Islamic dynasties and empires spread the

language and culture throughout the Iranian plateau; Persian

literature, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and art

became major elements of Muslim civilization and spread

throughout most of Europe and Asia, and to this day it effects

can be seen throughout the region. Growing up, my culture and

heritage played an important part in my life because my parents,

who were immigrants, wanted to make sure that my brother and I

grew up knowing where they had come from.

To this day, the memories of my paternal-grandmother's house

are still vivid in my head since I visited last summer. My

grandparents live in a town called Semnan, which is about 100

miles outside of Tehran. According to ancient beliefs, the first

settlers of Semnan were two of the Prophet Noah’s children, Sim

An-Nabi and Lam An-Nabi, and that their settlement became known

as Simlam, then local people over time changed the name to

Semnan. The city is situated at 1,138 meters above sea level just

south of the Alborz Mountains, bordering the Kavir desert to the

south of the city, but not to be mistaken this is not a dry city.

The Golrudbar River and other creeks have historically provided a

reliable supply of water for a civil establishment.

In the city of Semnani, which is under the Indo-Iranian

linguistic classification. The language is slowly dying because

families are speaking Farsi in the homes now and therefore

children and forgetting to speak it. I myself can only understand

it but not speak it. The city of Semnan has historically also

been one of the fourteen civil establishments of the ancient

Avesta-era. Later, the beginning of the prosperous era of the

city came about with the rise of the Arsacid Dynasty of Parthia.

The Parthians were very interested in importing Greek culture,

and this resulted in the pioneering of sculpting and other forms

of Western art in the city, and to this day you can still see the

numerous historical sites created by the Parthians. But with the

fall of the Parthian Empire, and the rise of the Muslim conquest

later on, Semnan was once again brought under the reign of

Persian customs and traditions. It is also a very religious and

conservative city; most women not only wear the hijab but also

chadors. Chadors is the Farsi term for a full body length

semicircle of fabric that is open down front but is held closed

by the woman in the front. One would never find this garment off

of my grandmother, or any women her age, if she is out of the

house. It is a drastically different city than the capital

Tehran.

My grandparents’ house is an old, big, concrete-made house

that stands on the comer of a major bustling street with a bazaar

within walking distance. Mamani, which is the Farsi equivalent

for grandmother, is always there to greet us at the door with

hugs and kisses. I can picture her now; she is wearing a long,

ankle-length, black dress with her chador. Mamani has always been

the head of the household. According to my dad, since Agha Jan,

otherwise known as my grandfather, was a train conductor, he was

rarely ever home, so Mamani was both the mom and dad of the

household. She cooked, cleaned, raised the children, took care of

her younger brothers and sister since she was the oldest, and

even worked at the same time. All of her six children, to this

day, praise and worship her. To many, Mamani is a saint and a

person to be looked up to.

The family room is where their world goes round. The living

room is a big, fat sized L-shaped room; this is where four pieces

of the classical, French renaissance style furniture is located

situated around a big, rectangular glass table located in the

middle. This area is usually for seating guests, not a part of

the family. In Iran, it is custom to sit on the floor, because

back in the day, Iranian families were bigger and furniture was

very expensive and uncommon, so most families sat, ate, and slept

on the floor. But nowadays, everyone does have furniture in their

household, but it is seldom used. On the glass table are always

massive amounts of different and exotic fruits and plates full of

home-made and store bought Persian pastries filled with creme and

sugar, their smells wafting around the house. Semnan is where my

dad was born and raised, and it has been his family’s home town

for generations, so I always feel a connection to the ancient and

historic city whenever I visit. Just last summer, I asked my

grandmother whether our ancestors have always been Semnani or

not, and she gave me a really interesting answer.

Our family lineage goes back all the way to the Qajar

dynasty. The Qajar dynasty was an Iranian royal family of Turkic

descent, who ruled Persian from 1785 to 1925. My grandmother told

me that my ancestors are actually from the area of what is now

Azerbaijan. Back then, during the Qajar dynasty, Armenia and

Azerbaijan were not countries. They were a part of Persia. There

were many different tribes in those regions, so they traveled and

mixed with different groups of people in what is now present day

Iran. My grandmother then goes on to tell me that since Semnan

was one of the major cities on the Silk Road, the Qajars

continued that by making the city into a civil fortress, from

which they controlled the major route to the capital in Tehran

and the holy city of Mashhad. Grandmother's grandfather was a

traveling merchant who stayed and lived in the city until his

death.

Family and culture were very important for both my parents

growing up, but all that soon changed forever. Iran became an

Islamic Republic in 1979; both of my grandparents made the bold

decision to send my parents to the United States to lead a more

fulfilling life than what was to become of them, if they had

stayed.

When they first entered the US, they barely spoke any

English and found it very difficult to survive and adapt in a

different country with a completely different culture. Life was a

struggle; they took classes during the day, worked nights, and

raised a family with very little income for the first few years

of their lives in America. But they paid their own way through

college and even professional school afterward. Because of that

hope and determination, my parents are currently living the much

sought after “American Dream.” They both are very well-educated,

financially successful, and have assimilated themselves very

well, all while holding on to their Iranian culture. Most

importantly, all of this affected my life growing up. Being

second-generation Iranian-American has affected my life in many

significant ways. Growing up, my house was always filled with

pictures and book of Iran. I always had to attend Farsi school on

Saturdays, and my parents were very strict about school work.

When I was a child, I really didn’t like how my parents were

different than most. But now as I look back on my child, I really

was very lucky. My parents always spoke of our culture and

heritage, but most importantly they taught my brother and I about

perseverance and hope. If it weren’t for my parents and their

experiences in life, I would not be the person I am today.

Bibliography

Arjomand, Said. "The Turban for the Crown: the Islamic Revolution

in Iran." Google Books. 1989. Web. 18 Nov. 2011.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en.

Atabaki, Touraj. Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture.

London: I.B. Tauris in Association with the Iran Heritage

Foundation, 2009. Print.

Avery, Peter. The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.

Pr., 1991. Print.

Axworthy, Michael. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. New York: Basic,

2010. Print.

Daniel, Elton L. The History of Iran. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood,

2012. Print.

Frye, Richard Nelson. The History of Ancient Iran. Munich: C.H. Beck,

1984. Print.

Mirbakhtyar, Shahla. 2006. Iranian Cinemas and the Islamic Revolution.

McFarland and Company, Inc.

Pollack, Kenneth, M. 2004. The Persian Puzzle. New York, NY: Random

House.

Varzi, Roxanne. 2006. Warring Souls. Duke University Press.

Wilber, Donald, and David Littlefield. Riza Shah Pahlavi: The

Resurrection and Reconstruction of Iran, 1878–1944. 1st ed. Vol. 4. New

York: Exposition, 1975.

Taylor and Francis Online. Exposition Press, 13 June 2010. Web.

16 Apr. 2012.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03612759.1975.9945183

.

Background:

Nigeria

Present day Nigeria has been home to many ancient

civilizations, the Hausa and Igbo states, and later the Songhai

and Kanem-Bornu Empires. But most Americans know little about it

beyond jokes about internet scams involving Nigerian princes.

Parts of the region were seized as a British colony in the mid-

19th century, other parts taken over by the Royal Niger Company.

A series of wars led to the British formally taking all Nigeria

in 1900, where it remained a colony until independence in 1960.

Independence groups had long been split along regional,

religious, and tribal lines, and the British imposed system led

to political parties also based on the same. Nigeria had never

been one nation before, and the British had lumped together very

different groups. The split was worsened by oil discovered in the

Biafra region. The civil war that followed, the subject of the

essay, was one of the most brutal of modern times, killing up to

twelve million by violence, famine, and disease. Biafra's

secession was crushed. Today Nigeria remains enormously corrupt,

the wealth and industrialization spread very unevenly even while

its economy is one of the fastest growing in the world.

There are almost 400,000 Nigerian born people in the US,

about half US citizens. About half arrived in the US after 2000,

and only about a tenth were in the US before 1980. As a group

they are more educated than average for immigrants. Their income

remains low for their educational levels, only slightly above the

average for all Americans. About 20,000 Nigerian born people live

in the DC metro area, the 3rd highest number of Nigerians in a

metro area in the US, after New York and Houston.

Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War

by Ifeyinwa Onuorah

The Biafra War was a civil war fought in the West African

country Nigeria. It was an ethnic and political conflict that

almost broke apart the most populous country in Africa. My family

is originally from Nigeria and this war is a big part of our

history. My uncle Ignacius Onuorah is a veteran of the Biafra War

and has firsthand experience on the events that happened during

the war and after. For this paper I researched the different

events that led up to and during the war and interviewed my uncle

on his experiences during the war.

My uncle was 20 when he joined the Biafra army to fight in

the war. “I was only twenty when I joined the Biafra army, I was

in the university when the war broke out.” I asked him if he

supported the war and what Biafra was fighting for he replied,

“Yes, I agree that war should only be a last resort but in this

case it was the only resort we [Igbos] had because the injustice

and slaughtering was just too much.”

There are three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Igbos,

Hausas, and Yorubas. My family is Igbo. One of the main reasons

for the start of the Biafra war was that the Igbos were being

killed in Northern Nigeria by the Hausas and throughout the

country Igbos were being discriminated against. According to the

History.com article, “Civil War in Nigeria,” the Muslim Hausas in

northern Nigeria were massacring the Christian Igbos, which led

to the Igbos fleeing to the southeast. For this reason the

southeastern portion of Nigeria that was predominantly Igbo,

wanted to break away from the rest of Nigeria and create their

own nation called Biafra where they would be free from the

oppression and suffering that they were going through. I asked my

uncle what his personal opinion was on what started the war and

he said, “Definitely, there were many reasons for why the war

happened, but one of the biggest reasons was because of the

killing of our [Igbo] people. The Hausas in the north were just

slaughtering us [Igbos] and the federal government was doing

nothing about it.”

Some Nigeria civil war buffs also claim that another reason

for the war was because the previous British colonial masters

uniting all these different ethnic groups together into one

country and naming it Nigeria. According to the article “The

Legacy of the Biafra War” by John C. Merriam, the article states,

“Nigeria is an uneasy marriage of over two hundred tribal

groupings, many with linked histories and cultural similarities,

others with very different roots and ways of living. When the

British carved out their colonial empire in West Africa, they

paid little attention to anything but economic and administrative

expediency.” Meaning that when England came to West Africa all

they looked at was the financial gain they would inherit by

combining these different ethnic groups into one country. So by

uniting these groups into one big country ethnic strife and

tension was created, especially by the three main ethnic groups,

the Igbos, Hausas, and Yoruba.

Like any war, the civilians suffered the most, especially

the women and children. According to the article “Civil War in

Nigeria”, the Biafra states lost their main source of revenue

which was oil, so without funds to import food an estimated one

million civilians died from malnutrition. I asked my uncle about

his initial experience when he entered the army “It was a

terrible experience, the civilians were suffering the most. It

was a war for the civilians no hospitals, food or shelter. In the

army we had limited equipment and the basis of life. There was

too much misery, shortage of everything, children were developing

diseases, shortage of everything for the civilians everything was

for the army. The only help was from Red Cross and a few other

organizations, whatever was available was expensive, many people

competing for few commodities.”

The war not only affected civilians, it also affected the

soldiers that were fighting in it. Many soldiers lost their lives

or were badly injured. My uncle was no exception, during the war

pieces of shells from the guns landed in his right eye and made

him permanently blind in his right eye. When asked about how the

war affected him on a personal level he stated, “I was a soldier

at least the army was feeding me, I spent most of time on the

battle line. I was fearing for my life the whole time. The only

you think about is how to survive and live another day. I lost

friends and fellow soldiers and my right eye.”

The Biafra army was fighting against the federal government

and because of that did not get as much help as the federal

government did from other countries. Most countries did not

recognize Biafra as an actual country, but Nigeria was recognized

as an actual country, hence why Nigeria was getting all the

support from European countries and Biafra was not. According to

the article “The Biafra War” by Arthur Nwankwo, Britain and the

Soviet Union gave diplomatic support and military aid to the

federal government, the Soviet Union a significant source of

firearms for the federal government.

The Biafra war ended in 1970 when the Biafra army finally

surrendered to the federal government. According to the article

“The Biafra War in Nigeria: Causes, Development, And Aftermath”

by Gregory Tarleton-Markov, 13 million lives were lost during the

war and after the war Igbos were once again being discriminated

against. When asked whether he liked the outcome of the war my

uncle replied, “It wasn’t so much whether I liked the outcome but

it was the outcome, there was nothing to be done about it.

Overall, we didn’t get what we were fighting for. If I can say is

the rest of Nigeria benefited from our suffering. We were

fighting for Biafra but we didn’t get it.” The effects of the

Biafra war still haunt and affect many Nigerians today, the war

didn’t really solve any of the tribal tensions or stop the

discrimination against Igbos in other parts of Nigeria. My uncle

agrees that Igbos are still being discriminated against in some

parts of Nigeria even to this day, he states, ““Now, we have

still been marginalized in the sense that a man from the south is

the president, his policies are pro Nigeria, he didn’t bother to

go to Igbo land to contest in the election, which shows that he

was going to win with or without our vote. He didn’t bother to

campaign in Igbo territory. There’s no Igbo man aiming to become

secretary or chairman, not to mention presidential candidate. Is

it a case of wanting our vote but not wanting us? On a national

level there is no Igbos holding a position.”

In this modern day tribal tensions between the three major

ethnic groups are a little better, but not a lot. When asked

whether he felt tribal relations were better my uncle said, “No

it’s not. We have no major issue like we did before the war, or

that caused the war. Politicians are running the country down,

the average Nigerian is suffering. We are scattered into ethnic

groups. There is no major problem, the only problem is

politicians and there corruption so the politicians pit the

tribes against each other.” After the war my uncle went on and

completed his education, eventually becoming the principal of the

Federal Government College of Canoo, Nigeria, which is a high

school located in southerner Nigeria. He is the father of five

children and one grandchild.

Works Cited

"Civil War in Nigeria." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 21

Nov. 2010. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

Merriam, John. "The Legacy of the Biafran War." The Legacy of the

Biafran War | News |. The Harvard Crimson, `12 Sept. 2010. Web.

26 Nov. 2013.

Nwankwo, Arthur. "The Biafra War." Case Study. ICE Studies, 1

June 2009. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.

Tarleton-Markov, Gregory. "The Biafra War In Nigeria: Causes,

Development, And Aftermath." All Articles RSS. Knoji Consumer

Knowledge, 15 Apr. 2008. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.

Background:

Pakistan

Pakistan, for most of its history, was part of a group of

kingdoms, sultanates, or empires that make up today the

subcontinent of India or South Asia. As a state or distinct

culture, Pakistan did not exist before 1947. Within today's

nation, one finds cultures such as Baluchi, Pushtu, and Urdu that

are also in neighboring India, Afghanistan, or Iran.

Prior to India's independence, a growing Muslim movement

feared for their future under a majority Hindu population. Muslim

activists, led by Mohammed Jinnah, successfully pressured both

the British and the Indian National Congress leadership to agree

to the partition of India into two nations. At that time Pakistan

included what would become Bangladesh, until a successful

independence movement broke away in 1971.

The Partition of India led directly to the Indo-Pakistani

War of 1947, both of them civil wars, the second also a border

war. Atrocities on both sides led to a high death toll and huge

numbers of refugees. As many as 14 million people fled to avoid

being trapped in a nation where they feared being the religious

minority. The highest numbers of refugees were in the Punjab and

Bengali regions. Estimates of deaths from the riots, communal

violence, gang and militia attacks, cross border raids, and war

between the two nation's militaries range from half a million to

a million and a half. The violence also included huge numbers of

rapes and kidnappings of women and children.

Muslim immigrants from what is today Pakistan entered the US

as early as the eighteenth century, including building railroads

in California. Racial quotas kept the number of Pakistani

immigrants very small until they were finally lifted in the 1960s

thanks to the civil rights movement.

There are over a quarter-million Pakistani immigrants in the

US today. In the northern Virginia-Washington DC-Maryland area,

Pakistanis number slightly over 6,000. Pakistani immigrants as a

group tend to be well educated.

Saira Din's story tells primarily of the violence during the

Partition and how it affected her family personally. There also

is a focus on the abuse women endure in that region of the world.

Sanam Shaikh's story is of the widow of an army soldier during

the Indo-Pakistani War. The essay also gives us a look at

arranged marriages and child marriage.

Mrs. Karmatay

By Saira Din

“When I look back it does not even seem that long ago.

Wasn’t it only yesterday when I was a young girl running around

in Chandigarh Punjab, in Indian streets. Or was it all that

happened 88 years back? All those memories are still so fresh in

my mind, that every night I travel back to 88 years of my life

and live them all over again.” (Bibi Karmatay, personal

interview, January 2012).

There are several things that I will be mentioning and

explaining in great detail; Mrs. Karmatay's childhood in

Chandigarh Punjabi in 1924; Mrs. Karmatay's friends, history and

her activities with friends in 1924-1944; the rights of women in

1924; the history of women being abused around Mrs. Karmatay,

including her mother from 1924-1955; men in power 1924-1965;

sexual abuse in 1924-1966; Muslim migration to Pakistan; the

start of a new life in Pakistan with many conflicts; women

meeting men; the practice of men sharing each other's wives; and

my grandmother's marriage from 1935-1946.

Now that we kind of have a little idea what happened in my

grandmother's life, Mrs. Karmatay, I would like to go ahead and

talk about all these facts listed above in great details. Let’s

make a journey back to 1923 and experience what my grandmother

and other individuals experienced and faced in that period of

time.

I would like to talk about Mrs. Karmatay's childhood in

Chandigarh, Punjab, a small town in India. According to my

grandmother, children had no toys to play with but instead they

were forced to learn valuable skills so they can grow up to be

strong working people. Because at that time food and living in

whole was very hard to earn, parents wanted their children to

learn from their experience and become as hard working and

independent as them. Indeed when my grandmother was a child there

were no toys for her to play with either. Instead my great-

grandfather told my great-grandmother to take my grandmother out

in the fields and teach her various life skills. For instance my

great-granny would take her daughter out when she is going to

collect either wood or water.

Teaching her daughter to collect wood and water did not stop

there. My grandmother actually had to carry water and wood all

the way from the jungle to her home like her mother. Only then

her parents would give her food to eat. Maybe that is the reason

that my grandmother is almost 100 years old and still active like

a sixteen year old girl. In that period of time people actually

earned their living by working day and night, teaching their

children the respect for food and money. For instance, today when

I go back to Pakistan to visit my grandmother, if I don’t finish

my food in my plate and throw it away, it hurts her because of

the way they had become when life was not easy.

As young people, when we take advantage of their wealth, it

kind of makes me feel guilty as well. My great-grandmother was

obligated to teach my grandmother everything that belongs in the

kitchen. For example, everyday my grandmother had to memorize

four or five items in the kitchen or my great-grandfather would

not allow her to eat her meal. As soon as young girls are mature

enough to carry some weight, they all were expected to carry

water, food, wood and other stuff on their head or their bodies.

Violence was going on between Muslims and Sikhs then. But

there was a strong bond between local Muslim and Sikh girls. Mrs.

Karmatay's close friends were Sikh. For example, Mrs. Karmatay

used to go to collect wood with them, and they would also help

each other carry water. At a very young age girls have very

harsh activities to participate in. Many girls would break their

bones in such harsh work. Compared to children of today, we only

learn how to be spoiled brats. We as young people would never

even be able to survive one complete day carrying water, food,

and wood in a warlike environment. Let’s walk further into the

life of Mrs. Karmatay and learn some more harsh facts about that

era.

In that period of time, there was a history of women being

abused. With men in power, sexual abuse was commonly practiced .

Most everyday, my grandmother and great-grandmother used to get

beat up badly by my great-grandfather. It was almost getting very

hard for me to interview her, but she insisted to include all the

information. In 1923 there was many tensions going on and women

had no rights, so men would take their frustrations out on their

wives or children.

At that period of time women were less important in Punjabi

society. Because men were in power they had rights to do

everything and anything. According to my grandmother, women were

being raped on roads in front of everyone and no one would care.

It was very casual to take someone’s wife or daughter and just be

able to do anything any man wants with them. As my grandmother

was telling me this, she was in tears. She said her best friend

was raped as well. In South Asian society at that time, being

pregnant before marriage was considered very inappropriate. So

when my grandmother’s friend got raped and she was pregnant with

a stranger's child, she committed suicide. According to my

grandmother, it was very casual to commit suicide as well.

Suicides were very common among young girls. It is a very painful

journey to listen to someone talk about their nightmares,

especially from the person who is very close to you.

Many Muslims migrated to Pakistan to start a new life there

and adjust to a new environment. There were several conflicts in

that period of time. According to my grandmother, there was

finally a time came when women could choose a man to marry or to

have any kind of relationship. There were no more men kidnapping

of women to do whatever. It was finally nice for women to be free

of any fear. They finally could walk freely and collect wood,

wild berries, and water.

Then my favorite topic came up which I love hearing from my

grandmother over and over again. I love her! So back to my

favorite topic: men sharing each other’s wives. It was probably

the year 1945 when men in the area started to share their wives.

The logic behind this part I never understood. According to my

grandmother, it was more respected to share each other’s wives

than marrying, then divorcing, women. But it was popularly

practiced at that time. My grandmother also had been “borrowed”

once or twice. Since she loved my grandfather so much she always

would come back to him and leave all the other rich guys. But how

funny at that time. The sharing of wives was referred to as

“borrowing” like if that would hide the main meaning behind it.

Another example of borrowing was they would take each

other’s wives for few months, spend time with them, and then

return them back to their original husbands. But sometimes if

they fall in love, in that case they would end up marrying each

other. So basically, marrying two or three men was common

practice as well among some women. In the year 1946, my

grandmother got married to the man her parents chose for her. But

in her case, she had spent time with other men, just like any

other women at that time. But she always came back to my

grandfather and never fell in love with any other man.

A long time ago, our loved ones have gone through so much

trouble to be where they are right now. Every day we are living

with history through the faces of our grandparents, in some cases

even parents. We should take advantage of them being around us

and gain as much knowledge about their past history as we can.

One day they might not be around us. Because the things they

know, those facts will die with them. But if we talk to them and

take those facts from them, we can actually carry that history on

to our children, or even children’s children. So we can always

know where we actually came from.

Bibliography

Bigelow, Anna. "Punjab's Muslims: The History and Significance of

Malerkotla."

Http://www.global.ucsb.edu/punjab/journal_12_1/4_bigelow.pdf ,

Web. 02 Jan. 2012.

Birodkar, Sudheer. "Sikhism," Sikhism. 02 Jan. 2012.

http://www.hindubooks.org/sudheer_birodkar/hindu_history/sikhism.

html.

Bibi Karmatay, personal interview, January 2012.

"Komagata Maru." - Sikhi, Free Sikh Encyclopedia. 05 Feb. 2007.

http://www.punjabis.org/index.php/Komagata_Maru.

“Today in Sikh History: 30th May,” Web 02 Jan. 2012.

http://www.allaboutsikhs.com/sikh-history-timeline/today-in-sikh-

history-30th-may

Nani

by Sanam Shaikh

Which people in your life mean the world to you? Most of us

have a few, including parents, friends, and siblings. Mine is my

grandmother. I know much about her life, but always felt that I

could learn more. This interview has given me the chance to

receive the answers to many aspects of her life that were still a

mystery to me, and for that, I am very grateful. Sitting back and

reminiscing with our parents and/or grandparents past is not good

enough; we must take action when we still have the chance. Family

is the one thing that remains constant in our life, and we should

absorb as much knowledge as we can to figure out where we come

from. My grandmother is the epitome of this rather large and

controversial family of mine, which would make her the absolute

best candidate to share her story.

Akhtar Jaan, or otherwise known as “Nani”, nicknamed after

her large collection of grandchildren, was born October 10, 1932

in the small village of Poonch. She was brought into a household

of a mother, father, and ten children. “It was very crowded,” my

Nani told me. “All of us used to play together in the yard, with

not much, but we still had loads of fun.” She smiled as she spoke

about the good old days as a little kid not having a care in the

world. “We used to make all of our toys out of dirt” She laughed,

“Mum would get so mad at us for that. My favorite game growing

up was hopscotch. We would use the rocks out by the rivers to

draw it out.” With all of the happiness and Kodak moments my Nani

was sharing with me, I did not want to have to get to the tough

questions, such as the hardships she endured as a child.

Along with the happiness, I was curious as to what

difficulties came along with living in Poonch. “What

responsibilities did you have as a child?” I asked.

“Everyone worked very hard, regardless of what age you

were,” my Nani explained. “We all woke up at 5am every morning to

do our chores. We were responsible for milking the cows and

feeding the other animals.” She told me how she was taught to

milk her first cow when she was only five years old. “Life was

hard, yet simple,” she stated. The children were taught to be

self reliant and learn at an early age how to care for

themselves, plus their younger siblings. “Since my father was in

the military, he was always away.” She played with her fingers as

she spoke. “My mother was so busy all the time taking care of the

house and all of us children. We learned to care for each other

most of the time.” Coming from a small immediate family, hearing

this was extremely foreign to me.

During her childhood, what had intrigued me the most was her

schooling. I have heard that she has not attended school for most

of her lifetime through different family members, so I just

wanted to put this often rumored subject to rest. She laid down

the truth right away, “I stopped going to school when I was

eleven,” she said strongly. “I stayed home to take care of my

little brothers and sisters.”

My Nani carried on with her story as I was trying to take

all of it in. “I still learned to read and write. Besides it

wasn’t very fun anyway,” she said. “There was a five mile walk

just to get to school! My feet were always sore and hurting. I

hated going!” she said with her eyebrows raised. “Our school was

one small room filled with countless students. We all shared our

books and chairs, since they were scarce. Even after all the

terrible things she continued telling me about her school, I was

surprised to see how at the age of seven, she did not possess any

excitement for school at all.

“Did you have any dreams or goals for yourself? Like, what

did you want to be when you grew up? Wasn’t that motivation to

keep going to school?” I asked concerned.

“As much as I hated school back then, I wouldn’t think twice

if I had a chance to ever go back,” she told me. “I was young and

dumb, school wasn’t very important to me back then.” Even though

my Nani regrets taking school for granted, I felt a little upset

and angry with her. My belief about Pakistani women in general is

that they should consider school as a major blessing within our

life which is not always promised. Many women still in the

twenty-first century are still not allowed to attend school in

Pakistan. (Socialistalternative.org)

Throughout my Nani’s childhood, she went through many ups

and downs, but that wasn’t enough to prepare her for all the

adversity that was yet to come. Once my grandmother turned

thirteen, there was often talk about her getting married soon. “I

wasn’t surprised,” She told me. “My sisters were all married

around the age of twelve and thirteen.”

“But, didn’t you feel you were too young?” I asked eagerly.

“Well obviously,” she said with a surprised look. She told

me how she was really scared and nervous, especially since she

had never met the man who she was going to spend the rest of her

life with. They were forbidden to meet before the marriage since

it was considered unlawful in arranged marriages. “I wasn’t

allowed to see him. The first time I laid my eyes on him was our

wedding day.”

As strange as it sounds to hear my grandmother say this, it

is quite common for this to happen in Islamic marriages. It is

not, of course, still to this extent but arranged marriages still

exist to this day and age. Dating is still not socially

acceptable within Pakistan, so most of the citizens in the

country usually are in semi-arranged marriages. Semi-arranged

marriages consist of the families introducing the boy and the

girl, and then the couple has the last say, on whether they want

to go through with a marriage or not. (Epoch Times Staff)

“What I was most worried about was my wedding night,” my

grandmother continued to speak about her life changing

experience. “I just remember feeling sick and my thoughts

racing,” she said. “He was much older too…twelve years older.”

I felt my heart in my chest as she kept going on with her

story. Even though I was well informed before this interview that

my grandfather was older, I never was fully aware of the exact

age difference. “What did you think of him, when you first got to

know him?” I asked feeling uncomfortable as she unfolded through

every detail.

“He was a sweet man, very kind and sweet. I miss him,” my

Nani said. I could almost sense the pain my grandmother was

feeling just speaking about her deceased husband. My grandfather,

Tassadaq Hussain Khan, was a soldier and fought in many different

wars, including the most famous, Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.

(Globalsecurity.org) This war, also known as the First Kashmir War,

was fought between the two newly independent nations, India and

Pakistan over the state of Kashmir. This was also only the first

of four wars fought between the two countries.

The pain and suffering started in my grandmother’s home when

a tribal rebellion broke out in Poonch, which was only southwest

of Kashmir. Nani was rushed out of her comfortable home in the

village into the big city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, just in time

before the Pakistani Army entered Kashmir to help resolve the

conflict. Nani became extremely depressed during the time of the

war, as she would sit at home alone praying that her husband

would come back to her safe and sound. Fortunately for her, he

did, with minor injuries, and always a good story to tell. After

the second time he went away due to war, she had faith that he

would always return.

As years passed, my Nani grew older, and decided that she

wanted to start a family. “How old were you when you wanted to

have children?” I asked eagerly.

“I would say about fifteen, but I didn’t have my first child

until seventeen,” she said. My Nani always gets so immediately

upset when she ever speaks about her first child. Unfortunately,

in the years my Nani was having babies, it was very common for

the babies or even the mother to die due to childbirth and other

complications involving birth. My grandmother’s first daughter

was diagnosed with rheumatic fever at the age of one. This

disease commonly affects joints, skin, heart, blood vessels, and

brain. (Children’s Hospital and Health Center) During that time

she explained how it was “a common disease.” I believe she says

that in order to make herself feel a bit better. She doesn’t seem

to dwell too much on this subject, since my Nani is the proud

mother of a whopping total of nine children. My grandfather was

very absent during the time their children were growing up. My

Nani was became the single parent who was raising the children on

her own. Despite a missing father in their lives, my grandmother

always strived to give her kids the absolute best of everything

in life.

As her children grew older, so did Nani and her husband. My

grandfather had passed suddenly in his early forties due to heart

problems, leaving his rather large family behind. “That was the

hardest thing I ever had to go through” Nani said. “He was fine,

and then all of a sudden he became very sick, and was not getting

any better. His heart was not strong. It finally gave up on him

when he had the heart attack,” she said while clearing her throat

over and over. She helped describe the day of his death one of

the most devastating days for her and her children. She said that

her third youngest, my mother, was the most affected, because of

how close her relationship was with my grandfather.

My grandmother was left to care for a family completely on

her own, yet she was a very strong woman and never backed down

from a challenge. She used his pension and had some property of

his to survive on. Nani never worked in her life but careful

economic pre-planning by my grandfather helped her to live a

comfortable and nice life. My grandfather seemed like someone who

was truly selfless and a giving individual. Unfortunately he had

passed long before my existence, so I do not feel the pain of his

death like my mother and grandmother does.

My Nani faced loads of difficulties in her life, yet she has

much to show about her successes in life as well. To start off

with her children, many of them have made her proud by becoming

doctors, entrepreneurs, and educators all over the world. She

looks back at her life and recalls “It had its ups and downs, but

it’s my life, and it is a good life.” I couldn’t have summed that

up better myself. Nani is truly an inspiration and great role

model for all of my family members aspiring to be strong women

like her one day. Our relatives share more than brown eyes and

the same hair. It is so rewarding to be able to sit and learn

about our ancestral history. Through discovering our own roots,

we become aware of who we are as an individual, and understand

more about our unique purpose in life.

Bibliography

“Family History Sample Outline and Questions” UCLA.edu. UC Regents

2012 http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/familyHistory.html

A. Ibrahim. “A Brief Illustrated Guide To Understanding Islam”

Islam-guide.com. Darussalam, Publishers and Distributers 1996-2002.

http://www.islam-guide.com/

“Islamic Marriage Philosophy” Muslim-marriage-guide.com. 2007-2011

http://www.muslim-marriage-guide.com/islamic-marriage.html

Muslim Student Association of Colorado State University. “A Brief

History of Islam in the United States,” Colostate.edu

http://www.colostate.edu/orgs/MSA/find_more/iia.html

“Indo-Pakistani Conflict of 1947-48” Globalsecurity.org. 2000-2012

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/indo-

pak_1947.htm

“Pakistan: Women facing slavery, discrimination and exploitation

– Socialists fight women’s oppression worldwide,”

Socialistalternative.org. 2006

http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article16.php?id=180

“Arranged Marriages a tradition in Pakistan” Theepochtimes.com.

Epoch Times Staff. 2008

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/arranged-marriages-in-

pakistan-persist-4983.html

“Rheumatic Fever” Chw.org. Children’s Hospital and Health Center.

2012 http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21659/router.asp

Personal Interview courtesy of Akhtar Jaan. Sanam Shaikh. July

23-30, 2012.

Background:

Vietnam

It is often difficult to get Americans to see Vietnam as a

nation, not simply a shorter way of saying “the Vietnam War.” The

war is known more accurately in Vietnam as the American War. I,

like many other scholars, refer to it as the US-Vietnam War.

Vietnamese civilization goes back to at least 2000 BCE, but

its independence goes back only to the ninth century CE.

Vietnam's history of conflict with China goes back millenia, and

the nation was only intermittently independent.

The French began their conquest under Napoleon III. The

Catholic Church, French-Vietnamese mixed people, and ethnically

Chinese though Vietnam-born merchants all played leading roles in

colonial society. World War II saw the defeat of the French. The

Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, fought first the Japanese and then

the returning French, driving them out by 1954.

Vietnam was split between the US-supported South, where

French influence had been strongest, and the Communist North. In

both new nations, the government purged opponents, killing tens

of thousands. Popular support was very strong in the North, far

weaker in the South, where the same domination as under the

French, by Catholics, French-Vietnamese, and ethnic Chinese,

continued.

The US had taken over the French role even before the French

had been defeated, supplying military support to local

collaborators. The Viet Minh led a broad based coalition, the

National Liberation Front (NLF), often inaccurately called the

Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists) by the US government and South

Vietnam. The war between the US and North Vietnam always had

shallow support in both America and South Vietnam, facing an

enormous amount of popular opposition in both countries. In South

Vietnam, Buddhists led the war opposition. In the US, students

and civil rights groups formed the opposition in the beginning.

But by war's end, over seven million Americans had protested

against it in demonstrations. Though most Americans opposed the

war by 1968, President Nixon kept the war going until 1974, when

growing mutinies inside the US military forced withdrawal.

The victorious North Vietnamese government sent hundreds of

thousands to reeducation camps and executed tens of thousands

more as political prisoners. Over a million fled the country,

some immediately evacuated by the US as allies or dependents. But

most left over the next decade in boats, dubbed by the press the

boat people.

There are over one million Vietnamese in the US, the fifth

largest foreign born group of

refugees to the US. There are over 40,000 Vietnamese-Americans

and immigrants in Virginia, mostly in northern Virginia, plus

more in DC and Maryland.

Emmer mentions in his essay how many do not realize he is

Asian when meeting him. His essay is one of several in this book

by mixed ancestry students.

Vietnam

By Matt Emmer

The Vietnam War was the result of Vietnam’s want for the end

of French colonization. The victory at Dien Bien Phu gained

Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia independence in lieu of the Geneva

Conference. In 1945, Ho Chi Minh created the National Liberation

Committee of Vietnam under the Viet Minh to have a temporary

government to become independent from France. Vietnam was divided

by the Communist North and anti-Communist South. Ho Chi Minh,

leader of the Communist North, was heavily influenced by the

United States Declaration of Independence and George Washington

was supposedly one of Ho Chi Minh’s idols. After repeatedly

asking Franklin Roosevelt for his help, and only being turned

down, Ho Chi Minh resorted to Communism because Russia was the

only country that was willing to support Vietnam’s independence.

These events struck distrust with the United States for Ho Chi

Minh, and his forces became enemies of the United States. The

United States had interest in supporting the South to keep

communism from spreading because of the Domino Theory which says

that once Vietnam becomes communist, then all of the Asian

Pacific countries would also fall in to Communism.

The Viet Cong, Vietnam’s Communist group, was formed in

Hanoi in 1960 shortly after the French occupation in Vietnam

ended. My grandmother was born there in 1935 and lived there most

of her life until she and her family fled to Saigon to escape the

Viet Cong in search of her father. The poor living conditions

during the Vietnam War consisted of bombings, fear of the Viet

Cong, and famine. Not all of Hanoi and surrounding villages were

supportive of Viet Cong, and favored South Vietnam. Because of

this, South Vietnam in turn provided healthcare and education

which helped preserve their culture.

My grandmother had a middle class family, her father being a

Hanoi Police Officer, and she worked as a typist for the

Hungarian Embassy only 3km from her home in a residential area

near the Bac Mai Hospital. The Bac Mai hospital is known for the

Line Backer II Operation where bombs intended to hit warehouses

on the opposite end of the Bac Mai airfield hit the residential

areas and hospital instead. My grandmother recalls going outside

and seeing people’s body parts in a tree across from her house.

She learned a little about the war going on from her work at the

Embassy, but she didn’t know much of what to think about it. She

only knew that she hated the French and Japanese, but loved the

Americans. Her family was supportive of the American occupation

in Vietnam in hopes that it would end the war. In the middle of

the night she was woken by commotion out in the street of what

she made out to be were Viet Cong soldiers. The Viet Cong knew

that her father was in favor of the American occupation and that

he had American friends. “I woke up and I go to my father and

say, Daddy, who are those men in the street? And my father got up

and he looked outside and they yelled and they shot at our house

and we all ran in the night to my grandfather’s house.” They left

that night for Saigon, and never went back.

In Saigon, my grandmother made a poor living as a seamstress

at first and later became a secretary for a US Military Colonel

because of her typing experience from the Hungarian Embassy.

There was always military in Saigon and her oldest son, Hiep,

enlisted in the South Vietnamese Army. He saw conflict first hand

and lost his left eye to a ricocheting bullet. The living

conditions in Saigon were not too much better than in Hanoi. In

fact, she recalled an instance that sticks out in her memory,

where she witnessed a girl being bound and suffocated by a boa

constrictor in an underground bunker.

April 30, 1975 marked the Fall of Saigon when the Vietnam

War ended. There was a massive fear in South Vietnam that those

who worked with the Americans during the war would be killed off

by North Vietnamese, resulting in two large waves of refugees

fleeing from Vietnam, one in 1975, and another in 1977. The US

military used cargo ships and airlifts to transport refugees to

countries with American bases. The new communist government in

South Vietnam tortured former South Vietnamese soldiers and

anyone who supported South Vietnam. All Chinese Vietnamese had

their farms and businesses seized and were forced into the rural

parts of Vietnam that had been destroyed by the war. Around two

million refugees fled Vietnam in small boats to Thailand,

Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, getting the

name “boat people.” My mother and her family, with the assistance

of my uncle Ray, got out right at the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and

were shipped to first Thailand, then Guam, and eventually

Washington, DC.

My uncle, Ray Rogers, was an American government worker that

had a project of providing school books for children in Saigon.

He came in to my family’s life when he met my grandmother’s

oldest child Lien at a party. The two fell in love and Ray wanted

to bring Lien and her family back to the United States to escape

the war. It was the beginning of the fall of Vietnam in 1975 when

my uncle got ahold of enough tickets to fly my grandmother and

her children out of Vietnam and in to Thailand as refugees. On

the way to the airport, my mother and her siblings were stopped

at a South Vietnam Army checkpoint where one of the soldiers

recognized my uncle Hiep. They held him at gunpoint for being a

deserter. Ray, being a government agent, explained the situation

to the American soldier that was overseeing the SVA checkpoint,

and let them through. Without Ray’s assistance it is possible

that my family would have never made it to the United States.

Ray got my family to the airport, but he stayed behind to go

back and get my great grandparents and great aunt. When Ray

reached them, they were contemplating drinking cyanide and

killing themselves because they knew they would be killed for

having American affiliation. With time running short, Ray got

fed up with my great-grandfather’s defiance and put him in the

trunk of his car and had the women get in the back seat and drove

them to the airport. There was a problem because there was

limited space on the planes for refugees. My uncle’s government

colleagues were in charge of letting the refugees through and he

told them that he was married to my great aunt, and she and her

parents needed to get through, when actually he was engaged to my

Aunt Lien. They got through and there is still a running joke in

the family between my great aunt and Ray that “they need to

divorce because they have been married all this time, and he

still hasn’t gotten any.”

Much of my family’s Vietnamese culture was lost since they

came to the United States and sort of Americanized. Such as my

mother, even though she can understand Vietnamese, she cannot

speak it and my immediate family doesn’t conduct in the strict

Catholic Vietnamese household as the rest of the family. But our

family still celebrates Tet, the Vietnamese celebration of

Chinese New Year’s, and my grandmother and aunts cook a lot of

Vietnamese food. One of my aunts owns a Vietnamese Restaurant

called Saigon Cafe in Sterling, Virginia. My mom rarely cooks

Vietnamese food, but somehow she incorporates rice and lemon

grass into almost every meal. My grandmother is now 76 years old

and lives in McLean, Virginia. Until she retired in 2008, she

worked at an elementary school as a cafeteria cook. She plans to

go back to Vietnam next year to visit her family that was left

behind. “I will never forget. I just want to see my home one more

time before I die.”

Bibliography

Rotter, Andrew J. "The Causes of the Vietnam War." Oxford Up,

1999. Web. 2 Oct 2011.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/causes.htm

Anh, Ta Viet. " Hanoi During The War of Resistance Against The

US." Hanoi Times. 12 Dec 2007. 2 Oct 2011.

http://www.hanoitimes.com.vn/newsdetail.asp?

NewsId=1180&CatId=21 .

Anh, Ta Viet. "A New Page In The History." Hanoi Times. Hanoi

Times, 12 Dec 2007. 2 Oct 2011.

http://www.hanoitimes.com.vn/newsdetail.asp?

NewsId=1177&CatId=21 .

Thompson, Wayne. To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North

Vietnam 1966-1973. Government Publishing Office, 2003.

Maier, My. Interview by Matthew Emmer. 01 Sep 2011.

Rogers, Ray. Interview by Matthew Emmer.

Povell, Marc. "The History of Vietnamese Immigration." The

American Immigration Law Foundation. N.p., 02 Jun 2005. Web. 21

Nov 2011.

http://www.ailf.org/awards/benefit2005/vietnamese_essay.shtml .

Part Two:

Colonialism

Colonialism is the ideology and practice of domination,

which involves the subjugation of one nation or people to

another. Colonialism also involves political and economic control

over a dependent territory. That territory is not necessarily

legally categorized or recognized as a colony.

Virtually no one questions Italy's conquest of Ethiopia as

colonialism, or South Africa's former status as a British colony

and South Africa's own colonialism against Namibia. But no doubt

many Americans and Israelis would disagree with describing

Palestine and Puerto Rico as colonies. For both emotional and

ideological reasons, many would insist these territories are

inherent and inviolate parts of the nation-state. Some might even

maintain these colonies benefit from domination. But neither

colony has political or social equality and Puerto Rico only has

limited self-rule. Both remain utterly economically dependent.

Both have long histories of independence movements crushed by

brute force and state repression. Both are culturally quite

distinct from the more powerful nation-states ruling over them.

Both peoples have distinct identities, often defining themselves

in opposition to the dominant nation-state. Even though most

Puerto Ricans no longer support independence, most people on the

island still have a self- identity distinct from Americans.

Background:

Ethiopia

Ethiopia is an ancient land, distinct from others as a

kingdom for thousands of years. It is also famed for its role in

the Bible, the Queen of Sheba, as an early Christian land

surrounded by animists and then Muslims, and as one of the few

parts of Africa to remain independent from European control until

extremely late. Ethiopia became a Christian kingdom in the 4th

Century, fought off Muslim invaders in the 13th Century, and

British, Turkish, and Egyptian invasions in the 19th Century.

Most notably, Italy tried to seize Ethiopia in 1896, only to

be badly defeated and humiliated. Mussolini and his fascist state

used modern technology, including poison gas, to brutally conquer

Ethiopia in 1936. Their era of rule, described in Kumbi's essay,

was brief, only five years until Ethiopians liberated themselves

with British aid. Ethiopia’s emperor was later overthrown,

replaced by a Communist military dictatorship, a series of wars,

and a gruesome famine killing hundreds of thousands that led to

worldwide aid. The northern region of Eritrea, annexed under a

previous emperor but kept by force under Communism, is today a

separate nation. The Ethiopian government became democratic,

largely in name only, in 1991.

There are a quarter million Ethiopians in the US, most of

them immigrating after 2000, and about half of them now US

citizens. The DC metro area has the highest concentration in the

US, about 35,000.

Ethiopia

by Beza Kumbi

A very important and interesting person in my life is my

grandma, Mrs. Tsedale Alemayehu. I call her “Tsedu.” She is the

oldest living relative that I have and has had a very exciting

life so far. My grandmother was born in 1931 Addis Abba,

Ethiopia. She is the eldest of her five siblings. During her

childhood the Italians invaded Ethiopia and occupied the country.

When my grandma Tsedu became of age she was married off. Her

husband and she had five children just like her grandmother. When

Tsedu’s children grew up they all moved to America, then Tsedu

moved to American and moved in with her daughter in Chicago

Illinois. The Italian war affected her adult life in different

ways. Growing up through a war made her become a very humble

grateful person and does not take things for granted and she also

is mentally prepared for the worst of circumstances and knows how

to handle a bad situation.

Tsedu was born in 1931 in Addis Abba. Her mother had her

when she was twelve years old. Within the first few years of

Tsedu’s birth, the Italians invaded Ethiopia because Mussolini

wanted control of the country. (Campbell) At age three, because

of all of the attacks that were going on and people’s homes being

burned down, my grandmother’s family fled with their extended

family to the countryside in Debre Libanos, northwest of the

capital Addis Ababa, to live in a cave. They lived there for

about two years until the Ethiopians were liberated from the

Italian control. At the time it was just her, her younger brother

and mother. Her father also brought one of her uncles and kids to

live with them in the cave. At night, some of the adults would

spend their time in trees to keep lookout for the Italians or

even the rebel soldiers. They spent a long time waiting out the

war in the cave until they could return safely back to the city.

Most of her family was affected by the invasion. Two of her

uncles were put in jail because of the Italians. The Italians at

the time were just locking up anyone who they saw as a threat or

could be working for the rebel troops, so many men were locked up

including her uncles. (Ethiopian Treasures) Other people told her

stories about neighbors getting kicked out of their houses and

having to relocate and build new houses. (Challenge and Response

in Internal Conflict) During the war, her father went off to

fight with the king against the Italians and was gone for one

year. So her family, like many others, had to fend for themselves

because they no longer had a man around the house. Once her

family returned to the city, Addis Abba, she was enrolled in

school.

By the time she was eight years old, the Italians were no

longer occupying the country, because Ethiopia was strong enough

to kick them out. Once the war was over her dad was able to

return home. He took her out of school when she was in the 6th

grade, because the king at the time was obsessed with the

country’s youth in becoming more educated and would send a lot of

the children to America. Her father didn’t want her to be sent

away because as the oldest of her siblings she had a

responsibility at home to take care of the rest of her siblings.

After she left school, her parents enrolled her into a knitting

school and she began to take the role of helping around the

house. When Tsedu got older her family and her would go on

vacations often to the countryside where they had a vacation

house. She has many memories of the man playing cards and the

woman taking their children to swim in the lake.

By 19 years old, Tsedu was married off to a family friend’s

son. It was an arranged marriage, but she was not concerned about

that because that is how it was back then. She was just happy to

know he came from a good family and they were as well off as

them. The first time she saw her husband to be was in a photo.

Soon after, she was told the both of their families gave them the

blessing to go out on their first date. After they were married,

Tsedu had five children with her husband. Later on, Tsedu had

access to different medicines and herbs because her husband owned

a pharmacy downtown, so she became the neighborhood doctor.

Whenever anyone felt sick, but could not afford a doctor they

would always come to her and she would make different types of

remedies to make them better.

Growing up, Tsedu’s family was very religious, so when she

became older she too spent most of her free time at the Orthodox

Churches. (The Ethiopian Catholic Church accepts the jurisdiction

of the Pope.) So as Tsedu became older she spent more of her time

at the Church. Tsedu and her cousin would also spend a lot of

time at the monastery where should would feed a lot of the poor

people and spend the night with the female monks.

In Ethiopia, when someone dies people are expected to wear

black every day and the grieving period can be as long as a year.

People who never even knew the person who passed away, but knew

someone in the family would be expected to share the grief too.

Ethiopian funerals can also get very emotional to the point where

they don’t let children attend because it would be too much for a

child to witness. When Tsedu was in her forties her father passed

away and she had so much grief, she shaved her hair completely

off.

The first time Tsedu came to America was in 1980. She came

to America to visit her youngest daughter. The first city she

went to was Portland, because her son was living and going to

school there. Tsedu also went to Seattle to visit her other son.

Once both of her daughters moved to Chicago, Tsedu was able to go

back and forth between Ethiopia and Chicago. It was hard on her

to be in America for a long period of time because she had to

leave her husband back home in Ethiopia.

When Tsedu was in her early fifties she was diagnosed with

cervical cancer. She was sure she was going to die and wanted to

live her last few months in Ethiopia, but a family member, who

was a doctor, convinced her to go to America because of the

better possibilities. Once she came to America she had a

procedure done and now she has been cancer free for 30 years.

Ethiopians culture is very family oriented, so when it came

to any preparations for funerals for parties, anything that

needed to be planned and organized, Tsedu always took care of

everything. She would make sure there would be enough food even

if there would be over 100 people attending. Tsedu is really

devoted to her family and always is checking to see how everyone

in her family is doing all around the world.

Her hopes now are that she would be able to watch all of her

grandchildren grow up and go through life. Tsedu wants to witness

her grandchildren become successful and to become married and

have a family just like her.

Today Tsedu lives with her daughter and family in Virginia

and has been living with them for more than twenty years. She has

five grandchildren that she loves spending time with and sharing

her culture, religion and life experience. Living in America had

been a huge difference because of the differences of the

language, cultures and social norms. The technology itself has

been a big adjustment for her to handle. Growing up, it was a big

deal if you have a TV with one or two channels, but here she

lives in houses with multiple TVs and thousands of channels. In

Ethiopia they would have to wash their clothes in rivers or if

they were well off enough they had running water in the house to

wash the clothes there. Then they would let hang the clothes, but

here in America Tsedu has access to her own washer and dryer in

her home. She also has her own cell phone, which growing up in

Ethiopia no one even heard of a phone until 1890.

(Telecommunication Ethiopia) It has been a big change for her

getting used to the social norms too. Here in America the women

have many jobs in different fields and are looked at like as an

equal. Growing up she was used to woman being raised to be a

mother and house wife. Now that technology has improved with

things like Skype and being able to fly back and forth easily to

the different countries and there are many ways to keep in

contact with her children she is able to spend longer periods of

time in Ethiopia.

Tsedale Alemayehu has been through a lot since her

childhood when the Italians invaded Ethiopia and occupied the

country to now living in America. Growing up through a war made

her become a very humble and religious person. Today even though

she lives in America she does not mind having a simple life with

just the bare necessities and does not take things for granted.

War might have been a big part of her life when she was a child

but she does not let that define her today.

Bibliography

Campbell, Ian. The Plot to Kill Graziani: The Attempted Assassination of Mussolini's

Viceroy. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa UP, 2010. Print.

Marcus, H.G. 1969. “Ethiopia 1937-1941,” Challenge and Response in

Internal Conflict, 1969.

"ITALIAN CONQUEST OF ETHIOPIA 1935-1936." ITALIAN CONQUEST OF

ETHIOPIA 1935 "Telecommunications in Ethiopia.," 25 Nov. 2013.

Web. 26 Nov. 2013. -1936. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013

DIEL, L. 1939. “Behold Our New Empire”- Mussolini, London; Hurst

& Blackett.

"Ethiopian Treasures." - Emperor Haile Selassie. N.p., n.d. Web.

26 Nov. 2013.

Interview: Tsedale Alemayehu

Interview: Enanu Wondirad

Interview: Saba Wondirad

Background:

Namibia

The region has had peoples there for tens of thousands of

years, Damara, Nama, San, and later Bantu and Orlam. Namibia was

once a German colony, and scene of the horrific genocide against

the Herero described in. German colonists seized Namibia for

commercial and mineral exploitation in 1884, while the United

Kingdom seized Walvis Bay. When Germans ordered the seizure of

all lands and expelled all Africans into the desert, up to four

fifths of the African population died, much of the rest confined

to concentration and forced labor camps.

The United Kingdom's colony of South Africa itself seized

the Namibian colony from Germany during World War One, renamed

South West Africa as a League of Nations mandate. After the Union

of South Africa left the British Commonwealth and became

independent South Africa, it held onto Namibia over United

Nations and worldwide objections. The South West Africa People's

Association (SWAPO) fought a war for independence against

apartheid era South Africa. South Africa set up Bantustans, the

least wanted areas of the nation for confinement of Africans,

nominally independent. Namibia won independence in 1990. The

government practiced reconciliation, giving amnesty to all sides

in the civil war. Most land remains owned by a tiny white

minority though.

Because independence is so recent, there is little

information on Namibians in the US. Those entering prior to 1990

were likely listed as South African.

“For a Better Future, I Shall and Will Suffer”

by Vetondouua Karuuombe

Born and raised in Namibia, West Africa. Namibia was the

only place my grandmother had ever known. She was born during a

period where the country was one of Germany’s colonies. She was

the oldest among four siblings, her family were agriculturalists.

Her father was a miner and her mother a servant for a German

family. She never attended any educational institution, but was

very good with numbers. This proved to be very helpful as she was

responsible for handling the family’s finances.

During the period as a German colony from 1884 to 1915,

German was the only official language in Namibia. Boers, i.e.

South African whites who spoke Dutch (South African Dutch would

later develop into Afrikaans) already lived in the country

alongside Orlam tribes and mixed-race Reheboth Basters. When the

Germans arrived in Namibia, none of them could understand the

locals and vice versa. So in order to understand the locals, it

was compulsory for the locals to learn German/Afrikaans. My

grandmother learned it from her mother, but to this day refuses

to speak any European language. She does not know any English,

never learned and refuses to learn it. Oddly enough she watches

the news, which airs in English.

After Namibia became a German protectorate in 1884, the

Germans negotiated a number of land purchases and protection

treaties with local leaders to give the German government and

German companies rights to use the land. Many of these agreements

were speculative, made in the hope that the gold and diamond rush

of the 1880s in South Africa would be replicated in Namibia.

During this period, many European settlers in Namibia bought

or leased land for commercial farming purposes, thereby formally

defining the areas occupied by indigenous communities. By 1902,

freehold farmland accounted for 6% of Namibia’s total land

service area while 30% was formally recognized as communal land.

After the 1904-1907 war between Germany and forces of the Herero

and Nama, large tracts of land were confiscated from the Herero

and Nama by proclamation. Furthermore, my grandmother used to

live in the country’s most fertile area. But when the Germans

realized this they had to relocate the locals so they could have

the fertile soil for their own agricultural needs. The locals

were moved to a place called “Katutura,” which is a Herero word

meaning “we don’t belong.” This piece of land was not fertile and

her family had a very hard time surviving on what they could

produce, which wasn’t very much to live by.

Additionally, in order to earn more money for the family, my

great grandfather became a miner, and later a rail road worker.

The German missionaries taught us about God, taught us why it was

important to believe that there is a God to begin with. A lot of

Herero people are non-Christians due to some horrifying events.

One of these is found nowhere in historical books or papers, only

the survivors remember the happenings of that day. “It was a

Sunday morning and a couple of German missionaries came to the

homestead” she pauses. “We were excited to learn from these

clean/kind/caring looking men, but my mother told us not to get

too close.” The missionaries came and invited them to church.

When they got to the church; she realized that their coffins laid

upright against the church’s internal walls side by side. Not

thinking much of it, they sang songs from a little book that they

got at the church’s entrance. “In the middle of the sermon, the

Preacher asked them to close our eyes and bow their heads to

pray, and so they did. However, the moment they closed their

eyes, men dressed in uniforms walked out of the coffins and

started shooting at them. Men, women and children alike, the

people from neighboring locations heard the gunshots and came to

help. Those who survived would be scarred for life, my

grandmother being one of them. To this day, it is a suicidal

attempt if anyone tries to convert a Herero into Christianity. My

parents do not attend church, and therefore I wasn’t raised

Christian.

To a lot of people cattle may mean another source of income,

but not to the Ovaherero people of Namibia. Cattle represented

class and wealth; they represented health and were the second

thing Herero people cared for other than their families. German

settlers ran roughshod over the historical rights and claims of

the Herero tribal inhabitants, and for the next twenty years

plundered their lands, houses and livestock. Of this period, the

Governor said German settlers had an “inborn feeling of belonging

to a superior race.” The Hereros were regularly referred to as

“baboons.” The men were commonly beaten to death for minor

infringements, and the women were made sex slaves by the soldiers

and settlers. I have never met my grandfather, but what I do know

is I am half German and half Herero as is my mother.

The Hereros were outraged by this and on the 12 of January

1904 they decided to do something about it. A fight between the

German settlers and the Hereros started, in a German town called

Okahandja, where the German fort was located. The Berlin

government responded to this insurrection fast and ruthlessly.

Kaiser Wilhelm II dispatched 14,000 troops to the region under

the command of Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha. Lt. Von

Trotha believed in Darwin’s “superior race,” “survival-of-the-

fittest-through-cleansing-of-the-weakest” views, hardly

surprising. In contrast, Chief Samuel Maharero of the Herero

people wrote to his people shortly after the outbreak of war

states that Englishmen, Boers, missionaries and people of other

tribes were not to be harmed.

In a decisive battle at Hamakari, near Waterberg, on 11

August 1904, von Trotha’s troops surrounded the Herero people on

three sides and brutally defeated them. The troops left open

only the way into the Omaheke area of the Kalahari Desert. The

battle plan was that those who escaped the German bullets will

die of thirst. Waterholes for 240 km around the desert were

either patrolled or poisoned, and those Herero who came crawling

out of the Omaheke, desperate for water, were bayoneted. This

left the Herero with one option: to cross the desert into

Botswana, in reality a march to death. This was how the most of

the Herero people perished.

As if the troops hadn’t done enough damage, the Germans gave

up Namibia to the South Africans when the first world war broke

out, which meant that the Germans and the British were at war. In

1948 the Afrikaner led National Party gained power in South

Africa. It was one nightmare to another. South Africa saw Namibia

as a possible fifth province for their country. The already

existent system of segregation that was all over colonial Africa

was worsened through the policy of apartheid. One example of the

way in which divisions between communities were created was the

increasingly harsh `Immorality Act," which termed it “immoral”

and illegal for white people to have sex with people defined as

having a different skin color. Strangely it was not considered

illegal to lie in the same bed, but only to be caught having

sexual intercourse. One wonders how the police went about

enforcing this curious law.

Apartheid simply means “living separately.” In the late

1950s and early 1960s, as in South Africa, the living quarters of

black and colored Namibians in towns were torn down. These

residents, according to the principles of Apartheid, now had to

be moved out of Windhoek city which was reserved for whites only,

or “colored” Namibians were also to be divided from black

Namibians. The task proved very difficult as the gene pool had

been thoroughly mixed between all Namibians since the time of the

arrival of Europeans.

If one were to look at the influence that the Germans had on

Namibia, you would think the Germans had the biggest influence.

However there are no monuments/historical artifacts that are in

remembrance of the Ovaherero people who died in Waterberg, or the

prisoners who died in German prisons in Swakopmund. There are

also no museums dealing with the Apartheid history. If a tourist

wanted to know more about this, he/ she would have to go onto

websites to read about it. One thing that kept nagging in the

back of my head was, why keep the language, Afrikaans? I mean, if

it had so much historical information, most of it bad, why keep

it then?

In conclusion, By 9 February 1990, the Constituent Assembly

had drafted and adopted a constitution. Independence Day on 21

March 1990, attended by international representatives, who

included the UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and

President of South Africa F W de Klerk, who jointly conferred

formal independence on Namibia. Sam Nujoma was sworn in as the

first President of Namibia, watched by Nelson Mandela and

representatives from 147 countries, including twenty heads of

state. My grandmother told me one thing that I will always keep

with me, the pain they endured, the suffering; the brutality of

it all was all worth it, only if I got to live free.

Work cited

Grandmother, personal interview 2013.

Cox, J.; Kerven, C.; Werner, W. and Behnke, R. 1998 The

privatisation of rangeland

resources in Namibia: enclosure in eastern Oshikoto. London:

Overseas Development

Institute Ekongo J Namibia: Red Line could go by 2015, New Era,

23 September 2010

Horst Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama

against German Imperialism, 1884-1915 (Akademie-Verlag, 1966),

Gesine Krueger and Dag Henrichsen, "We have been captives long

enough: we want to be free" in P. Hayes, J. Silvester, M. Wallace

and W. Hartmann, Namibia under South African Rule (London: James Currey,

1998).

BBC News, Africa 4 March 2013 Last updated at 10:37 ET ( website)

Background:

Palestine

There probably is no more volatile or complicated issue than

that of Israel and Palestine. There are also few other issues

where so many people have intractable views.

Palestine historically was first occupied by peoples

mentioned in the Bible as Canaanites or Philistines. Israelites

invaded the region, driving out the indigenous peoples. The Bible

justifies this conquest as ordained by God, but such an action

today we call ethnic cleansing. More than a few observers see

parallels between European colonialism in the Americas and both

ancient Israelite actions and modern day Israeli occupation

carried out against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Besides the two ancient Israelite kingdoms, the region has

been occupied by one empire after another, Seleucid, Assyrian,

Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, then Umayyad, Abassid and Seljuk

sultanates, and the Ottoman Empire. The Israelite kingdoms were

only independent for two and a half centuries, and the Israelite

occupation of Palestine, often depicted as an eternal Jewish

homeland promised by God, actually lasted perhaps a thousand to

no more than 1100 years, less than a quarter of recorded history

and a far smaller proportion of human habitation. A failed

uprising against the Romans was brutally crushed, scattering

Israelites into an eventual almost worldwide diaspora.

The British Empire first maneuvered to take Palestine from

the Ottomans beginning in the nineteenth century. Located at a

crossroads, the peoples of Palestine have always been highly

mixed. Regardless, the claim of some racists today that

Palestinians as a people do not and never have existed, or never

occupied Israel before Jews began to return to the region, is

clearly false. There was a longstanding Arab population in

Palestine for thousands of years prior to the first Jewish return

to the region beginning in the very late nineteenth century.

There were scattered and occasionally successful efforts at

Jewish settlements as early as 1819. But serious, large scale,

and sustained Zionists efforts did not formally begin until 1897.

Distinctly Palestinian identity, as Palestinians and not only

Arabs, is roughly as old as Zionist efforts to reestablish Jewish

occupation in what was once ancient Israel.

The British conquered Palestine from the Ottomans in 1918

with the aid of both Jewish and Arab allies, and Britain was

formally awarded the area in 1922. The British government first

formally promised the region as a Jewish homeland in 1917 with

the Balfour Declaration, but also stated there should be no loss

of rights or harm to non-Jews living there. Palestinians revolted

against the British in 1920, 1929, and 1936, while Jewish

immigration increased, followed by anti-British and anti-

Palestinian terrorism.

In 1948 the United Nations divided the region into Arab and

Jewish states. Arabs numbered at the time over 1.3 million in

Palestine, Jewish colonists about 600,000. These colonists had

bought about 8% of the land in the area. The UN plan gave the new

immigrant minority 56% of Palestine. Not surprisingly, Jewish

colonists accepted the plan while Palestinians rejected it. Civil

war broke out immediately, ending in a new state of Israel and

Israeli victory. (The US government under President Truman

recognized Israel within hours, and ever since has been its

largest provider of aid, military and otherwise.) Over 700,000

Palestinians were expelled or fled. Israeli forces also conquered

26% more of Palestine on top of the original proposed 56%.

Palestinians in Israel itself have limited rights, with Israeli

citizenship but often subject to martial law, land theft, and

widespread legal and societal discrimination. (Legally imposed

discrimination has eased in recent decades.) Those Palestinians

within occupied territories have far less rights and face even

greater discrimination and segregation that some, such as former

President Jimmy Carter, describe as apartheid-like.

There have been a series of border wars and internal wars

throughout Israel-Palestine history, ending in Israeli defeat in

1956, 2006, and 2012, and in Israeli victory in 1968, 1973, 1978,

and 1982. Israeli victories expanded conquered territory to

include the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula (later

returned to Egypt) and West Bank. There also has been wide

ranging terrorism from Palestinian nationalists, the Israeli

right wing, and state terrorism from both Israel and Arab

nations. There also have been frequent Palestinian civilian

uprisings against the Israeli state since the 1980s, as well as

peace movements among both Israeli and Palestinian communities

and international peace initiatives that brokered successful

peace agreements. The state of Palestine was formally declared in

1988, consisting of the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.

Palestinian authorities gradually took control of Palestine,

though Israeli authorities maintain control over air, sea, and

some rural areas.

In spite of enormous progress, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

remains, with both sides often unable to even agree on the root

causes. Crawford's family history essay gives us a point of view

we do not often hear, that of Christian Arabs. Occupying an

intermediate position, they experienced systematic discrimination

as Arabs, but were not regarded as threatening by the dominant

Israeli society as Arab Muslims.

Family History

by Dylan Crawford

My mother’s side of the family has always lived in the

region of Palestine, though we are not sure whether or not we

originally came from Palestine or what is modern day Jordan. My

immediate family’s history begins in Palestine in the 1930s.

Palestine during the 1930s was surrounded in conflict;

conflict between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians, and

both against the British. My grandmother was born during this

period in the town of Nazareth. She was one of a family of seven

children. Nazareth during this time period was a predominantly

Christian Arab town. My grandmother described life in Nazareth as

“Simple and very humble. School was very similar to what

Americans probably would have had, it was run by the Baptist

church and the teachers were missionaries from various parts of

the world and classes were in English. My math teacher was from

Korea and was very small. It was shocking at first.” She told me

that the clothing in style during this time period was the same

as what you saw in movies depicting 1930s England, suits and

dressed were the norm; based on the standard depiction of Arab

countries before the post WWII era, I did not expect this to be

the norm.

When asked about the clashes and violence that marked this

period my grand mother remembered a particular incident; “There

was one time when there were rumors that the Haganah [one of the

militant Jewish groups during this period] were going to come up

to Nazareth as an act of revenge for one of the incidents that

happened elsewhere. Everybody was scared because we thought that

they were going to remove us from our homes.” The rumors turned

out to not be true but the fear they struck was on par with any

threat of action by an armed group.

Palestine became engulfed in war in 1948 when Israel

declared independence. My grandmother recalled many stories about

her family during the war. “During the war many things were

rationed and unavailable. We were given a small piece of

chocolate as part of our rations; I remember telling David [my

great uncle] to send us the chocolate from America. I did not

even like it, it tasted disgusting. But it made me feel better to

receive something from my brother during the war.” When asked

about day to day life during the war she told me it was “Tough.

We tried to go about our daily lives, we went to school and we

went to church. Some things just couldn’t be done though. You

couldn’t go to the market because the market had very little

food. We relied on whatever rations we had and could get by

with.”

Not all of my family went through the war. Some had left

ahead of time; in 1942 my great uncle Peter journeyed to the

United States to attend college. While he was there he studied

engineering at the University of California San Francisco. In

1946 he was joined by his brother, another one of my great

uncles, David. The two of them not only wanted a higher education

but saw the coming strife that would soon become the Israeli war

for independence. They realized that things would never be the

same and decided to stay in the US.

When asked about the decision to stay in the US, David

responded, “It was tough. Probably the hardest decision I ever

had to make. Everyone knew what was coming; we just ignored it.

We pretended it would just go away, that the conflict would just

solve itself. And when the time came for some of us to go to

university we got up and left. Our time there was good but we

couldn’t ignore the facts. Every time we would write to our

family we got news that things were not getting better, and then

the war broke out. The Jews insisted on asserting Palestine as

theirs, and the Palestinians wanted their country back after

years of being ruled by foreigners. So we decided to stay and

make a life there. Things could have changed, but they didn’t. In

the end more and more of the family came and joined us.” As time

passed more members of the family left the conflict torn country

and immigrated to the land of opportunity that was the US. My

great aunts left their home and traveled to live with their

brothers in California.

One generation later, after the creation of the State of

Israel, my mother was born in Nazareth. Unlike the rest of my

family my mother grew up in Jerusalem. Jerusalem during this

period was a mainly Jewish city. My mother went to an Israeli

public school. I asked her about her time at the school, “My

school was very different from what I experienced at home. The

classes were taught in Hebrew, but I spoke Arabic at home. It was

interesting in the sense that I got to learn two languages, but

it was very difficult specifically because Hebrew was practiced

at my home so I had to study extra hard to get through school.

Not to mention the diverse religions that I experienced in my

life. My school celebrated Jewish holidays like Hanukah, but at

home we celebrated Christmas because we’re Christian.” My

grandmother assimilated into the society of Israel with relative

ease. She got a job hosting a kid’s television show in Arabic on

the government ran network.

I asked her about how she felt Arabs were viewed in Israeli

society during this early founding period. “We were viewed as

second class. We weren’t Jewish so we didn’t belong in their

Jewish society. We weren’t mistreated, but we were viewed as

different.”

I asked my mothers opinion on this as well. “Arabs often had

the unwanted jobs. They were street sweepers, garbage men, and

other public servant jobs. I remember their being a common phrase

used by places looking to hire employees. It translated as

“Military service required.” Because Arabs were not required to

join Israel’s conscript army, and few chose to, it was more of a

way to say Arabs need not apply. There was definitely a sense of

“we want to be separate.” Israel had already been in two wars

with the surrounding Arab countries, they thought we should just

move across the border “back to our own kind.”

The difference and conflict between Israeli and Palestinian

culture allows for the Palestinians to remain separated from the

rest of Israel. The Palestinians have always been living

separately from the Jews since Jews first started immigrating to

Palestine in the early 1900s. With the creation of the state of

Israel things just got more separated. The only mixed cities were

Jerusalem, which was divided into west for Israel and east for

what remained of Palestine, and Haifa. When the war first broke

out a majority of the Arabs living in Palestine fled, either to

the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria or

to other countries around the world, like my family did.

During the 1980s Israel became plagued with acts of violence

and riots known as the Intifada, literally “shaking off” in

Arabic. During this time period my mother worked at the American

Consulate in Jerusalem processing visa applications. It was

during this period she met my father; a Marine Security Guard for

the Consulate in Jerusalem. After his tour was up my mother left

her family to live in the US with my father. Now my mother works

as a media analyst, specializing on Israel and the Palestinians,

for the federal government.

A few years after my mother left the country my aunt moved

to the UK and began a career working for the BBC. Now she

travels to various parts of the Arab world assisting them in

developing the journalistic capabilities to produce great

investigative reporting. My grandmother has spent the last few

years living with my aunt.

My family has lived the very essence of the American dream.

They left a conflict ridden country and settled in the US having

a much sought after simple life.

Background:

Puerto Rico

The first people in Puerto Rico or Quisqueya were Taino

Indians, and their descendants still make up much of the

population today. The Taino presence on the island goes back

thousands of years, with estimates of from 100,000 to over half a

million people. Spanish invaders carried out a genocide that

wiped out most, but not all, Taino with warfare and deliberate

starvation that weakened Natives and left them very vulnerable to

disease. Most Puerto Ricans today have mostly Native DNA, along

with some African and to a lesser extent Spanish, compared to the

popular mythology of Puerto Ricans as mostly Spaniard with some

African and a trace of or no Native ancestry at all.

Puerto Rico under Spanish control was largely a military

outpost, made up of Spanish soldiers with Taino wives or

concubines. In the interior, other Tainos remained, joined by

runaway African slaves and dissatisfied Spaniards who fled the

Spanish colony. Especially in the rural areas, the material

culture of Puerto Ricans remained largely Taino, along with the

people themselves. Most African slaves were taken to Puerto Rico

relatively late, when plantations were first established in the

early nineteenth century.

Spain lost Puerto Rico when the US invaded in the Spanish-

American War. American authorities kept tight control, repressing

independence movements, including armed uprisings in 1930 and

1950. A few Puerto Ricans tried terrorism against the US,

including assassination attempts against President Truman and

American congressmen. Support for Puerto Rican independence has

gradually declined as the island has become economically

dependent on the US and many Puerto Ricans left the island to

form communities on the US mainland, eventually equal in numbers

to back home.

Jung's essay tells us much of rural life in Puerto Rico. Her

family, who were once slave owners, would theoretically be among

the elite. But those days are long gone, and for them, her

grandmother's marriage to an American soldier, even an enlisted

one, was a step up. Jung is fair skinned herself, and thus her

statements and those of her family and neighbors about “a white

man” are a reminder than in Latin American cultures, black/white

is not a sharp divide but a continuum.

Family History

By Kaitlin Jung

The oldest living relative I have is my grandma, Zenaida

Dryden. She is from Isabela, Puerto Rico. My grandma was born on

May 21, 1935 and is 76 years old. Her family consists of her

mother, father, two older brothers, and one younger brother.

After interviewing my grandma on her home and lifestyle,

schooling, work, marriage, slavery, the changes in society, and

political events that she witnessed, her accounts match with what

history books have to say about her time in all aspects.

To begin with, my grandma’s home and lifestyle coincide with

what history books and sites describe. My grandma described her

home as a shack. The top of the house was made of straw and the

floor was compacted dirt. According to the Puerto Rican history

site called Sol Boricua, many Puerto Ricans lived in “bohios,”

which are aborigine-style huts that originated from Taino

Indians. This makes sense because Taino Indians were the first

people to inhabit Puerto Rico; therefore, their traditional homes

were passed down. They were small homes made of straw and wood

and dirt. My grandma’s house consisted of two bedrooms with seven

people living in it (my grandma’s family including her grandma).

Her family shared beds, which were normally straw on the ground

or hammocks. The kitchen was a shed attached to the shack, and

they had to go through a little porch to go to the kitchen. There

was no stove, but instead, a table that had a flat piece of wood

on the top of the table. There was a box on top of the table with

dirt/clay inside. To cook, they would put three rocks in it and

wood underneath. My grandma and her siblings had to walk two to

three miles everyday to get water since there was no running

water in her house. There was also no electricity. Their bathroom

consisted of an outhouse, which was a little ways off from the

house. Neighbors lived fairly far away since my grandma lived in

the countryside of Puerto Rico. She said that she had a couple of

chickens, cows, and pigs.

A normal rural house in Puerto Rico during the 1930s

consisted of bark and thatch. “The floors were raised on poles to

let rain flow beneath. Homes were normally divided into two

rooms. The kitchen was an ‘outdoor lean-to.’ Hammocks were the

only furniture inside. An average of 7.7 people lived in one of

these homes” (Oliver). This author’s description of a typical

house in Puerto Rico matched exactly with what my grandma’s

house. Many homes were made this way throughout the 1930s because

it was efficient and low-cost for Puerto Ricans.

My grandma described her everyday lifestyle as a “normal

Puerto Ricans’ lifestyle.” She would get up at seven and walk

three miles to school. Throughout most of her schooling, she did

not own shoes. She would come home from school around twelve in

the afternoon or whenever she felt like going home. After

school, her days were spent running around and climbing trees.

The school system was not strict, so she never did homework. My

grandma remembered always having to walk miles upon miles to fill

buckets of water to take baths. She rarely cooked unless her

mother was sick because the “stove” was dangerous. Friends of

hers who live in Isabela, Puerto Rico also described their

schooling as extremely lenient. They all said that they would

yell from house to house to gather up all the kids and play games

all day.

During the 1930-1940s my grandma’s schooling consisted of

going to school every day and the thought of quitting if she

pleased. My Grandma described her school as one big room, with

about 30-40 kids. They would read English and Spanish every day.

Only one teacher would teach the thirty kids all of the subjects.

The teacher emphasized on English, she yelled at my grandma to

pick up a pebble, and my grandma picked up a rock. The teacher

made her look dumb and explained to her the difference of a

pebble and rock, so my grandma never forgot the English words

“pebble,” and “rock.” She stayed in that school until the sixth

grade.

My grandma then went on to middle school, which was a lot

better. She had to take a car to get there, and had to wear shoes

sometimes. According to the book From Yucca to High-Tech, most

children in rural areas did not attend school; it also said that

most of them did not wear shoes, which was my grandma’s case. In

middle school, she said there was an English teacher, math

teacher, social studies teacher; this was very similar to modern

day schools. She eventually graduated from there, and moved on to

high school, which was downtown. Her high school she described as

being very similar to middle school. My grandma had classes that

were roughly thirty minutes to an hour long, but she said that

English class always lasted longer than the others. She had

different teachers for different subjects.

After graduating high school, my grandma went to college.

She was only taking one class (physics), when she broke her leg,

which led to her becoming very sick and she couldn’t go to class.

My grandma quit college because she failed the first semester and

went off to work. Dr. José M. Gallardo, Commissioner of

Education in June 1937, made a new school program with English

being a major subject in school. This program progressed because

of President Roosevelt’s letter to Dr. Gallardo:

"It is an indispensable part of American policy that the

coming generation of American citizens in Puerto Rico grow up

with complete facility in the English tongue. It is the language

of our nation. Only through the acquisition of this language will

Puerto Rican Americans secure a better understanding of American

ideals and principles" (Puertorico.org).

This agrees with what my grandma said about always learning

English throughout all of her schooling. She explained that

English was the most important subject taught in class and that

it was the subject that was spent the most time on.

My grandma first started working at age fifteen. At first,

she began to sew gloves to help make money for the family with

her mom. A dozen gloves were four dollars. With four dollars she

would buy material to make a dress. Often times, she would stay

up late into the night sewing gloves in order to help her family

with money. My grandma said that she worked in a candy factory in

Florida for six months at age twenty-three. She worked every day

and didn’t make much money. At the factory, my grandma later

found out that they were cheating her out of money because she

didn’t know any better. After six months, her parents wanted her

back home. She saved all the money to help her parents, but some

of it was used to buy a plane ticket.

My grandma said that her father worked in tobacco fields; he

would cut tobacco. She also said that he had many odd jobs and

her family was barely making enough money for food. My grandma’s

life experiences coincide with critiques of Esteban Bird. He

proved that Puerto Rican workers, such as my great grandpa, made

only twelve cents a day per family member (lcw.lehman.edu).

According to Bird this was four cents more than the cost of

feeding a hog in the United States. Yucca to High-tech said that

“Tobacco workers averaged roughly 135 a year. 94% of their wages

were spent on food” (Oliver). This is very accurate because my

grandma basically described the same exact situations about her

family. She had to help make ends meet from the time she was only

fifteen years old. Potatoes and water were the main dinners in

her family because there was not enough money to eat any other

kind of food.

My grandma got married at age twenty-five to an American

man. My grandma only spoke Spanish at the time, and her husband

only spoke English. They were engaged for a month before they got

married. Generally, her family was happy, and the whole

neighborhood attended the wedding. While they were dating, the

mother was very strict on her, and they never held hands until

after marriage. Many neighbors said, “This poor country girl got

married to a successful white man in only one month!” Many

neighbors looked up to her after the marriage because she quickly

moved into a nice house compared to others and she was now

financially stable.

“We didn’t have technology- I didn’t!” (Zenaida). My

grandma’s dad used a machete to do most of his work. “The cutting

of sugar cane was done by field workers with a machete,

essentially with the same technology of the 19th century. In

Puerto Rico there was no mechanization of the cutting phase in

the 1950s. What seems to have made the difference in the 1950s

was the mechanization of the process of lifting the sugar cane

into trucks once it was cut” (lcw.lehman.edu). This excerpt

corresponds with my grandma’s dad using a machete. In Puerto Rico

it is now stereotype to picture a Puerto Rican with a machete

because they used them so often in the fields. Other technology

my grandma had was a radio, a television, and a refrigerator

after marriage. She also had running water for the first time. My

grandma said she had all of this only because her husband was in

the service. My grandma gave her parents her refrigerator a year

after her marriage. Her parents then bought a new home with

running water and electric. Back then, my grandma said that none

of her friends owned a TV. By the age of 35, my grandma noticed

that most of her friends had left their “bohios” and moved into

cement homes that had running water and electric.

My grandma touched on the subject of her great grandparents

owning slaves. Her great grandparents owned a large amount of

land and they had slaves that worked that land. The slaves were

allowed to leave when they wanted to, but they wanted to stay

with her great grandparents and work for them instead. My

grandma’s grandmother used to tell her that her grandmother would

exchange her food with the slave’s food because she liked their

food better. Slavery wasn’t that huge in Puerto Rico because they

were a fairly isolated island until the nineteenth century.

Bowman says that Puerto Rico experienced only three decades of

intense slave labor compared to the 150 years of British colonies

slave labor (Cuny.edu). This may explain why slavery was not as

cruel in Puerto Rico, and why it was not as intense as other

colonies. This correlates with what my grandma said because her

grandparents were very kind to their slaves and that they were

allowed to be free within one generation.

My grandma talked about how society has changed over time.

As far as gender roles, her father was the boss, but her mom had

some say. There weren’t many arguments or control issues. My

grandma said she was “free and always happy and always playing.”

In general though, it is well known that men are very “macho” and

have more control, while the woman is supposed to be more

submissive. As far as race, Puerto Rico is a fairly mixed island

and there were free African Americans living on the island prior

to slavery. Puerto Rico didn’t enter the slave trade until very

late. They ended up with roughly 40,000 slaves on the island.

There were also many free Blacks on the island. The increased

economy led to more dependency on slave labor. Anti-slavery

became popular in Puerto Rico as a solution for economic

downfall. In 1873 slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico. “The

slave regulation was because of foreign influence” (Cuny.edu).

Race doesn’t play a huge role in Puerto Rico because there were

already people of mixed races living on the island, Puerto Rico

was fairly isolated, and only participated for a short time in

slavery compared to other colonies. In general, this correlates

with what my grandma spoke of because she did not mention any

prejudice or racism.

My grandma was born in a time with many political activities

going on. “We are a commonwealth associated with the United

States. We are happy to be a commonwealth, and most people like

it the way it is. There are Democratic, Republican, and

independent families. My family is Democrat, but there are some

people who are Republican” (Zenaida). I found it odd that my

grandma had a very minute input on the political activities in

her life because according to us-puertoricans.org, there was a

Nationalist party in Puerto Rico in 1930s. Puerto Ricans were

tired of the US control and how their culture was being taken

away, much like Hawaii. Many Nationalists and US police died

during the protests against the US.

During the 1950s, Blanca Canales (a Puerto Rican

nationalist), took control of Jayuya and said that Puerto Rico

was free. The US quickly responded by sending bomber planes and

the National Guard. The US declared martial law and took over

the town. Nationalists fought for freedom all over Puerto Rico,

but lost. “On November 1, Nationalists, Oscar Collazo and

Griselio Torresola attacked Blair House in Washington D.C. where

President Truman was living while the White House was under

renovation. Collazo was wounded; Torresola kills a guard and is

killed” (us-puertoricans.org). After that nationalist leader was

killed, there was huge nationalist support. In particular, Albizu

Campos (Nationalist) was put in prison for 80 years. In 1953, he

was released, but imprisoned again the next year when

Nationalists led by Lolita Lebron opened fire in the Capitol

building. In prison, Don Pedro Albizu Campos was subjected to

human radiation experiments, and he died in 1965. (us-

puertoricans.org). Many Puerto Ricans walk to the Old San Juan

Cemetery every year to see his grave and pay respects. With all

of these major political events, I figured my grandma would have

heard at least a little about it, especially Albizu Campos. These

events seem like it would impact Puerto Ricans’ lives the way it

is described in textbooks, but my grandma obviously was not

impacted by the events occurring during her time.

After interviewing my grandma, I found that she had a life

very similar to what textbooks describe. Her family was very

poor; she lived in a shack, had very lenient schooling, and

worked most of her life. The only thing that I found to be

surprising is that she didn’t know about the major political

events happening during her time. Overall, the websites I found

online coincided with the life events my grandma went through.

Bibliography

Bowman, Katherine. "Slavery in Puerto Rico."

Http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu. Web. 2 Oct. 2011.

"From Yucca to High Tech: The Year 1930." Writing Samples by Lance

Oliver. Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

http://www.coffeericeandbeans.com/print/CB1930.html.

"History of Puerto Rico III." Sol Boricua, Puerto Rico. Web. 8 Oct.

2011. http://www.solboricua.com/history3.htm.

"Immigration... Puerto Rican / Cuban: In Spanish Harlem - For

Teachers (Library of Congress)." Library of Congress Home. Web. 14

Oct. 2011.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandac

tivities/presentations/immigration/cuban4.html#.

Morales, Iris. "History Matters." www.us-puertoricans.org. 2010.

Web. 28 Sept. 2011.

"Operation Bootstrap." Lehman College. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.

http://lcw.lehman.edu/lehman/depts/latinampuertorican/latinoweb/P

uertoRico/Bootstrap.htm.

Rivera, Magaly. "People." Welcome to Puerto Rico. Web. 1 Oct. 2011.

Background:

South Africa

Bantu, Khoikhoi, and San peoples lived in what became South

Africa for thousands of years. The Dutch East India Company

invaded the eastern region in the 17th century, expelling

Africans from much of the area. British colonists invaded the

south near the Cape. Mixed peoples called Griqua (“Basters” or

bastards by the Dutch) fled to the interior with other Africans

and white renegades. The British invaded further north, and

African born Dutch called Afrikaners conquered or displaced

Africans in their own attempt to escape British laws, especially

anti slavery codes. Indians were brought into the colonies to

replace former slave labor. A series of British wars defeated the

Bapedi, Basotho, Nebdele, Xhosa, and Zulu states and then

Afrikaners. The colony became the Union of South Africa in 1910,

itself conquering South West Africa during World War One.

The Union quickly denied the vote to nonwhites and took

nearly all land for whites only.

In 1948, apartheid or “apartness” formally established and

worsened already strict segregation and discrimination. Opponents

were imprisoned or assassinated, often working with a Zulu party,

Inkatha. South Africa also invaded neighboring newly free or

rebelling African states, especially Angola, until defeated by

Cuban troops. The African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela

eventually became the new government of a free avowedly

multicultural South Africa, aided by public protests,

international boycotts, and diplomatic support. Apartheid ended,

though most wealth remains in white hands and South Africa

remains a very unequal society with almost half of Africans

living in poverty.

Many of the earliest South African immigrants to the US were

white, and many after the end of apartheid were fleeing based on

their fears of a Black majority society. American quotas limiting

the number of nonwhites from the late 19th century until the

civil rights movement also made immigration for Black South

Africans difficult. Repression under Apartheid did lead to some

immigration from dissidents, especially South African Jews.

Masilela's account gives us that of a great-grandmother who has

seen the nation's history from its start.

My Family History

By Nontoboko Masilela

A tree that is not rooted deep in the ground is easily

uprooted during high winds. The palm tree has deep roots and

during high winds it bends and it will stand back up after the

winds have passed. It is important that wherever we end up in

this world and through the storms of life that we do not forget

who we are, where we come from and our roots. I have been in the

United States for three years now and since I have been here I

have become more and more patriotic of who I am, where I come

from and my family history.

My grandmother was born on January 5, 1905 in a country on

the African continent called South Africa. She holds our great

family history from my dad’s side of the family and like the

Native Americans did by telling stories to keep their culture and

traditions through the generations, my grandmother did the same

thing. 1905 was over eight decades before I was born and life/the

way of living was totally different from the time I was born. In

the early 1900s, South Africa was nothing like it is today.

According to the stories my grandmother told, the white people

were in charge and being black was considered a “curse” by the

white race. South Africa was colonized by the English and Dutch

in the seventeenth century. When my grandmother was born, there

was a war called the Boer War which resulted from the English

invasion due to the discovery of diamonds in the Free State and

Transvaal. The Afrikaners also known as Boers won the war and

attained their independence. My grandmother lived most of her

live in an era called Apartheid. The Free Online Dictionary has

defined Apartheid as, “An official policy of racial segregation

formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving

political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.”

This policy started in the 1940s. My grandmother did not go to

school; she worked on her family’s farm and as a maid. She wasn’t

able to enjoy what South Africa had to offer because everything

was given to the white race. In 1990, when my grandmother was 85

years old and a couple of months before I was born, Nelson

Mandela was released from prison after 27 years. He fought for

the rights of the black nations. In 1994 Nelson Mandela was

inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa, at that

time my grandmother was 89 years old. All her life, my

grandmother lived in a time where her skin color “worked against

her” by the time black people were given the same rights as the

white race, she was old—that truly breaks my heart.

South Africa is a very diverse country; it has 11 official

languages. English is the main language of communication and

there are different tribes. I belong to the Ndebele tribe; that

is my grandfather’s tribe who married my 108 year old

grandmother, who too is from the Ndebele tribe. People from the

Ndebele tribe speak an official language called Ndebele. Like

every other tribe, the Ndebele tribe has distinct songs, colors,

customs, and rituals that represent the tribe. My tribe wears

extremely colorfully attires and our traditional outfits and bead

jewelry are all handmade. In the Ndebele tribe males (high school

seniors) are required to go to the mountain for about a month

during school winter holidays for a “manhood” initiation. Females

are not told what truly happens on the mountain; all we know is

that they get circumcised there by the elders. When they come

back from initiation school, there are massive celebrations.

Families slaughter cows and the boys who went to initiation

school are now considered men. Girls also go to an initiation

school, but they do not go to the mountain. Girls stay in a

special hut for a month and elders initiate them and teach them

about womanhood. I have two brothers and one sister. We did not

go to our tribal initiation school. My parents did not want us to

engage in that; however, we do take part in other tribal events.

In my culture, there is always a meaning and reason for the

name one is given. The only problem that we face with our native

names is that other people cannot pronounce them; therefore, we

have both native and English names, but I prefer to use my native

name. Our last names hold a story and you carry that story with

you wherever you go. My last name Masilela was given the

definition, “Dlamblili” which means “you eat both,” you take it

all and don’t leave anything for the next person. My uncle Lucas

who is my grandmother’s first born says our full clan name during

family reunions and traditional events. Our clan name is like a

song; when my uncle says it, we do our African call, sing and

dance.

My grandfather passed away before my dad got married, so

unfortunately, I never got to meet him. We grandchildren have

been told hundreds of stories about our grandfather and we have

also seen him in a great number of pictures. My family tree is

long, really extended, because I do not know any of my great

grandparents; I start my family tree from my 108 year old

grandmother. My 108 year old grandmother, Linah Mahamba Masilela

and my late grandfather, Matthew Masilela had ten children:

Lucas, Johannes, Maria, Abraham, Bellina, Martha, Samson, Zakeus

(my dad) and his twin sister Busi, and Eva. Lucas married Linah

and together they have seven children, Johannes married Florence

and together they have five children, Maria married Makgatea and

they do not have any children, Abraham married Nasimelane and

together they have six children, My late aunt Bellina married

Johannes and together they had five children, Martha was married

to her late husband Maredi and they had five children, my late

uncle Samson married Namani and together they had three children,

my dad Zakeus married my mom Michelle and together they have four

children, my dad’s twin sister Busi is widowed and has no

children, and my aunt Eva never got married and has no children.

The Masilela family has grown tremendously because the first

generation of cousins went off and got married, have children of

their own and their children have children. My 108 year old

grandmother has four generations of grandchildren; she is a

great, great, great, great grandmother.

Today my grandmother is alive and kicking; she is 108 years

old! She lives in South Africa on the same land she lived on

years ago. She has a huge piece of land and the house her and my

grandfather, who passed away before I was born, it still there.

However, she has another house built on that land. My dad’s twin

sister Busi and my aunt Eva, take care of my grandmother. The

great thing about my grandmother is that she is not handicapped.

She doesn’t have tubes or a breathing machine attached to her. My

108 year old grandmother can walk by herself and she does not

need to be fed either. Due to her age, my grandmother sometimes

relives some parts of her past life. She has her days where she

just goes back in time and talks about being out on the fields;

she talks and reacts like it is really happening. Every time I

tell people that my grandmother is 108 years old they always say,

“WHAT!? Is she your grandmother or great grandmother?” I

understand why they react in that way because in this day and

age, people don’t live to see 100 years. I asked my grandmother

what I should do to live as long as she has lived and all she

said was, “obey your parents.” This comes for a verse in the

Bible, Ephesians 6:1-3 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord,

for this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother” (this is the

first commandment with a promise), 3 that it may go well with you

and that you may live long in the land.” Ever since I have known

my grandmother, she has always had faith in God and she always

prayed with me. My dad and his sibling all grew up in church and

they all say that my grandmother is a woman of great faith. With

a brain that has been working for 108 years, my grandmother tends

to forget certain things from time to time; however, there is one

thing she never forgets and that is to pray. I haven’t seen my

grandmother in person for three years, but I Skype with her every

now and then. Faith in God is the greatest thing that has been

passed down from grandmother to all the generations that come

after her. I thank God for my grandmother, she is a great

blessing!

Yes, our family histories might not be as great as we want

them to be; however, that history is still part of us and has

made us who we are. Embrace your family history and be proud of

it; moreover, share that history with not just your children, but

share it with your friends. Let them know where your roots are. I

think of myself as a tree/plant, the leaves may continuously

change colors as I grow; however, my roots will forever be in

South Africa and that will never change. My 108 year old

grandmother may or may not be alive when I get married and have

my own children, but my children will know who Linah Mahamba

Masilela was and what our family history is. Don’t ever despise

where you come from for it has made you who you are!

Works Cited

My uncle Lucas is my primary source; my 108 year old grandma’s

first born.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Apartheid.html

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/

apartheid.hist.html

http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_ndebele.html

http://www.sahistory.org.za/20th-century-south-africa/garveyism-

early-1900s-philosophy

http://www.wakahina.co.za/listings/m/surname/masilela

Part Three:

Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in

whole or in part, of any ethnic, racial, or religious group by

mass killings of noncombatants, causing serious bodily or mental

harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the

group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical

destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to

prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring

children of the group to another group. Other elements of

genocide include; mass rapes or use of rape as a weapon of war;

using starvation as a weapon of war; deliberate exposure to

disease or using disease as a weapon of war; and forcible removal

of an ethnic group or people from their homeland.

While the term and legal concept of genocide only dates from

its coining in 1947 by Raphael Lemkin, it is a disturbingly

common feature of human history. Even more disturbing is its

increasing frequency in recent history and the almost as frequent

indifference of much of the world. Where most casualties

inflicted in the world wars were by one military against another,

today it is far more common that most deaths in wartime are

civilians, and often civilians are attacked precisely because it

is an easier victory than over a military force. Genocide can be

committed by governments or done by attacks allowed by the state,

committed by mobs, paramilitaries, or business interests, such as

the genocides of plantation slavery and extermination of American

Indians by Europeans and Anglo-Americans.

Just as disturbing for Americans, every genocide discussed

in this section was ignored (and one was materially supported) by

the US government, with no effort made to stop these atrocities.

Just the opposite, there were strenuous government efforts to

avoid involvement and, in the case of Cambodia, actual explicit

and prolonged US government support for those carrying out

genocide. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter all chose to support

the Pol Pot regime as a counterbalance to Vietnam's Communist

government.

There have only been two ways found to prevent genocide,

direct military force or alerting the rest of the world that

genocide is starting or may happen, leading to fear of military

intervention or punishment for war crimes. Strikingly, with the

exception of Nazi Germany and Japanese militarists, no major

power has ever been punished for genocide, only (sometimes) the

less powerful nations. There were never war crimes trials for the

Atlantic slave trade, genocide against American Indians,

colonial-era atrocities by Europeans, or more recent genocide

carried out by major powers such as Richard Nixon's carpet

bombing of Cambodia or French support of those carrying out

genocide in Rwanda.

Background:

Cambodia

Cambodia's history is ancient, going back to before the

famed Khmer civilization with its enormous temple complexes at

Angkor Wat. The Khmer Empire began at the start of the ninth

century CE and lasted until the fifteenth century. At its height

the capital may have had a million people. For five centuries the

Khmers fought a series of wars and were only intermittently

independent, trying to avoid domination by both Siam and Vietnam,

and were frequently vassals of either power.

In 1863 the Khmer king sought the protection of France

against the Thai and Vietnamese. Cambodia remained a protectorate

of France for the next 90 years, run as part of the French

Indochina colony. The French government dictated who would be the

Cambodian king, but chose poorly when deciding on Prince Norodom

Sihanouk in 1953. Sihanouk successfully maneuvered in negotiating

during France's withdrawal from Vietnam and gained independence

for Cambodia, declaring himself a constitutional monarch.

During the US-Vietnam War, Prince Sihanouk declared

Cambodia's neutrality, but was too weak to stop North Vietnam

channeling troops and weapons through Cambodian territory. In

1970, the US government and General Lon Nol overthrew Sihanouk.

Sihanouk sought the support of the Khmer Rouge. In 1972, US

President Nixon ordered first an American invasion of neutral

Cambodia and then carpet bombing the country, killing over half a

million Cambodians in a few months. For these atrocities, the US

Congress attempted to impeach Nixon, but impeachment for war

crimes failed to pass. Nixon instead resigned for far lesser

offenses, illegal spying, bribery, and obstruction in the

Watergate Scandal.

Cambodians flocked to Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge. Lon Nol

was overthrown, and the Khmer Rouge began a brutal genocide that

killed between 300,000 to one million people. The cities were

emptied out, urban workers put into forced labor camps, and

anyone suspected of being educated was often executed.

The US government showed no interest in stopping the

genocide. Just the opposite, three successive US Presidents,

Nixon, Ford, and Carter, supported the Khmer Rouge financially,

diplomatically, and with military aid, wanting them as an ally

against the Vietnamese Communist government. In 1978, the

Vietnamese military invaded Cambodia. Thus a Vietnamese invasion,

rather than international aid, ended the genocide and installed a

pro-Vietnam government occupying most of the nation. The Khmer

Rouge and a pro-Sihanouk faction also controlled parts of the

country.

In 1993, all three groups agreed to form a coalition

government with Sihanouk restored as constitutional monarch. Only

a few Khmer Rouge ever faced war crimes trials. Pol Pot, most of

his cadre, and Nixon and his administration, all escaped justice

for their role in killing huge numbers of Cambodians.

Many Cambodians fleeing their country were ethnic

minorities, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Hill Tribes such as the

Hmong. At least 150,000 Cambodian immigrants fled to the US.

About 4,000 of them are in Virginia, likely the majority in

northern Virginia.

As a group, Cambodians have lower levels of education and

higher poverty than most, thus making the presence of these two

essays from students the more remarkable. Both Hua's and Nguon's

essays describe families that are ethnically Vietnamese but from

Cambodia.

Family Paper on the Khmer Rouge

by Somnang Hua

I am originally from Cambodia, although I was born in

Vietnam. One of the most infamous events that have happened to

Cambodia was the civil war. It was the period of time when

Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge or Communist Party of

Kampuchea. The term Khmer Rouge can also be referred as Red

Khmer. It is used to describe the Communist Party who took over

the country during that time. Khmer Rouge is probably the only

one thing about Cambodia that is included in most western history

books. 1975-1979 was the period of time when the Khmer Rouge or

pro-monarchists conquered Cambodia. The war between the Communist

and democratic parties lasted about four years. During that time,

million of people were killed.

Although it was labeled as a civil war, the appropriate term

to describe the event should be genocide. “The Cambodian genocide

of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost

their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the

worst human tragedies of the last century,” said Ben Keirnan.

After Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge, the majority of

the educated people, including people who worked for the

government and college students, were executed. The rest of the

populations were forced to leave the city into the countryside

and small provinces.

My family were among the citizens who was forced to

abandoned everything they had and moved hundred of miles to a new

place and lived through these disastrous period of time. My

single grandmother and her five children were among the millions

of people who had to fight every day of their lives in order to

survive this war. My grandmother, Iv Tang, was a single mother of

five. Although she wasn’t super wealthy, she had a small

restaurant business that was enough to support all of her kids.

Her five children were 31, 28, 25, twenty and ten when the Khmer

Rouge first took over. They were living in a four bedroom single

house in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. They weren’t

allowed to bring anything with them. The Khmer Rough entered

their house and gave them an hour to pack up everything that

need, but they weren’t allowed to bring any valuable items with

them such as jewelries.

Money during that time was useless because the economy was

killed. The Khmer Rouge believed that everyone should live in an

equal life. Their intention was to “build a socially and

ethnically homogeneous society by abolishing all preexisting

economic, social, and cultural institutions, and transforming the

population of Cambodia into a collective workforce,” said

historian Brian Tittemore. There was completely no business

exchange that involved money during those four years. Also, no

one was allowed to leave the country. The airport was shut down.

The cruel treatments and obstacles that they had to face

during the time they were there were extremely repulsive.

“Living during the Khmer Rough was like living in slavery,” said

Iv Tang. The five of them were living in a tiny unstable house

that was built of wood and grass, a leaky roof and broken door

and no window. Iv Tang called it a rat cage. Work hours were

usually from 5AM to 6PM, pretty much from sunrise to sunset with

really little to no break. There was no pay. They can be worked

to death as long as the Red Khmer wanted them too. They had to do

everything the pro-monarchists ordered them to do. Heavy

punishments or execution can be given if one disobeyed the

orders. The major difference between the Khmer Rouge and slavery

was that execution could be given over the smallest thing like

stealing food and skipping work. Many people were died from lack

of nutrition and exhaustion.

“Two of my sons were killed during Cambodian Civil War,”

said Iv Tang. Chayna Iv was my grandmother's oldest son. He was

killed in 1976, one year after they were moved from the capital

city of Cambodia, to a small province called Kom Pom Yam. He was

32 at the time that he died. Chayna was a University professor

before the Khmer Rouge took over the country. However, he had

always kept his identity as a secret for his own safety. He lied

that he barely graduated high school, and all he did was helping

out with my grandmother with her restaurant business. My

grandmother was telling me with the tears in her eyes that he

could have lived if it wasn’t because some people who were

working in the same field as him were jealous of him. She got

more and more emotional as she repeated he could have lived. She

said she remember really clearly that the Khmer Rouge came to her

house and delivered the news that her son was killed because he

stole from the Communist Party.

After the death of her first son, my grandmother was hoping

and praying every night and day that her other kids can survive

through this. She said “surviving an everyday life was such a

challenge for her and her kids.” She and her four kids didn’t get

to have red meat for the entire two years. Their everyday meals

consisted of rice and salt. She felt really sick at one point and

thought she was going to die. However, the thought of leaving her

kids, especially her youngest daughter, kept her pushing and

fighting to survive.

One night my other uncle, Sochit Iv, brought home some pork

and potatoes saying it was the rewards from the Red Khmer for

being an outstanding worker, my grand mother reminisced. Later on

that night, there were two Khmer Rouge soldiers entering my

grandmother’s house while she was asleep and arrested my uncle

Sochit Iv, dragging him right out of his house. My grandmother

was kneeing down and begging them to let him go. They kicked her

away and said he broke the rule and stole from the community.

Therefore he needed to be punished. After they took him that

night, my grandmother waited and waited, but he never returned.

That was also the last time any of my family members saw him.

The civil war between the democrats of Cambodia and the

Communist Party of Kampuchea finally came to an end when the

current Prime Minister, Hun Sen, defeated the Khmer Rouge and

took over the power to rule Cambodia again in 1979. He sought

help from Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge was forced out of the power by

the Vietnamese military. The Khmer Rouge was defeated and most of

their soldiers were either killed or imprisoned. The rest of the

escaped soldiers fled out of the country. The leader of the Khmer

Rouge or Prime Minister, Leng Sary, was among the soldiers who

escaped after the Khmer Rouge was defeated. “He escaped to the

Thai border after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 and

continued to serve as the Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister in

charge of foreign affairs.” said Dr. Judy Ledgerwood. He was

caught in 2007, in a small province in Cambodia. His case was

closed in 2007, and he was charged with massive genocide.

Two out of her five children died during the Cambodian Civil

War and were among 1.7 million people who were killed during

that period of time. Iv Tang said during the four years of Khmer

Rouge, life was like a survival of the fittest. It was a

testament that how strong mentally and physically certain

individuals were. She claimed to become a way stronger

individual after that horrible experience.

Bibliography

Tang, IV. Face to face interview. 25 September. 2012.

Try IV. Face to face interview. 25 September. 2012

Kiernan, Ben. "The CGP, 1994-2012." Cambodian Genocide Program.

Yale Assistance

to Documentation Center of Cambodia, 1995-2005, 2010. Web. 03

Oct. 2012. http://www.yale.edu/cgp.

Ledgerwood, Judy. "Biographies." Biographies. N.p., n.d. Web. 20

Nov. 2012.

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/khmer/ledgerwood/biographies.htm.

Tittemore, Brian D. "Khmer Rouge Crimes." Khmer Rouge Crimes.

Inter-American

Commission on Human Rights, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2012.

http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/v7i1/khmer.htm.

Kim Siek Chhour’s Journey Through the Khmer Rouge

By Sally Nguon

Kim Siek Chhour, now known as Kim Siek Nguon, resides in

Sterling, Virginia with her husband and two daughters. The third

oldest child in a family of seven, she was born and raised on

November 1, 1960 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She was sponsored to

the United States of America, along with her whole family, when

she was 22; and from that moment began to build her life to

better herself, her siblings, and her parents. When people look

at her, they may see nothing out of the ordinary, but when I look

at her, I see my mother who is a strong woman that overcame her

past and worked stronger to provide a better future for her

family. Just by looking at her, one would never know that she had

endured four long years of trying to escape genocide that had

taken place in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Pol Pot, also known as, Saloh Sar was the leader of the

Communist Party, the Khmer Rouge. Khmer Rouge, which translates

to “Red Khmers,” consisted of soldiers and followers of Pol Pot.

Pol Pot, along with the Khmer Rouge, over threw Prince Sihanouk

and forced him out of his position. At this moment in time, in

1975, was the start of the Cambodian genocide and the beginning

of Year Zero.

The concept of Year Zero was that all traditions, cultures,

and knowledge within society were to be erased and everyone had

equal status. Everybody was forced to start with nothing while

earning equal work. Soldiers started the march into Phnom Penh,

the capital of Cambodia, and began to evacuate the city, forcing

everyone out of their homes and traveling to work in labor camps

under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s ruling. One by one, cities

began to empty out as Pol Pot and his regime took over.

In order for Year Zero to be seen as what Pol Pot planned, a

country with absolutely no knowledge, traditions, and cultures,

the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot’s command killed monks, doctors,

teachers, nurses, and basically anyone who was seen a “threat.”

His thoughts were if someone had the slightest knowledge of

anything, they were potentially a threat to him and what he was

trying to achieve; therefore they had to be eliminated. People

were killed in front of their own families, friends and

neighbors. Some killings were used as examples to show the people

who had the power and who was now running the country.

As evacuation took over Cambodia, people were led to labor

camps where regulations of a “new country” were enforced. Once

people entered the camps, each individual was checked thoroughly

for any valuables that they might have. The Khmer Rouge checked

for jewelry, money, gold, and even went as far as having a silver

filling plucked out of someone’s teeth if they felt like it.

Families were forced to separate between parents and children,

men and women, and lastly, girls and boys not knowing when or if

they would ever see each other again. They were given black

clothing as uniforms and anything colorful was taken and trashed.

Labor camps affected thousands and thousands of lives.

Everyone, no matter your age or physical capabilities were forced

to work on the labor camps by either planting grains, harvesting

fields, cooking, cleaning, and more. If a person said that they

could not work anymore, then the Khmer Rouge looked at it as the

person was no longer useful. They could potentially be killed

right on the spot, which scared many people. The slightest wrong

doing could have a person tortured and killed. As stated

previously, a lot of the killings would be in front of a crowd so

that everyone knew that it could happen to them. They were used

as examples, to state what was wrong, and that one will be

punished for his or her actions.

Many people attempted to escape the labor camps, planning to

travel to Thailand or Vietnam to take shelter at refugee camps.

Some succeeded and never looked back; a lot however, were caught

and killed on the spot.

This was the general background idea of what the Cambodian

people had endured within the four years of genocide. Each person

that survived through the genocide has their own personal story

of what they went through. My mother’s family was lucky enough to

survive the whole ordeal and come out with little that they had,

to begin a new life in a new country.

My mother and her family lived in Phnom Penh, the first city

where the Khmer Rouge took over. They heard word that the

soldiers were marching to the city and knew that they only had

two options. One was to try and escape or two was to wait for

them to arrive and see where to go from there. At the time, a lot

of the family members were not together because they were either

at work, on a trip, school, or the market so they chose option

two. My grandparents wanted to gather all the loved ones in one

place so that they would be together and know at the moment

everyone was here and that they were safe. They began to prepare

by packing and hiding their valuables. My mother was the third

oldest child and in 1975. She was only fifteen and had four

younger siblings that she had to look after as well. It became

very overwhelming because no one knew when the soldiers would

arrive and what they would do. The only important matter at the

time was that they were all together.

When the Khmer Rouge soldiers finally arrived in Phnom Penh,

one of the hardest memories that my mother and my grandparents

had was watching one of their neighbors getting beheaded right in

front of their house. The soldiers forced their way into my

grandparent’s home and told my grandfather to go out in the yard

while my grandmother, my mother, and her two older siblings were

by the window watching. My mother saw someone who she recognized

as her neighbor and who she called “uncle,” being led to an open

area in front of a crowd which my grandpa was in. She could not

make out what they were saying and was confused as to what the

soldiers wanted with her uncle. Then out of nowhere unexpectedly,

my mother saw a soldier raise an ax and strike her uncle,

beheading him. It was one of the most horrifying moments in her

life.

My mother’s family, along with hundreds of other people,

traveled with what they could carry for days which turned into

weeks to labor camps. Once they arrived, my mother’s family was

separated. My mother was told by my grandma to try and look out

for her siblings, and do anything that she was told and my mother

agreed while crying and trying to accept that she had many

responsibilities to look after her younger brothers and sisters.

My mom and her siblings were given black clothing as uniforms,

and joined other kids who were also separated from their

families. The only thing that my mother was able to concentrate

on was how to keep her and her siblings together, so she

designated a spot in the labor camp where they would try and meet

each day if they could.

With every new day in the labor camp, my mother was given a

different task that she had to complete. It was either working in

the hot sun all day harvesting grains, cleaning, or cooking with

very little food, or no food at all. Starvation was very common

in labor camps considering that the Khmer Rouge did not look at

food as a priority for them. They would only provide the bare

minimum food to the people with means of getting them to work,

and the rest was saved for themselves. When my mom could, she

would save food that was given to her for her younger siblings.

It was very hard having a big family while being in the

labor camp because it was hard to keep track of where everyone

was and how everyone was doing. The youngest sibling was only a

baby so he could not work at all. In order for him to survive, my

mother and her siblings who were old enough to watch after him

had to carry him on their backs while being strapped with a piece

of cloth. They were not given extra food for him because he did

not work. They were doing everything they could to prevent anyone

from getting “punished.”

Slowly, day by day went by, and my mother and her siblings

grew weaker but knew they had to stay strong in order to stay

alive. Eventually my mother and her siblings were reunited with

my grandfather and grandmother which was one the happiest moments

during that horrific time. My grandmother was happy to know that

each of her children was still alive and that they were doing

okay considering their living condition. During this time,

families were given the chance to reunite with each other as long

as they did what they were told and as long as nothing got in the

way of their duties. While together, my mother and her family

slowly started to plan their escape from the labor camp.

It was nightfall, and my mother and her family were together

after a long and hard day of forced labor. This was the night

that they were attempting to escape. The family had very little

with them, because the less baggage the easier it would be for

them to travel. They saved the little food they had from previous

days so that they would have it on this trip. While some of the

soldiers were sleeping or talking to others, my mother’s family

slowly escaped passed the gates of the labor camp. This started

the journey of freedom. My mother and her family only traveled at

night and slept during the day just as a precaution against

possibly getting caught. It was a long journey, but they had

finally arrived in Thailand and took shelter at the refugee

camps, where medicine, food, and water were provided. This was

what they were looking for.

The downfall of the Khmer Rouge took place four years later,

ending in 1979,after it began in 1975. There are different

“personal” options of how people viewed Vietnam’s actions. Some

say that when Vietnam entered Cambodia to take down the Khmer

Rouge, Vietnam had plans to invade Cambodia to take over. This

led to Cambodian people having a grudge towards Vietnamese

people. Others say that when Vietnam came into Cambodia, Vietnam

saved the Cambodian people from Khmer Rouge’s ruling and looked

at Vietnam as the saviors. After the Khmer Rouge downfall, Pol

Pot still had some followers up until the 1990s. In 1997, Pol Pot

was captured but a year later, died in 1998.

My mother’s family took shelter at the Thailand Refugee Camp

after escaping the Khmer Rouge, but they knew that they couldn’t

stay there forever. There was talk all around the refugee camp

that families had been given the chance to go to the United

States to start a new life with more opportunities, and that’s

what my grandparents wanted to do. My grandparents had family

friends who had escaped the Khmer Rouge before them, and had

found their way to America. With the help of their family

friends and the church, my mother and her whole family were

sponsored to the United States of Americas.

Looking at her life today, my mother would say that she has

accomplished everything that was important to her. She survived

the Khmer Rouge and helped her family survive. She came to the US

with nothing, and with the help of everyone, from her youngest

sibling to her oldest sibling, they worked their way up building

a life. They worked hard to support each other, and they still

support each other today even though everyone had their own

family to look after now. I look up to my mother and each of my

aunts and uncles knowing that they had to fight for their lives,

they survived, and they came out stronger than before.

Bibliography

Chandler, David. "THE KHMER ROUGE." Cambodia Tribunal Monitor.

07052011. Web.

24 Apr 2012.

www.cambodiatribunal.org/sites/default/files/resources/genocide_e

ducation.pdf.

Form, Wolfgang. “Justice 30 Years Later? The Cambodian Special

Tribunal For The Punishment

Of Crimes Against Humanity By The Khmer Rouge.”Nationalities Papers

37.6

(2009): 889-923. Academic Search Complete.Web. 19 Apr. 2012.

Johnson, Kay. “Will Justice Ever Be Served?” Time Europe 155.14

(2000): 76. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.

"Khmer Rouge." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition

(2011): 1. Academic Search

Complete. Web.19 Apr.2012.

“Pol Pot’s Lifeless Zombies Brainwashed Refugees From A Brutal

Regime.” Time 114.23

(1970): 55. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.

Youk, Chang. "Historical Overview of The Khmer Rouge."Cambodia

Tribunal Monitor.

JasculcaTerman and Associates, Inc., 2011.Web. 24 Apr 2012.

http://www.cambodiatribunal.org.

Background:

Greece

Classical Greek culture is extremely well known to most

Americans, modern Greek culture far less so. Greek words are

throughout the English language. Greek concepts and philosophies

play a central part in western culture. Schoolchildren are taught

about the history of ancient Athens, and popular culture works

such as the film 300 give a (very inaccurate) picture of other

Greek cities like Sparta.

Ancient Greek city-states were conquered first by Alexander

the Great, then Romans, then remained part of the Byzantine

Empire until it gave way to the Ottoman Empire. An independence

movement won out in the early nineteenth century, and successive

wars gradually won back pieces of territory from the Ottomans.

The Pontian or Pontic genocide is one of the least known

atrocities in recent history. After the Greco-Turkic War, the

Greek population in Turkey and the Turkish population in Greece

were due to be exchanged to their respective nations. Much like

the earlier Armenian genocide, Turkish nationalists decided to

ethnically cleanse a minority population.

Almost a million Greeks immigrated to the US, most of them

from 1890 to 1917. Papageorge's essay describes just such

refugees from that time.

My Family and the Pontian Greek Genocide

by William Papageorge

For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested

in my heritage. Both my mother and father are of Greek descent

and they have embedded the Greek-American culture and religion

into our family. My mother has always spoken of how her

grandparents were involved in a mass exodus from Turkey. When I

would ask her about what that meant she would always tell me that

I should speak to her Thitsa (aunt in Greek) Katherine who had

written a book on the history of our ancestors. This research

paper finally enabled me to do so and I am grateful for it. The

research paper that follows comes from the information that I

learned from interviewing Thitsa Katherine and from reading her

book.

My great-grandparents, John and Anastasia Paskalides, were

both born in 1896 in the Turkish region of Troupshi, Nikopolis in

Asia Minor. Greeks living in this area referred to it as Pontus,

an ancient Greek word for "sea.” Pontus refers to the Black Sea

and the surrounding coastal areas. The presence of Greeks in this

area dates back 2000 years before the migration of Turkish

people to the area in the 10th century AD (Psomiades 1). My

great-grandfather, John, at the age of six, tragically lost his

father in an accident while helping a relative build his mud-roof

home. In 1914, at the age of sixteen, John and Anastasia were

married. John worked as a laborer in his village and Anastasia

stayed at home and cared for her invalid mother,Semela Matengis,

and three younger brothers, Panayiotes, Michali and Christos. On

October 28, 1914, Turkey entered World War I as an ally of

Germany. This event changed the lives of my great-grandparents

forever. In 1916, at the age of eighteen, John came to the United

States in order to avoid conscription in the Turkish Army. He

planned to earn enough money to return to his wife in Troupshi,

Nikopolis after the war ended. However, one year later, all Greek

residents in the region of Nikopolis were displaced. These

victims of history had to leave behind everything that was part

of their lives in Turkey (Pavlides 1). They carried away only

their memories. My great-grandmother was one of these victims.

Asia Minor is a peninsula that forms the westernmost region

of Western Asia, comprising some parts of the modern Republic of

Turkey. It is bound by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus

and the Iranian plateau to the east, Greater Syria and Upper

Mesopotamia to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south,

the Aegean Sea to the west and the Balkan peninsula to the

northwest (Jones 150). At the outbreak of World War I, this area

was ethnically diverse, its population including Turks, Azeris,

Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Zazas, Circassians, Assyrians, Jews,

and Laz people (Jones 150). Since the beginning of the twentieth

century, the Turkish government had seriously feared losing its

power over Pontus, as it had with Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria.

This was aggravated by the fact that a great percentage of

Pontians in Turkey were made up of highly educated and successful

businessmen, who occupied a prominent position in society and

exerted considerable influence upon the Turkish economy

(Psomiades 1). Therefore “drastic measures” of extermination of

the Greek element had been planned by the Turkish government long

ago and were put into practice after 1908, when the party of

Young Turks came into power and advanced the slogan of “Turkey

for the Turks” (Jones 151). In September 1911, the participants

of the Young Turks conference in Thessalonica openly discussed

the issue of extermination of the ethnic minorities (especially

Christians) in Turkey, the most important of which were Greeks

and Armenians (Jones 151).

When World War I began in 1914, the Turkish government

decided to send Greek men to labor camps in the interior of

Turkey. These men were force to work in treacherous mountains and

ravines. They were exposed to severe weather conditions and were

not permitted much food. These conditions killed most of those

Greeks while others were able to escape to the mountains and take

up arms to protect themselves and their families. After killing

off a large part of the Greek male population, the Young Turk

leaders came up with a plan to eliminate the rest of the Greek

population including the elderly, women and children. Their plan

was to deport them to the interior of Turkey where they would be

exposed to severe weather conditions, hunger, and illness

(Pavlides 31). Over 500,000 Greeks were deported of whom

comparatively only few survived (Pavlides 31).

My great-grandmother, Anastasia, her mother, Semela, and her

three brothers, Panayiotes, Michali and Christos, were part of

this mass exodus. They were told by Turkish authorities that they

had to leave their village because the “enemy” was near and they

were near a battlefront (Pavlides 1). Anastasia learned later

that this in fact was not true. She placed her arthritic mother

on a wagon, because she could not walk, and loaded it with some

of their meager possessions and together they all began their

trek. Semela, Panayiotes, Michali and Christos all died along the

way. Anastasia buried them all on the road of their deportation.

Her youngest brother, Christos, was buried one night with the

help of an uncle, Lefterios Paskalides, who helped her dig the

hole. The following morning Christos’ young remains were found

strewn along the road. During the night, wild jackals had

discovered the body of this young boy. Anastasia witnessed all of

this.

Most of the people from Anastasia’s village died along the

way. Many were elderly and could not withstand the hardships of

the journey, like Anastasia’s mother. Others just died of

starvation, like Anastasia’s three brothers did. According to the

International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples,

between 1916 and 1923, up to 350,000 Greek Pontians were

reportedly killed in massacres, persecution and death marches

(Jones 154).

However, Anastasia and her brother-in-law George survived.

In 1920 she reached her father, Foti Matengis, in Constantinople,

Turkey, where he worked loading ships. Her father was surprised

to see her and his first words to Anastasia were, “Couldn’t you

have saved one of my sons?” (Pavlides 1). As soon as Anastasia

was able to, she called John in America. John was very happy that

his wife and brother had survived. He sent them money for their

passage to America. George was very anxious to come to America

and he had great hope for his future. Anastasia was not so sure.

In 1923, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey

resulted in a nearly all Greeks being sent to Greece, all Turks

being sent to Turkey. According to the Greek census of 1928,

1,104,216 Ottoman Greeks had reached Greece (Pavlides 75). It is

impossible to know exactly how many Greeks living in Turkey died

between 1914 and 1923, and how many Greeks were sent to Greece or

fled to Russia.

My great-grandmother, Anastasia was very fortunate. She

survived what many Greeks still call “the Turkish massacre.” She

also survived the long trip over to Ellis Island, New York, on a

ship packed with immigrants. Anastasia often spoke of people she

knew who were detained or sent back to Greece because of illness.

She also spoke of her first impressions of America as a strange

place. At Ellis Island, she was given a banana to eat. She had

never seen a banana before and tried to eat it with the peel on!

John and Anastasia settled in Jersey City, New Jersey. They

lived in a cold-water flat above a tavern. Many Pontian Greeks

settled there because it was close to Ellis Island. John worked

for Crucible Steel as a metal washer like many other immigrants

did. Life in America was difficult (especially when John gambled

away his whole salary) but they were grateful to be there. John

was able to read and write Greek and soon learned how to speak

English. Anastasia was illiterate and never learned how to speak

English. She stayed at home and soon became pregnant with her

first child.

My great-aunt Despina (keeper of this family history) was

born in 1922. She was given the name Katherine when she was

registered for school because Despina was determined to be too

difficult to pronounce by school officials. My grandmother,

Semella (Stella) was born one year later in 1923. My great-uncle

Thomas was born in 1926 and my great-uncle Christos followed in

1930. John and Anastasia stressed the importance of an education

and all of their children were encouraged to do well in school.

All of their children assimilated into the American culture

and they all graduated from high school. Katherine, Stella and

Thomas earned college and master’s degrees. The three of them

also became educators. All four children married and had

families. They too stressed the importance of education and they

also stressed the importance of maintaining our Greek culture and

religion. Their influences filtered down to my generation. That

is why I continue to embrace my Greek heritage. I also realize

that the struggles of the generations of my family that came

before me have molded me into the person I am today. It is my

hope that someday I can share this history with my children and

that they too will embrace their history and culture. I am

grateful to my great-grandparents, John and Anastasia. They

survived the Pontian genocide and came to America so that future

generations of our family could have a better life. The dream for

their family came true and I am a testament to that dream!

Bibliography

Balytnikova-Rakitianskaia, Olga. “Pontian Genocide.” Orthodoxy In

The World. 19 May 2010. Web.

http://www.pravmir.com/article_978.htm.

Halo, Thea. Not Even My Name: A True Story. New York: Pan Books

Limited, 2000. Print.

Jones, Adam, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Florence:

Routledge,Inc., 2006. Print.

Pavlides, Ioannis. Pages from the History of Pontos-Asia Minor. Trans.

Katherine Paskalides Kaliades. Thessaloniki: Historical

Publications Press, 1979. Print.

Psomiades, Dr. H.J. on May 19'h , 2006, “A Brief History of the

Pontian Greek Genocide: 1914-1923”. GENOCIDE. 19 May 2006. Web.

http://www.xenitas.net

“The Pontian Genocide 1916-1923”. Greek News. 16 May 2006. Web.

http://www.greeknewsonline.com/?p=4913.

Background:

Poland

Poland had the bad fortune to be situated between Germany,

Russia, and Austria. Any history of Poland often shows a nation

struggling to remain independent, but often winding up as divided

up among German states, Russia's Tsarist or Communist empires, or

the Austrian Empire.

After World War I, an independent Poland was formed out of

parts of the former Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian

empires. Nazi Germany invaded Poland, marking the start of World

War II. Nazi violence against Poles in this time fits the

definition of genocide. Nazi policy was to exterminate fully a

tenth of Poland's population, any Pole who could conceivably be a

center of resistance; government officials, intellectuals,

scientists, and religious and social leaders, as well as huge

numbers of Polish Jews.

The end of the war saw the nation coming under Communism,

controlled from the Soviet Union for the next four decades.

Popular resistance to Soviet control of Eastern Europe was

strongest and earliest in Poland, with the Solidarity labor

movement. Poland has remained democratic since 1989.

Most immigration to the US from Poland happened during the

period between Reconstruction and the first decades of the

twentieth century. Perhaps two and a half million Poles

immigrated to the US, and perhaps ten million Americans today are

of Polish ancestry, the strongest presence in the Northeast and

Midwest.

Klonowicz's essay is unusual in that he immigrated to the US

much later, in the 1990s. The account he gives us is of his

family's surviving both Nazi genocide though losing relatives,

and then enduring and even somewhat prospering during Soviet

occupation and repression before coming to the US.

Poland

By Arkadiusz Klonowicz

My family’s known history begins in the 1860s in what is

today central Poland. At the time Poland as a nation didn’t

exist, being torn apart by three neighboring countries. We’ll

look into Polish history for much needed background information

to show how it shaped and affected its people, history and

culture in a society where historical identity and deeply rooted

patriotism are values many people share and keep always in their

hearts.

Polish history begins in 966 AD with its King Mieszko and

his subjects being baptized by the Pope and welcomed into the

“civilized” world. Ours is a tumultuous history full of wars,

bloodshed and battles, conquests and losses, uneasy alliances,

centuries of prosperity, kings, and both good and bad and

influences from both eastern and western civilizations.

What began as a small nation in the tenth century quickly

rose to be a prominent European power that fought the Teutonic

Knights in the biggest battle of the Middle Ages, the Battle of

Grunwald in 1410. After many wars and short lived alliances with

the neighboring kingdoms of Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Austria

and Hungary, the Polish Kingdom grew to be the biggest nation in

Europe by the mid 1600s. Its vast lands spanned five times that

of modern day Poland, spanning from the Baltic Sea in the north

to the Dead Sea by today’s Turkey. In 1795, due to bad politics

and being attacked from all fronts we were broken apart by three

nations, the Kingdoms of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. They took

hold of Polish lands and its people, wanting to destroy the

Polish language, history and culture. Poland as a sovereign

nation ceased to be for 123 years, until the end of World War I.

However, the Polish people never stopped fighting to reinstate

their country having many uprisings in efforts to be whole again

and sustain its national identity.

The first trace of my family tree begins in 1867 on my

father’s side. Adam Kita was my Great-Great-Grandfather and was

born in 1867 in Ostrowka, a village located in today’s central

Poland, ninety miles south of Warsaw. It was a very remote,

isolated and small village and still is to this day.

He was born at a time when Poland as a nation ceased to be,

but Polish nationality was still alive. He and his family were

peasants who were in serfdom to the aristocrat who at the time

owned all the land, animals and entire villages by the hundreds

over a big area. But it wasn’t slavery in the American sense. My

Great-Great-Grandfather’s family and their kin never owned the

land, they had permission from the aristocrat to live there and

farm on it for life in exchange for 10-20 % of their harvest and

stock. Additionally, one day a week they had to work at the

aristocrat's fields for free. The aristocrat had some degree of

power and influence over its subjects. He could ban them from

marriage, ban religious practices, and could prevent children

going to school. Farmers could not leave the aristocrat; they

were bound to him and his land. There was a lot of tension

between farmers and their lords. In the late 1870s there was a

revolution similar to the French Revolution and manumission took

place (also known as Enfranchisement of the Peasants). At that

point, peasants were free to leave the land and move to towns, or

they could stay and pay rent on the land and slowly buy it to

own. Adam Kita and his family picked the latter. They stayed.

Over time Kita married a girl from the same village, Anna

Bak, from a few houses down (a very common practice back then)

and had five children; three sons and two daughters. One of his

sons, Jan Kita, was my Great-Grandfather. He and his family

worked a hard, relatively uneventful life. However they worked

hard enough to finally buy the land the family still owns to this

day. Adam Kita died in 1917 from unknown causes, in the same

house he was born in. He died a free man, owning his own house

and land; the first one in the Kita family.

Jan Kita, my Great-Grandfather, was born in 1892. He only

had four years of education and spent most of his life being a

farmer with his father Adam and four siblings. He was the oldest

son. He married Bronislawa Hernik (1894-1952) who lived in the

same village. It was an arranged marriage by their parents. She

bore him one daughter Celina and three sons: Kazimierz,

Mieczyslaw and Tadeusz, who is my Grandfather, born in 1926. By

the time Jan had his children, he became head of the household,

being the oldest. Even though he owned the land they all worked,

there wasn’t that much land to use and sustain everybody. They

lived in extreme poverty. Three families lived in one small

wooden house with a straw roof that only had two rooms with a

dirt floor and a kitchen. They had no plumbing or electricity and

there were no beds in the house. People slept on mats or hay

stacks that they brought in from the stable at night and then

would put them back during daytime.

There were several famines in the early 1900s that prevented

crops from growing and then in 1914 World War I began and life

became even more unbearable. One of Jan’s brothers left to fight

the Germans, never to return. One of his sisters was kidnapped by

soldiers, not to be seen again. Passing troops would take

whatever food they had by force, leaving three families at the

brink of starvation. There were stories told that they would make

a kind of a soup with just water, some chunks of potato, some

weeds and a piece of leather (from a shoe or a piece of

clothing). Perhaps they could manage some bread or some wood

berries and that would be their meal for the day and this went on

for months. Everybody was weak, sick and desperate. In 1917

another of Jan’s sisters died from a sickness caused by

malnutrition. Their plight was a common sight in that part of

Poland during those terrible years. Many people, especially in

villages, died due to bad seasons and demands of the war.

At the end of the First World War in 1918, Poland finally

got a chance to be a nation again due to the collapse of three

warring empires. Even though Poland received only a small portion

of their previous lands, Poles were happy that we got our

independence back, after 123 years of struggles and failed

uprisings. The new Polish government went swiftly to work,

establishing all the necessary departments; a Senate, judicial

system, currency and official language. Those years after the war

had promising beginnings towards lifting ourselves up from the

destruction of war.

The first mention of my father’s mother’s side of the family

begins in 1895 when my Grandmother’s father, Antoni Koziel was

born in the village of Modrzejowice, 100 miles south of Warsaw,

about ten miles away from my Great-Grandfather’s village.

Modrzejowice was a bigger village that was closer to Radom, the

closest town. It was also closer to main trade routes. Antoni was

the oldest of seven children and he got his land very much the

same way as Jan did. His family bought it from the aristocrat the

generation before. They had more land, however and were more

industrious people. Antoni went on to fight in the war when he

was twenty years old, managed to survive and come back to

Modrzejowice to return to farm life. He never spoke much of the

war, doing his best to forget about it. We do know that he was

defending a few small outposts and food supply routes from the

Germans. In 1927 he married Maria Wyszolowska and they had two

children, Jan and Irena, my Grandmother.

What was salvaged and rebuilt after World War One, the

Second World War took away with increased viciousness and zeal.

Everybody was surprised by it and everybody was affected by it.

To be the first nation, still so young and fragile to feel the

full force and wrath of the Nazis was devastating to all aspects

of life. Hundreds of thousands of brave young Polish men and

women went to defend their nation. Unfortunately the Nazi wave of

hatred was too much for them to take. Poland was taken over, our

government was exiled or in hiding, the nation torn apart anew,

and its capital city Warsaw bombarded and turned into a prison

camp. Our western European allies refused to honor our treaties,

leaving us alone in our plight.

During Second World War my Great-Grandfather Antoni was

secretly supplying the resistance and Polish guerilla fighters.

He managed to support them by providing shelter, food, clothes,

passage through forests and carrying mail. In 1944 he got

discovered by the Gestapo and they came to pick him up. Luckily

he was warned beforehand and had to run away. He spent seven

months in hiding in forests around Modrzejowice. His wife had to

bring him food and clothes. When the Germans were finally driven

out by the Soviets on January 17, 1945 he was able to safely

return home. Before the Germans left, they set the village on

fire trying to destroy it. About 60 % of households were burned

down to the ground, people left homeless and starving. My

family’s household sustained minor damage and after the war

Antoni and his family took in a couple of families until they got

their homes rebuilt. The entire village helped to build new

houses, church, school. In instances like these one has to

believe in the goodness of people's hearts, despite the cruelty

of our enemies.

My mother’s side of our family history begins in 1928 with

the birth of my Grandmother, Marianna Korba. There is not much

known about my mom’s side of family before then, because during

WW II most records were destroyed and the children were too small

to remember their history. We do know that when the revolution

took place in 1878 they all left whatever village they came from

and moved to the town of Radom and became factory workers. My

Grandmother was the third oldest of six sisters and one brother.

In 1944, her brother Jan Korba got caught by the Gestapo and was

sent to Auschwitz for conspiring with the resistance. He didn’t

survive the infamous death camp.

Marianna was only eleven years old when World War II began.

She remembers moving from one part of Radom to another, where she

lived out her life until her death in 2006 due to lung cancer;

she smoked heavily her entire adult life. Her life during the war

was one of constant fear and hunger; the entire family had to

scavenge for food and lived in a shack with one big room, an

improvised kitchen and an outhouse. My Grandmother received

marginal education due to the war. She barely could read and

write due to not finishing elementary school. She worked in a

plastics factory her entire life until she retired. She lived her

entire life with her older sister, Jadwiga, who was my great-aunt

and like a third grandma to me. Jadwiga worked in chemical

factory making glue and petroleum products that caused her to

have throat cancer. She never married nor had kids. She died in

1999.

The results of war never change. It always affects most

those who do not wish for it, everyday common people who don’t

take a side or fight in the battles are hurt the most by it. My

family’s war history isn’t in any way different or unique from so

many other stories that our fellow Poles could describe. Poland

sustained the greatest damage of any nation that took part in

World War II, and those scars of the past are still visible

today.

After the war was over and Poland was once again a nation;

albeit with different borders and much smaller territory, people

tried to rebuild what they could. During late 1940s and early

50s, many people went to towns to work jobs that were vacated by

those who died or got displaced. Entire villages were empty and

it was common for an entire village of a few hundred people to

simply pack up what little they owned sold what they couldn’t

carry and move to town. Even Modrzejowice lost about 30 % of its

people with numerous homes sitting empty.

My father’s mother Irena Koziel was born in Modrzejowice in

1931, she was two years younger from her brother, Jan. They both

received only four years of elementary education that was

interrupted by the Second World War. They were too young to

remember much of the war. After the war Jan moved away to Radom

to work in the city, he married and remained in it. My

Grandmother met my Tadeusz, my Grandfather, at a family event.

They dated for a few years and got married in 1954, she was

twenty four and Tadeusz was twenty seven years old. Since Jan

left the farm and there was no man to run it, my Grandfather

moved in to my Grandma’s home and took over as the head of the

household. When he moved in, the farm had only a house, a barn

and some land behind the barn. Through hard work and good

business sense, my Grandfather built stables, storage units,

animal houses, a garage and a summer kitchen. He also purchased

parts of a forest and more land from neighbors and elsewhere, in

effect more than quadrupling the amount of land they had. At that

point the family was self-sufficient in producing food to eat and

they actually had enough to trade and sell. After 1957, the

family was never hungry again. On top of working on his land, my

Grandfather worked in a factory as a mechanic to provide extra

income and money for investments. My Grandmother was always at

the farm working each and every day taking care of animals and

the gardens, crops etc.

Electricity finally made it to the village in 1955 and my

family was the first to have a Russian black and white TV in

1968. Irena and Tadeusz had four children: the oldest Jurek, born

in 1956, the second son, Zbyszek in 1958, my father Grzegorz on

January 3, 1959 and their daughter Urszula, born in 1962. My

Grandmother died in 1998 due to stomach cancer, my Grandfather is

still alive.

My maternal Grandmother had two children out of wedlock, my

uncle Waldek, born in 1959 and Elzbieta Korba, my mother, born on

June 11, 1961. Their father, Janek, my Grandfather, was killed in

a car accident before they married, in 1960, not even realizing

he had a daughter on the way. My mother and her brother grew up

fatherless and in extreme poverty, at some point being raised in

an orphanage for four years when she was eight years old.

Marianna couldn’t support herself and her two children at the

time but was able to regain custody of her kids when she was

finally able to get a job that could support them. Despite all

those difficulties, my mother finished high school, first one in

the family.

In 1952, Stalin wanted Poland to become Communist and join

the Soviet Union as one of its dependent republics, just like

Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine and many other nations had done. He

failed to convince the Polish leaders to do so but because of the

presence of the Red Army soldiers in Poland, Stalin was able to

establish a Communist government with the Red Party and a

politburo in Poland, which was completely dependent on Moscow,

making Poland a “satellite state,” as Stalin liked to call it.

Even though Poland retained an independent government it was

nicknamed a “puppet government” due to its inability to make any

sovereign choices. In effect, Communism, propaganda with its

brainwashing and spies permeated into Polish society, affecting

it both culturally and especially economically. There was a lot

of tension between the Polish people and the Red Party Russians.

There were many Polish people arrested, lots of strikes, protests

and censorship to try and keep things quiet. Those were the times

that my parents grew up in and times that people still remember.

The years when Poland was under Russian influence was bitter

sweet, depending on who you ask. Those who lived in towns and

were resisting Communism faced repercussions. They couldn’t find

good jobs and were constantly being spied on. Those who caved in

and joined the Communist Party had a good life with well-paying

jobs, better homes, but then they were shunned from Polish

society and forever labeled as Communists. My family had no

political ties and by living in a village they were left alone,

all they had to do is to farm and provide food to the towns. They

had to work the government land from time to time as part of the

collective but for them socialism was good, they were getting

paid for their food and my Grandfather worked as a mechanic in a

factory. He was able to expand his land holdings, buildings and

he built two additional homes, one for his son and one for his

daughter in the city. Both of these homes were paid for and

built by my grandfather. That’s an amazing achievement for a

person in Poland during those difficult times and we all admire

him for that.

My father lived in Modrzejowice until he finished high

school in 1977. After high school he went to the Silesia region,

300 miles south, to work in a coal factory as a driver for two

years; that was his alternative for not going to the Army. There

was a mandatory draft at the age of eighteen until 2005, with few

options not to do it; working in factories and plants was one of

the alternatives. He was the first one in the family to own a car

and he moved to Radom, where he became a taxi driver for few

years.

He met my mother on one of his runs. They began dating and

in 1983 they got married. I was born in Radom on June 10, 1983

and my sister Aneta was born April 23, 1985. At first we lived in

an old, small apartment in downtown Radom. When I was two years

old we moved to a communal apartment in a classic grey Communist

building, a staple and memento to Communism as all the buildings

looked the same. We lived there until I was fourteen years old.

Then our family moved to a single family home in the suburbs as

my father had many prosperous businesses in the years after the

fall of Communism in 1989; between 1992 to 1999. My father opened

up a few grocery stores and a bar that were quite profitable at

first. My mother stayed home and took care of us kids. I went to

high school in Radom, and in 2001 when I was eighteen years old I

decided to come to the USA.

On August 15, 2009 I married my American fiancee, Melissa in

a beautiful and traditional Catholic, Polish wedding ceremony in

Radom, where I grew up. We honeymooned in Krakow and then

returned to America where we are making our home together in

Ashburn, Virginia while I am finishing college. My sister decided

to remain in Poland and stay close to the family. She finished

college and has no plans to leave Poland. I am the only one from

my entire family to have ever left Poland and marry someone who

is not Polish. We’ve all been 100 % pure Polish, as far back as

we could trace.

Bibliography:

“Wyszukiwanie Osob

Represjonowanych,”www.straty.pl/index.php/szukaj-w-bazie

“A Brief History of

Poland,”http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/history/index.html

“Historia,” http://www.radom.pl/page/155,historia.html

Background:

Rwanda

Rwanda is a nation known almost entirely to Americans

because of the horrific genocide that took place. Located in

central east Africa, the three main groups are Hutu, Tutsi, and

Twa. Some argue the groups are tribes, others that they are

social castes or classes.

Germany conquered Rwanda in 1884. In 1914, Belgian troops

overthrew the Germans, making it their colony. Where German rule

did not alter the society much, Belgian rule set up a strict

separation. Mixing between Hutu and Tutsi was forbidden, and

Tutsi power over the Hutu was promoted because Belgian scientific

racists believed Tutsi were racially superior due to lighter skin

and more European-like features.

In 1959, the Rwandan Revolution included the killings of

many Tutsi by Hutus seeking independence. Tutsi militia

retaliated, marking the start of a cycle of retribution. In 1990,

a Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, began the

Rwandan Civil War. Neither the RPF nor the government were able

to win the war, forcing both into a ceasefire in 1993. Many Hutu,

especially the militia Interahamwe, strongly objected.

When the Rwandan president was killed by a missile attack on

his plane, the new government and Interahamwe began the Rwandan

Genocide, killing between a half a million and one million Tutsi,

Twa, and Hutu in 100 days. None of the major world powers did

anything to stop it. The United States under President Bill

Clinton was reluctant to step in because of the recent loss of

several dozen American soldiers in Somalia. (In 1998 during a

state visit, Clinton publicly apologized for US inaction during

the genocide.) France in particular played a leading role in the

supporting the genocide, since French business interests were

supplying those carrying out the atrocities.

The RPF launched an offensive that overthrew the government,

ending the Rwandan Genocide. Many Hutu fled the country to

neighboring Congo. The instability in turn led to the overthrow

of the Congolese government. In Rwanda, a reconciliation effort

began, with some war criminals prosecuted for genocide.

Reconciliation led to a remarkable turnaround for the nation.

Rwanda today is one of the least corrupt nations in all of

Africa, with one of the strongest rules of law.

Nearly all Rwandans immigrating to the US likely have done

so very recently, but finding information on Rwandan immigrants

is difficult. Kayitesi's essay tells us much about the lives of

Rwandan women, as well as her family's losses to the genocide.

Family History

By Marie Claire Kayitesi

In the past, women were traditionally assigned specific

tasks inside the household property, and were rarely allowed by

the society to stay outside. This situation was widespread in

many traditional societies around the world, including in my

country, Rwanda. In traditional Rwanda, women held power in their

homes and were primarily responsible for household work, care of

the children, and home order and organization, while men were the

bread winners, working outside their homes. By being limited to

indoor activities, my Grandmother was taught to do household

chores at an early age like all Rwandan girls. This made my

Grandmother as well as other Rwandan women depend on males

financially. When my Grandmother lost her husband during the

Rwanda genocide in 1994, it became very difficult for Grandmother

to live, as the only family breadwinner was no longer there.

During her early age, my Grandmother went to school and

learned how to read and write; this was sufficient for

Grandmother as a woman since, at that time, the most important

thing for women was to learn how to do household work to be able

to manage their homes in the future. According to my Grandmother,

household chores learned and done by all women included cooking,

cleaning the house, taking care of children, and managing the

household. These were Grandmother’s activities at her young age

and after getting married. According to Grandmother, when modern

schools were introduced to Rwanda by European Colonizers, only

boys were initially sent to schools, especially high schools and

colleges. But a few decades later, traditional Rwanda started

changing, and some parents realized that attending high school or

college was not for only boys. For instance, Grandmother told me

that by the time my mother was about to go to school, women were

expected to attend high school but not colleges or universities.

In “Tragedy for Women in Rwanda,” Human Rights Watch Rights

Advocacy Group found that “Women, as a rule, received very little

education in pre-genocide Rwanda. Girls made up 45% of primary

school students, but by secondary school, boys outnumbered girls

by nine to one. By the university level, that disparity had grown

to fifteen to one.” (Human Rights Watch Advocacy Group)

Grandmother remembers that, in 1940s, Rwanda was a monarchy

and was under the rule of a king named Rudahigwa, and at that

time, Rwanda was colonized by Europeans, first by Germans, then

by Belgians after World War I. According to Grandmother, Rwanda

was inhabited by three ethnic groups: the Tutsi, the Hutu, and

the Twa, and the King came from the Tutsi group. These three

ethnic groups were not distinguishable tribes with different

cultures and customs. Instead, they had developed a single and

highly sophisticated language, Kinyarwanda, crafted a common set

of religious and philosophical beliefs, and created a culture

which valued song, dance, poetry, and rhetoric. However, these

ethnic groups were different physically and Europeans colonizers

used these ethnic’s characteristics to produce a theory of ethnic

superiority between the Tutsi, the Hutu, and the Twa. According

to a study made by Washington College of Law students Sarah

Hymowitz and Amelia Parker, “The colonists created a strict

system of racial classification. Both the Belgians and the

Germans, influenced by racist ideas, thought that the Tutsi were

a superior group because they were more “white” looking”

(Hymowitz and Parker).

As the time went by, Rwanda had changes in many aspects.

Grandmother remembers the time that Rwanda got its independence

in early 1960s. At that time, women’s activities started

changing. Girls were no longer staying home; instead, women could

attend colleges and universities and work outside of their homes,

but not as many as the men. Grandmother kept in mind that, in

1959, there was violence between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic

groups, which caused some of Grandmother’s relatives to die and

others to flee the country and go to neighboring countries. This

was painful for Grandmother.

Since then, the Hutu ethnic group took control of the

government from the Tutsi ethnic group, and discrimination

against the Tutsi group started. In The History Place, the author

said that, “Following independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu

majority seized power and reversed the roles, oppressing the

Tutsis through systematic discrimination and acts of violence. As

a result, over 200,000 Tutsis fled to neighboring countries and

formed a rebel guerrilla army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front”.(The

History Place)

Grandmother told me that, in late 1970s, a lot of

transformations started happening regarding attitudes towards

women. For instance, women could give speeches and provide their

opinion in public gatherings, which was not the case before.

Also, a limited number of women who attended colleges or

universities could have lucrative jobs, while others could have

jobs in the informal sector, for example as sellers in markets.

Grandmother told me also that change in women's fashion happened

at that time, with the appearance of the first pants for women in

the country. According to Grandmother, the first women to wear

pants were laughed at and considered by the society as rebels and

against the national culture. Moreover, by 1990s, a few women

could drive cars. My Grandmother told me that, even though women

have made some gains, many married women could not attend

colleges or universities, as was the case for my own mother.

Grandmother also told me how hard it was to live without her

siblings since most of them had fled the country in 1960s. She

informed me that when her siblings and other refugees wanted to

come back to Rwanda, the government rejected that request, saying

that the country was too small to receive an additional

population made of Rwandan refugees. On October 1, 1990 Rwandan

exiles banded together as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and

invaded Rwanda from their base in Uganda. The rebel force,

composed primarily of ethnic Tutsi, blamed the government for

failing to democratize and resolve the problems of some 500 000

Tutsi refugees living around the world. That time, the government

used that war and put many of Tutsi in prison and some of Tutsi

got killed. With international pressure, a peace accord was

signed in 1993 but was not supported by some hardliners on the

government side.

On April 6, 1994 the airplane carrying the President of

Rwanda was shot down as it prepared to land at Kigali Airport,

Rwanda. The president was killed. As though the shooting down was

a signal, military and militia groups began rounding up and

killing all Tutsis and political moderates regardless of their

ethnic background. In this genocide that happened for almost one

hundred days, more than one million Tutsi were killed, including

many of my Grandmother’s relatives. The Tutsi tried to find

refuge in various places within the country, but the perpetrators

found and killed them. Donatella Lorch in Heart of Rwanda’s

Darkness: Slaughter at a Rural Church said that “It appears that

they were methodically hunted down, first in the church, then in

the school and finally in the workshops near the soccer field.

Residents say that probably 1,000 more were killed and buried in

mass graves in the town, which is just inside the border with

Tanzania”(Lorch)

The Rwandan Genocide left many orphans and widows including

my Grandmother. While many women and young women were massacred

along with their husbands and siblings, the perpetrators often

spared women and their daughters from death, instead sentencing

them to rape and humiliation. According to Tina Rosenberg in

Editorial Observer; New Punishment for an Ancient War Crime, “The

United Nations estimated that at least a quarter-million women

were raped in Rwanda”.(Rosenberg)

After the Genocide, it was very hard to Grandmother as well

as for many widows and young children who had to manage their

lives and to depend on themselves without any help. In the Impact

of Rwanda Genocide on Gender Identity, the author showed that,

“As a consequence of the genocide, there was a large number of

households which came to be led by women and children. It was not

uncommon to find a ten year old child taking care of her/his

siblings. Both children and women became the major providers or

breadwinners of their families, something that was previously the

role of men.”(Mukankusi)

My family history is interlinked with the political and

social transformation of Rwanda. On the one hand, the

colonization of my country had an impact on girls’ education that

had brought a radical change of the place of girls and women in

the society. On the other hand, political change that occurred at

the end of the colonization and its consequences had a very

negative impact on my family, separating family members and

spreading them all over the world, and causing the loss of lives

of many of those who have stayed in Rwanda during the Genocide.

Bibliography:

Grandmother Interview

The History Place,

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/rwanda.htm

Human Rights Advocacy Group,

http://clg.portalxm.com/library/keytext.cfm?keytext_id=129

Hymowitz, Sarah, and Parker, Amelia, “Group One: The Hutus and

the Tutsis,”

http://www.wcl.american.edu/humright/center/rwanda/jigsaw1.pdf?

rd=1

Lorch, Donatella, “Heart of Rwanda's Darkness: Slaughter at a

Rural Church,” June 3, 1994,

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/03/world/heart-of-rwanda-s-

darkness-slaughter-at-a-rural-church.html

Mukankusi, Caritas Stella, “The impact of the Rwandan genocide on

gender identity,” February 2005,

http://www.irenees.net/fr/fiches/experience/fiche-experience-

650.html

Rosenberg, Tina, New Punishment for an Ancient War Crime, April

5, 1998,

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/05/opinion/editorial-observer-new-

punishment-for-an-ancient-war-crime.html

Part Four:

American Indian Stories

American Indians have gone through all three of the previous

sets of tragedies, wars, colonialism, and genocide. In gathering

these students' stories it became obvious that an entire separate

category needed to be set aside.

More than a few people in northern Virginia were surprised

to find out there is still an American Indian presence here.

Teaching both American Indian and Latin American history, and

being of both backgrounds, Native students often seek out my

courses, as do those who have family accounts of Native ancestry

they want to pursue. But most of the Native students, Native

students in northern Virginia and, eventually, Natives in the

United States, are increasingly Latin American, Latino as well as

Native.

Genocide (what is often euphemistically called “Indian

wars,” thus blaming the victims) officially came to an end in

1890 with the Wounded Knee massacre. In Virginia, American

Indians were officially declared nonexistent in the state, with

all Indians reclassified as colored. The eight surviving state

recognized tribes grew in numbers to perhaps 8,000. But these

still small numbers are not nearly as fast growing as Latin

American Indians.

Finding reliable figures on the latter is very difficult. In

Latin America, Natives are often taught to be ashamed of their

heritage. “Indio” can be an epithet, denoting stupidity or

naivete. Long episodes of violence can actually make it dangerous

to admit to being indigenous. The Census Bureau did not even

collect data on Latin American Indians who were “immigrants” to

the US until the 2010 census. But one of the clearest signs of

the explosive growth in the local Latin American Indian

population is the enormous cultural festivals for Bolivians and

Peruvians, made up of half or more indigenous dances and music,

done by clearly proud and resilient Bolivian and Peruvian

indigenas.

Since the physical portion of genocide is three generations

past or more, it is not surprising none of the essays here focus

on it, just as a Jewish student writing on their grandmother

would not write mostly on pogroms in the nineteenth century. All

of the students' essays in this section instead have concerns

focused on holding on to culture and heritage in the face of

assimilation.

Background:

Navajo Nation

The Navajo people were once part of Athapascans or

Athabascans. Athapascan origins were in what is today Alaska and

the Yukon and Northern Territories in Canada. Perhaps 2,000 years

ago, according to both archeology and Native oral traditions,

some Athapascans broke away from their northern cousins,

migrating south. Some went to the Pacific coast, becoming the

Hoopa tribe. But most went to the southwest, becoming the Apache

and Navajo.

The Navajo or Dineh, settled in what is Dinetah, the Dineh

homeland, the land between the four sacred mountains. At some

point the Apache and Navajo split and became two separate

peoples, though Apache, Navajo, Hoopa, and Athapascan all have

similar cultures, languages, traditions, and religions.

Spaniards brought horses and what would become very

important to the Navajo economy and diet, sheep. Spaniards and

Mexicans never successfully conquered the Navajo nation, but a

very brutal campaign by the United States did. During the Civil

War, Kit Carson carried out a scorched earth campaign, then

rounded up Dineh people and forcibly removed them hundreds of

miles away in what Navajo call the Long Walk. Years of petition

saw them returned to their homeland and the expansion of the

reservation to become the largest in America. Today the Navajo

number over 300,000, the largest tribe in the country. Almost

half Navajo are today urban Indians, living off reservation,

mostly in big cities.

Chevarillo's essay discusses one of the most central parts

of Navajo tradition, weaving, and its importance to her family.

The Navajo Weaver

By Brenda Chevarillo

My grandmother, Nina A. Atencio was a Navajo weaver. She

was very influential in my life. I learned so much from her.

She was born on October, 13, 1921. She was born in Kimbeto, New

Mexico. She lived her entire life in Kimbeto, New Mexico. She

died on September 1, 2005. Unfortunately, she didn’t pass away

in her own home, instead at the nursing home she was staying

until she got better. Her clan was T2zhii Dine’e meaning Turkey

People and Kinyaa’nii meaning Towering House People.

She attended boarding school in Ignacio, Colorado until the

age of nine years old. Her parents needed her help when she was a

young girl in helping to raise her little brothers and sisters.

Ever since she was a child she always took care of her brothers

and sisters. It was very important to her to keep her family

close and make sure they were all doing well. As a child, my

grandmother learned how to cook, sew, and butcher sheep.

She learned the tradition of weaving Navajo rugs when she

was a young girl. She had always supported herself and her family

by selling her Navajo rugs. She didn’t believe in receiving help

from the state, as it is referred to, as welfare.

I can remember when I was about six years old I would go

home with my grandmother for the summer. As soon as I would get

out of the truck onto her land I wanted to go home. I never did

go home. I stuck it out for the entire summer. In that time, I

learned how to herd sheep, take care of the sheep, plant

vegetables, and ride horses. My grandmother and I would take

walks. We would both have our long walking sticks in hand this

sticks were for digging up roots of plants and flowers that my

grandmother would use to dye the wool for her rugs.

My grandmother made her Navajo rugs from the very beginning.

She used her own sheep’s wool. She would shear the sheep, wash

the wool to the point that it was as white as the clouds. Then

she would form it into spools of wool. After, all of that she

would then dye the wool with the roots she and I picked from our

walk. We would also set up her loom. It was portable, sometimes

we would find a tree and set up underneath it and enjoy the cool

breeze. Other times we would put it in her house when it would be

raining and thundering. Her radio would always be playing her

Navajo Bible hymns.

I will never forget this time in my life. At times my

grandmother would finish weaving rugs in just a matter of weeks.

If the rugs had lots of detail and the designs were so

complicated it would take her longer.

I remember the times when I would go with my grandmother to

sell her rugs and how the trading post owners would measure the

rug by folding the rug in half and then into another half to see

if the corners of the rug would align up together to see if it

was straight. This was the point to see how much the rug was

worth or how much they were willing to pay for it. My grandmother

would argue back and forth to get the best price for her rugs.

Many times the trading post owners got the better deal. As I got

older in my teens I would get so mad when I would see the trading

post owners continue to get the better deal.

My grandmother did beautiful work. All the rugs she ever

wove were straight. The way to tell if it’s my grandmothers’ rug

was by the line she would make on the very last row of the

design. The line would go straight across to the edge of the rug.

She explained to me when I once told her, “Grandma, you messed

up!” when I noticed the line in the rug.

My grandmother always wanted me to learn how to weave and

speak Navajo. I never learned and now it makes me mad at myself

for not learning these very important traditions of the Navajo

people. My grandmother also taught classes on weaving Navajo rugs

at the Salmon Ruins in Bloomfield, New Mexico and at the Aztec

Ruins in Aztec, New Mexico. These classes were usually held in

the summer when the tourist season was good. She was also a

foster grandparent to the Navajo children in her community. She

would teach weaving to the children at Dzit na odith le School in

Blanco, New Mexico. She did this for many years. My grandmother

always enjoyed teaching others the art of weaving.

My grandmother taught me good lessons of life. Her

traditions, beliefs, and values will always be carried out to the

next generation. I’m very proud for having my Navajo background

because if I didn’t have my background I wouldn’t know who I am

and where I came from.

Background:

Pawnee Nation

The Pawnee are a southern Plains tribe, sedentary farmers

with a homeland in what is today part of South Dakota, Kansas,

and Nebraska. Unlike many other Plains tribes, the Pawnee largely

avoided warfare with the US. Pawnee were Indian Scouts for the US

Army, particularly allied against their traditional enemies the

Lakota. At one point the Pawnee comprised an entire army

battalion, some of the earliest American Indian veterans. Despite

this service to the US, Pawnee were forced onto a reservation in

Oklahoma like many other tribes, and in 1906 the US government

ended Pawnee tribal governing. Tribal government was

reestablished, as it was for most Indian tribes, with Franklin

Roosevelt’s New Deal for Indians.

The Gover family is well known within Indian Country.

Carlton's cousin Kevin was formerly Assistant Secretary for

Indian Affairs.

Rebuilding a Lost Connection

By Carlton Gover AKA Carlton Shield Chief

La-Wa-Te-Ah-Ku, Lak-Ta-Chu-Le-Shaadu

“He also gives” “Shield Chief”

As generations of my family come and go since our tribe’s

relocation and assimilation, connections to our ancestral

heritage are being severed. As the problem has been recognized by

elder members of my family, ideas of ways to stop the severing of

our family’s roots to the past have become a prominent debate in

our lives. One idea that has taken up substantial support in my

family is reclaiming the connection by adopting our ancestral

family name in place of the one that has been given by the United

States Government. By changing our last name of Gover to our

ancestral name of Shield Chief, my family hopes for a continued

connection for future generations to the roots that we came from.

Pawnee naming is very much different from the Western notion

of naming. Pawnee peoples would change their names in reflection

of a deed that they had committed. Pawnee Scouts, for instance,

would change their names whilst they were in the service because

of a deed they had done in the service. So a man might have left

the tribe to be a scout with the name of “Big Spotted Horse” and

returned as “Sioux Killer” because he had changed his name when

he had killed Sioux Warriors during a battle or raid. Also a name

might be given to someone because another member of the tribe had

done something. My Grandfather had such a name when he was young.

My Great Grandfather had given a horse to a Pawnee Ceremony that

was being held and thus was given the name, “Gives a horse to the

Ceremony.” My Grandfather then was given the name,“He also gives”

because when his father had given a horse to the ceremony, my

Grandfather had also given something to the ceremony as well.

Names given to a member of the tribe can be an addition to

another name such as the instance of my Great Grandfather and my

Grandfather.

The meaning of our family name of Shield Chief is very much

clouded by mistranslation. The word “chief” isn’t a Pawnee word

or thought; it’s a western cultural one. Our name “Lak-Ta-Chu-Le-

Shaadu” is closer in meaning to “leader who protects his people”

rather than Shield Chief. Therefore, family members who receive

the name of Shield Chief as their Pawnee name are considered to

be leaders of our community who have done something noble or

honorable. Two examples of family who have received this name in

contemporary times, is my Grandfather, Philip Gover, and my

cousin Kevin Gover. My Grandfather received the name of Shield

Chief upon his return home from World War Two as a senior non-

commissioned officer of the Oklahoma National Guard. He was given

the opportunity to accept a field commission that would have made

him a Lieutenant, but the commission would have also reassigned

him to a different unit. Because my Grandfather wanted to ensure

that his men would come home safe, he turned down the commission.

He was given the name Shield Chief to reflect his leadership

abilities and his accomplishments. My cousin Kevin Gover was

given the name when he was appointed the Assistant Secretary of

the Interior for Indian Affairs in 1997. He too was given the

name as a sign of his leadership abilities and accomplishments in

life.

The reason behind my family’s current last name of “Gover”

dates back to the late 1800s when the Pawnee Tribe of the Platte

River was placed on the reservation of Oklahoma. When the United

States was cataloging the Pawnee, they came across a Great

Grandmother of mine. She was married to a Frenchman at the time

that had the last name of Gover. (It is important to note that

did not have children together.) Therefore, instead of giving her

children the English translation of Lak-Ta-Chu-Le-Shaadu, the BIA

agent decided to give my ancestors the last name of Gover because

their mother’s current marriage. Thus, my family is currently

carrying on the last name of a step-parent of our ancestor, and

not a name in which we can claim as our own. Due to this, several

members of my family wish to have our last name changed to Shield

Chief because they do not feel a legitimate connection to our

contemporary name of Gover.

As my family is having children with lesser amounts of

Pawnee blood in each generation, a form of dismay has swept over

some of my family. My family does not wish to end up like many

other peoples with Native descent who have lost their connection

to their aboriginal origins. In response to this, several members

of my family wish to have our last name changed from Gover to

Shield Chief on a family wide scale. They believe that even

though the culture itself may be lost upon future generations,

who don’t see themselves as being Pawnee, the name Shield Chief

will survive to always be a reminder of where they came from.

Some members of my family have already taken steps to getting

used to having the last name of Shield Chief by putting it as

part of their name on the popular social networking site of

Facebook. This may seem a petty act, but actually it shows how

my family is grasping for that connection back to our ancestors

in the Pawnee Tribe. It’s a major first step as identifying

ourselves as Shield Chiefs instead of seeing ourselves as being

Govers.

Not only is my family considering changing our last name to

one that we can better associate ourselves with, but other Indian

families have already done so. A very important figure in modern

day Arapaho culture has changed his last name from “Smith” to

“Ota” for the same reasons as my family feels like we should

change our name. He could not identify with the last name that

was given to him by the United States Government, so he took the

necessary steps for him and his family to change their names back

to their own family name of Ota. This sense of belonging and

connecting to our aboriginal roots isn’t just being felt through

my family, but many other native peoples. It is becoming that

time where fewer and fewer pure native peoples are being born,

and more mixed blood Americans, such as myself, are becoming the

Native populace's majority.

Personally, my thoughts of the name change would be a

reflection of who I am. I believe carrying the name would set me

to a higher standard. It would be a constant reminder of who I am

as an individual, and as an American of Pawnee decent. Therefore

I would have to carry myself as such and not give in to the

stereotypes that many perceive Natives as being. It would remind

me not to give in to alcoholism and other such delinquent acts

that would dishonor my family if I were to partake in such acts.

I don’t recognize myself as a Gover, but as a Shield Chief and

thus wish to relay that to others with the name change. I am only

one-quarter Skidi Pawnee, but that does not mean I must dismiss

that heritage because I am majority Caucasian. Being Pawnee is

something I am very proud of and very close too, and I would like

my children and my children’s children to be proud of that too.

This name change would be a reminder to my descendants that they

came from a proud people who had an impact upon the country in

which they live in. My ancestor signed the treaty with the Grande

band of the Pawnees with the United States government; his name

was “Chief of the Shield” or Shield Chief. I don’t want my

descendants to forget that. So I am not simply wanting this name

change for myself, but for my future relatives to have some pride

as to who they are.

In order to not forget who we are as a family we must hold

on desperately to what we have left as a Native people. By re-

adopting the name of Shield Chief, the continued existence of a

culture and people we belong to will not fade with the passing of

time. Having the name change benefits the family as a whole, our

family belonged to a proud group of people who had an exquisite

culture. Losing sight of that past makes us blind as to who we

are and what we had been.

Bibliography

Gover, Kevin.(Shield Chief, Skidi Pawnee) “What the name means to

me” American Indian Museum, Washington D.C. 21 Sept. 2011

Gover, George.(Hard to be a chief with so many to lead, Skidi

Pawnee) “Where the name came from, how we got our name” Salt Lake

City Utah. 23 Sept. 2011

Gover, Reva.(Star, Skidi Pawnee/Tohono O’odham) “Why we should

change our name back” Tuscon Arizona. 22 Sept 2011

Ota, Harold.(Shoshone/Arapaho) “Why I changed my name” Ethete

Wyoming. 24 Sept 2011

“Treaty of 1818,”

www.firstpeople.us/FPHtml.Treaties/TreatyWithTheGrandePawnee1818.

html

Background:

Bolivia and the Quechua Nation

Bolivia is a landlocked nation in the center of South

America, high in elevation and with the highest percentage of

indigenous peoples of any nation in the Americans. Most Bolivians

have indigenous ancestry. But mixed ancestry people are often

taught to assimilate, deny their Indian heritage, and even take

part in discrimination against other Indians. Still, the majority

of Bolivians are Indian and identify as such, even in the face of

such prejudice. Most are either Ayamara or Quechua.

Most of Bolivia was at one time part of the Incan Empire,

and also previous indigenous civilizations such as the Moche.

Spaniards under Pizarro conquered the Incans because the empire

had been greatly weakened by civil war just prior to Spanish

arrival. Spaniards intermarried with Incan elites, and the colony

was known as Upper Peru (upper meaning high elevation.)

Bolivia was liberated from Spanish rule by Simon Bolivar,

for whom the nation is named. Bolivia had the misfortune to

suffer for most of its history through extreme instability and

frequent military dictatorship or corrupt elite rule. A radical

revolution in 1952 finally ended peonage, gave Indians the rights

to vote, and limited military power. But the same combination of

militarists and corrupt elites continued until recent years, when

Evo Morales became the first self-identified indigenous president

in Bolivia's history.

Bolivians have immigrated to the US since the early

nineteenth century, but the census did not keep track of nation

of origin until the 1960s. Perhaps 40,000 Bolivians live in the

metro Washington DC area. How many of those Bolivians are

American Indians can only be guessed at by the highly visible

presence of Indian dances and dancers in in Northern Virginia's

Bolivian festivals. It is a safe bet that the majority of those

40,000 Bolivians, just like in their home country, are Natives.

Childhood Story

By Lineth Cobarrubias

When I think about my life as a child, I think of it as a

pretty much innocent life. My mother gave me everything but I

guess as a young person I don’t really appreciate what I had.

Compared to my mother’s childhood life, my life was more than

perfect. But I was born in a diverse, educated society. Unlike my

mother, she was born in a country that was not technologically

advanced and lacked diversity.

My mother was born in 1954 and grew up in Bolivia during the

1960s and 1970s. For many Americans that was the decade of

hippies and good times. But in Bolivia life was different, her

life was hard. My mother was born into a family of eleven. She

was the oldest girl, which meant she had to help my grandmother

do everything. As best she can recall, she was six to seven and

she had to help my grandmother cook and wash cloths of all the

children including her mother and father. When she was done

cleaning and washing, she had to help cook lunch or dinner for

her siblings. When she was done with all that she had to feed,

bath and watch over her baby brother Jorge. You could say she was

the second mother. My mother, as she was six or seven, all she

wanted to do was go to school like her older brothers. My

grandmother didn’t want her to go to school so she could help her

around the house. Her brothers got to go to school, but right

after they had to go help my grandfather at the brick making

business. My mother later went to school and finished elementary.

When she was in middle school she dropped out because her mother

needed more help around the house and her mother just had her

baby sister Ana. My mother learned to speak Spanish in school but

she was raised to speak Quechua, a language that the Incas once

spoke. (“Quechua”) Earlier in the olden days, women use to sit at

home detached from the outside world. They use to manage home and

look after children. That was their only responsibilities. For

many generations that is what woman and men thought that women’s

roles was, And that belief was taught to their children. Nowadays

the average house hold has three to maybe four children. Our

society will look at you as irresponsible if you had more than

five, just like they think that Octo-mom is crazy. When I asked

my mother to ask her mother why she had so many kids, my

grandmother responded, “ I have many kids because God wanted me

to have a lot so that they could help your father with the

bricks.” My mother believes in God just like her mother wanted

her to. But she did not want her mother to have another baby

because she knew that she was going to be the one taking care of

them.

Another thing our society thinks about is income. Most

people can’t afford a child. They have protective services that

come knocking at your door if you have more than six and can’t

afford one. The society my mother grew up in was very closed

minded and that is what she was taught. When my sisters got

married, she told them, “Make sure he always has food to eat when

he gets home.” My mother was not allowed to go out unless it was

to buy vegetables or something else. She really wasn’t allowed to

associate with any boys and if she was seen with a boy, she had

five older brothers that would not allow it, beside her mother.

If the community saw her talking to a boy, she would be perceived

as promiscuous. My mother’s mind has changed a lot over the years

but it also has to do with the fact that she lives here in a

society that influences women’s right and is open minded about

other beliefs.

My mother has been a big believer of Jesus and she was

raised Roman Catholic. It can be assumed that most people in

Bolivia are Catholic. Not only her family was very religious but

also the entire Quechua community she grew up in was involved

with the church. My mother would go to church every Sunday

morning with all her brothers and sisters. In fact, she never met

anyone who didn’t believe in Jesus or wasn’t Catholic until she

came to the United States. “I thought people only believed in

Jesus, when was kid I didn’t know there was other religions

besides Catholicism.”

Bolivians, besides believing in Jesus, they also believe in

saints. Saint San Joaquin was the saint that her community

believed in, that took care of her town. Each town in Bolivia has

a different saint they believe in, and they celebrate them as if

they were Jesus's followers. Another thing that Bolivian culture

believes in and still some older generations today believe in, is

the spirit of the land. This belief came from the population that

inhabited Bolivia. They were called Tiwanaku, they were

descendants of the Incan Empire. (“Archeology”) They believe that

there is a protector of the land called Pachamama. And she

controlled a lot of factors. If anything when wrong in your life,

it was because you have angered her. The way they could be

forgiven was if they set incense around the house. These incense

had a lot of different things, like images of money or animals or

coca leaves. Usually you would call one of those people who knew

more, for instance the medicine men. He would go chant around

your house with incense in hand. This may sound crazy but people

believe in this greatly. Today in Bolivia people still believe in

it, for example my grandmother, but not as much as when my mother

was a child. To me it only seems crazy because nowadays we call

those people witches and it is frowned upon. Today thanks to our

constitution we have the freedom of religion, but because there

are so many different beliefs in this country, they separate

church and state.

As for gender attitudes, that was a different lifestyle was

completely different of today's typical life. Work and technology

also saw huge differences. Take the fact that Bolivia is the

poorest country in South America. Bolivia does not have much

technological resources or industrialization. My mother’s father

made bricks for a living. He dug up different kinds of clay by

mixing different types of clay, so when it was cooked in these

big oven rooms they would be hard and sturdy for building.

Depending on the type of clay and how long they were cooked for,

some would take days for it to cook. The time it took to cook and

the type of clay would depend on the price and quality of the

product.

My mother’s mother still used barter to exchange products.

Currency was available, but she didn’t use it much. My mother

grew potatoes at her house and she would exchange it for rice or

corn. When my mother was fourteen she got a spot at the nearby

market, and sold rice, corn, flour and coca. Coca is best known

throughout the world because of its alkaloids a powerful

stimulant and an ingredient of cocaine. “I use to sell a lot of

coca at that time I would always have to order more.” She

wondered. What she didn’t know that at that time of the 1960-

1670 cartels originally imported most coca from Bolivia and Peru,

processing it into cocaine inside Colombia and then distributing

it through most of the trafficking routes and distribution points

in the U.S., including Florida, California and New York (PBS).

Before it is processed into cocaine, the coca leaf was like

tobacco, people chewed the leaf for medicinal purposes.

She met my father at the market years after and she got

married at the age of nineteen and had her first child, my

brother, at the age of twenty. She married very young, but it

wasn’t unusual at that time. She didn’t have a chance to finish

school because she had five kids in total. She got her own land

next to my grandparents and also sold bricks for a living until

she got the opportunity to move to the United States.

My mother’s life was harder than mine and a lot different.

She had to work at a very young age and had to grow up fast, and

leave her childhood behind. She grew up in a society that

believed she had to cook and clean before she could attend

school. There was great gender discrimination. Because of all

those attitudes towards women she never had the chance to finish

school. If she finished school she wonders what she would have

picked as a career. Her beliefs today were influenced by her

mother and the society she grew up in. Today she believes

education is a big part of life as a person and, well, she still

believes I should know how to cook. She always tells me, “What

are you going to cook for your husband when you are married? I’m

sure he’s going to want more than McDonald's.” I walk away and

tell her, “I will have him cook for me.” I'm proud of the society

I grew up in.

Bibliography

"An Overview of Quechua." N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov 2011.

http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~pah1003/quechua/Eng/Main/i_ABOUT.HTM

David Pearce, “Coca and Cocaine,”

http://www.cocaine.org/cokleaf.html

“Thirty Years of America's Drug War,”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/

“Revealing Ancient Bolivia,”

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/tiwanaku/index.html

“South America: Bolivia,”

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/

bl.html

Appendices

There are many versions of both release forms and guidelines

for writing family histories available online and in books on

oral history. The ones in use or recommended by most universities

unfortunately often have one common characteristic: They protect

only the interviewer, and especially the institutions, not the

interviewee or their families. The worst aspect of these release

forms especially is that the interviewee absolutely gives up all

control over what should, by all rights, remain their

intellectual property. I certainly would prefer to see more

releases and guidelines that favor their interviewee over

interviewers, and give permission and encourage anyone to use my

documents below as a model.

Appendix One:

Release Form

Release Form-Family History Essays

Name of Essay Author:

I hereby agree to allow my family history paper, previously

submitted in Dr. Alton Carroll’s history class at Northern

Virginia Community College in Sterling, Virginia, to be published

in a collection of family histories from students.

I understand and agree to the following:

1. This essay will be published in an academic press only, one

that is not for profit. There will be no financial or other

compensation given to or expected by myself, my family members,

or others mentioned in the family history essay.

2. I hereby vouch that this essay is free of any material,

information, or opinions that may be harmful, embarrassing,

defamatory, libelous, or may otherwise cause injury to any person

mentioned in the essay.

3. I have spoken with all family members and others still living

that are mentioned in the essay, and I vouch that there are no

objections from family or others mentioned in the essay.

4. I understand this essay may be edited for grammar and have

minor changes as needed by the author and editors of an academic

press.

5. This essay may be used or quoted in whole or in part by other

researchers in other written works or media forms for educational

or other nonprofit use only.

The collector and editor of these essays understands and agrees

to the following conditions for the essay author and the persons

interviewed:

1. The authors of all family history and oral history essays and

the interviewed persons retain all rights and control over their

own intellectual property, the previously mentioned essay(s).

2. As editor, I will make minor changes only and strive to

preserve the voices and points of view contained in these essays,

never altering them and doing my best to avoid inaccuracy.

3. As needed, I will provide background material in the

introductions to these essays and may provide additional material

in footnotes.

All of these points have been clearly explained to me by the

editor. I have had ample opportunity to ask questions. If I have

asked questions, I have had them satisfactorily explained to me

by the editor.

By typing in my name below, I signify I agree to the terms and

conditions above.

Appendix Two:

Family History Guidelines

What follows are excerpts of the guidelines given to

students for family history papers. Those portions of the

guidelines dealing with other types of student essays have been

left out.

The most important advice is about distressing information,

making certain no one is harmed by inadvertently including

confidential information. In addition to the written guidelines,

this point was stressed very heavily in class.

ESSAY GUIDELINES US HISTORY I

Family history papers:

1) Interview your oldest relative or anyone you find of great

interest such as a veteran, your minister, etc. Allow plenty of

time and arrange a comfortable setting where you will be

uninterrupted with no others present. You may wish them to bring

photo albums to look at. Have a set of prepared questions, but

feel free to deviate from them if a topic strikes your interest

or theirs. Use a camcorder or other recording device, you likely

will wish to hold onto this for yourself and your own children.

2) Do everything possible to put them at ease and get them to

forget they are being taped. Start off with general “How have you

been feeling/What have you been doing?” questions until they are

at ease.

3) Ask open-ended questions, not closed or leading ones. Ask

“What did you think of X?” rather than “Did you hate X?” Avoid

yes/no questions.

4) Let them talk, do not interrupt even if they go off topic.

This is their story, not yours. Once they have finished, then go

back to what they may have not answered.

5) *AVOID QUESTIONS WHICH MAY HARM, EMBARASS, OR DISTRESS THEM*.

These talks may bring up painful subjects. Do *NOT* push them to

answer questions they do not wish to. If painful or embarrassing

information comes out, you do NOT have to include it in your

paper. *IF IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT*.

However, at the same time, they may wish to discuss these

sorts of topics and may find it a therapeutic release or believe

such subjects as racism, the roles of women, or their work or

wartime experiences are very important for others to know about.

In that case, it is your duty to listen. But *PREPARE YOURSELF

EMOTIONALLY IN ADVANCE* to possibly hear some disturbing things.

It is not unusual at all for one or both of you to break down

crying, even the strongest people.

6) I strongly urge all of my students, regardless of whether you

do a family history paper, to talk with your eldest family

members and learn all you can before they pass on.

You will regret it if they pass on and you have unanswered

questions about your family. All of you should also seek to learn

the medical history of your family.

Notes

Notes for Introduction

Virginia Department of Health, “Quick Facts About Minorities in

Virginia,” 1-12-02,

http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/healthpolicy/healthequity/quickfacts.

htm

Notes for Background: Afghanistan

Tim Eigo, “Afghan-Americans,”

www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Afghan-Americans.html

Barbara Robson and Julienne Lipson with Farid Younos and Mariam

Mehdi, “The Afghans: Their History and Culture,” 2002,

www.culturalorientation.net/library/publications/the-afghans-

culture-profile

Notes for Background: Bangladesh

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, “US Relations with

Bangladesh,”

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3452.htm#history

Notes for Background: El Salvador

Aaron Terrazas, “Salvadoran Immigrants in the United States,”

January 2010,

http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?ID=765#6

Notes for Background: India

Indian-American Leadership Council Inc., “Asian Indians Now 1% of

US Population,”

http://www.indianamericans.org/

Notes for Background: Iran

Soraya Fatah and Raha Rafii, “Strength in Numbers: The Relative

Concentration of Iranian-Americans Across the United States,”

http://www.niacouncil.org/docs/irancensus.pdf

Mary Gillis, “Iranian-Americans,” www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-

La/Iranian-Americans.html

Notes for Background: Nigeria

Migration Policy Institute, "The Nigerian Diaspora in the United

States,” June 2015, www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/.../RAD-

Nigeria.pdf.

Notes for Background: Pakistan

Jeane Batalova and Uriah Ferrucio, “Spotlight on the Foreign Born

of Pakistani Origin in the United States,” September 2008,

www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?id=672

Vinay Lal, “The Partition of India,”

www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Independent/partition.html

Notes for Background: Vietnam

Aaron Terrazas, Migration Policy Institute, “Vietnamese

Immigrants in the United States,” August 2008,

http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?ID=691

Notes for Background: Ethiopia

Migration Policy Institute, “The Ethiopian Diaspora in the United

States,” July 2014,

www.migrationpolicy.org/.../RAD-Ethiopia.pdf

Notes for Background: Palestine

Middle East Research and Information Project, “United Nations

Partition Plan,”

http://www.merip.org/palestine-israel_primer/un-partition-plan-

pal-isr.html

Notes for Background: Puerto Rico

Melba Ferrer, San Juan Star, “UPR study finds high Taino DNA rate:

Tests contradict theory of extinction of P.R. Natives,” 4-18-99,

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/306.html

Notes for Background: South Africa

Judson Knight and Lorna Mabunda, “South African Americans,”

http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Pa-Sp/South-African-

Americans.html

Notes for Background: Cambodia

Grover Furr, “The US Is Even More Guilty Than Pol Pot.”

http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/polpotmontclarion0498.html

Carl Bankston III, “Cambodian-Americans,”

http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Bu-Dr/Cambodian-Americans.html

Notes for Background: Greece

“A Timeline of Greek Immigration,”

http://chnm.gmu.edu/greekam/timeline.html

Notes for Background: Poland

Syd Jones, “Polish-

Americans,”www.everyculture.com/multi/Pa-Sp/Polish-Americans.html

Notes for Background: Rwanda

“The Triumph of Evil,”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/

John Mark Ockerbloom, “Rwanda- Emmigration and Immigration,”

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?

type=lcsubc&key=Rwanda%20--%20Emigration%20and%20immigration&c=x

Guy Orgambide, “Rwanda: The Wake of a Genocide,”

http://www.rwanda-genocide.org/

Notes for Background: Navajo Nation

Robert Roesel, “Navajo History 1850-1923,”

http://www.unco.edu/library/gov/middle_ground/books/HONAI-

%20Navajo%20HIstory,%201850-1923.pdf

Department of Information Technology, “History,” 2011,

http://www.navajo-nsn.gov/history.htm

Notes for Background: Pawnee Nation

Pawnee Nation, “Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma,” 2013,

http://www.pawneenation.org/history

Notes for Background: Bolivia and the Quechua Nation

Tim Eigo, “Bolivian-Americans,”

http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Bolivian-Americans.html