Summer is almost here as area schools begin letting out. To kick things off, we’re launching a new season of WYSO Youth Radio today. We’ll hear stories from students across Dayton, Springfield, and beyond.
WYSO Youth Radio is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio by clicking on the blue “LISTEN” button above, which includes emotion and emphasis not on the page.
Charkia Botts: Hi, I’m Charkia Botts, and I’m here with three African students who attend Ponitz CTC.
WaQudra Qudra: My name is WaQudra Qudra, and I am from Tanzania.
Didas Kashindi: My name is Didas Kashindi, and I’m from Tanzania, which is located in East Africa.
Mohamed Mohamed: My name is Mohamed Mohamed. I’m from Sudan.
Charkia: How old were you when you came to America?
Mohamed: Eleven.
Didas: I was seven years old, I think.
WaQudra: I was around eleven years old.
Charkia: So, coming to America as an immigrant, were you ever mistreated in school by the children or mistreated, in general, discriminated against?
WaQudra: Being a darker tone than everybody else, it is like inviting bullying.
Charkia: mm-hmm.
WaQudra: So it was also mentally draining getting called ‘Darkie,’ Monkeys, ‘African, you know, scratchers.’
Charkia: ‘Booty scratchers’?
WaQudra: Yeah.
Charkia: What about your preconceived notions about America?
Didas: Living in Africa, you were sold this dream of America. It’s such a beautiful country, such a great country, and such an equal country. But coming here as an African and getting bullied, it was most definitely…I thought about how that was false.
Charkia: Just like other Americans can vouch for and say this too, when I was a little girl, I would see on TV these commercials with African children. They would all be in poverty, just bad conditions, and then it would be this woman in the background talking like ‘Donate to Africa.’
That’s why I think a lot of American people and American children our age think that way about Africa: Growing up, that’s all we saw.
Mohamed: But they don’t know that Africa is really a beautiful place. Yeah, there are some beautiful places that you could go to, like the beaches.
Charkia: Did you say beaches?
Mohamed: Yes!
Charkia: Ok. ok. [laughter]
For me, growing up in a refugee camp for 12 years, I was always waiting for the opportunity to come to America so I could do something great.
WaQudra Qudra
Mohamed: In our music, you can’t cuss or… In African songs, you won’t hear people singing about drugs, money, all that. In African songs, you’re hearing none of that. They promote none of that.
WaQudra: The music there is mostly heavily focused on love. Our genre back home is love [laughter].
Charkia: Mental health, how is mental health dealt with? Because I know it’s different.
Didas: Most kids will just keep it to themselves. Because in Africa, talking to parents about your problems is not the best option. You tell your parents about your feelings, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy, and just get mad.
WaQudra: I’ll give you an example: when you feel sad about something or you feel depressed or you feels something’s wrong, you tell your parents or you tell you dad. If something’s sad, they always tell you to ‘man up’ if you’re a man, but it’s not taken as seriously.
Charkia: In America, yes, mental health is taken seriously, but also in the Black community, it’s not taken seriously either. Often, a lot of us Black American people we feel like we can’t talk to our parents either because they just push it away, basically. They don’t like talking about trauma. They don’t like talking about sadness. They don’t like that stuff either.
So what are some differences or similarities you’ve noticed between your home country in Africa and the United States?
Mohamed: Job opportunities.
WaQudra: The main difference is the opportunities you get here compared to those in Africa. In Africa, you’ve got very limited opportunities.
For me, growing up in a refugee camp for 12 years, I was always waiting for the opportunity to come to America so I could do something great. When I came here, I looked at the school system; I looked at everything in general. I was kind of excited, in a way, to get started and do something good.
Didas: For me, I feel like in America, you have a better chance to fulfill your dreams than back in my country.
Charkia: Thank you all for talking with me.
Didas: Asante sana! [Swahili]
WaQudra: Tunashukuru! [Swahili]
Charkia: What are y’all saying in your language?
Didas: That’s how you say thank you in Swahili.
Thank you to Joanne Casale, the Media Arts teacher at Ponitz CTC, for making this story happen. WYSO Youth Radio is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. WYSO Youth Radio is made possible by supporters like you, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation.
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