Priscilla was born in São Paulo, Brazil, the country’s most populous city, to a Brazilian mother and an Australian father.
“One of my greatest memories is going to a feira (outdoor market) with my mom and eating pastel and drinking sugar cane juice.”
The first time the family traveled outside of Brazil was to move to the United States – it was for her father’s job. Her baby brother, the youngest of her three siblings, was born in Boston. Priscilla will never forget the day the family learned that he had Leukemia.
“We all had to grow up fast.”
After that, most of the traveling the family did was for her brother’s health care. They moved between Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, and a few American cities. All this moving left Priscilla feeling as though she didn’t have a “home.” She learned to avoid close relationships with people, as she knew she was going to be saying goodbye soon enough. The family was in Singapore when her brother’s health took a turn for the worse. He passed away at six years of age when Priscilla was 14. It was then that, “everything just fell apart” for her family.
She remembers her little brother, fondly.
“When times are tough, I look at his photo, and it reminds me to always be strong. He was strong even in his last breaths. He had this very old soul that shined happiness.” (audio below)
United States
Priscilla moved to the United States permanently in 1996 to study travel/tourism, and hotel administration at a Lasell College in Boston, Massachusetts. Shortly after getting her degree, at age 22, she had her first child.
“I was not excited about being a homemaker, so I decided to put my degree to use and open up a home-based travel agency. This job allowed me to be with my child and use my degree to assist others with my passion for traveling.”
Family
Priscilla’s religious mother gave her these prayer beads. Although Priscilla doesn’t consider herself to be religious and lives by the motto “you do what’s best for you,” she keeps these beads with her at all times as a sort of protector. These beads symbolize her family’s religion, Catholicism, and all of the history connected to this. Priscilla emphasizes that, according to superstition, it is crucial never to break these, and if you do, you must make sure to collect all of the beads swiftly.
Audio: Priscilla remembers breaking the beads as a child
New Hampshire
After living in Massachusetts, Priscilla and her family moved to Bedford, New Hampshire. Bedford is a suburb of Manchester, the state’s largest city. Priscilla has always found it hard to fit in.
“I can adapt anywhere, but fitting in is different. I feel that when I look around, I can’t find someone like me.”
Most people never guess that she is a mother of three, or that she’s in her early forties. She has found it difficult to make friends with the local women. When she has conversations with the other moms, they generally want to discuss their children. Priscilla wants to discuss other things. (audio below)
Priscilla has also noticed that when she walks around New Hampshire, she gets a lot of strange looks, which she attributes to her having darker skin. (audio below)
She recognizes that nobody’s life is easy. Still, she thinks life is harder in New Hampshire when you are a “foreigner” – especially around Bedford, which is not a very diverse place.
“When you see somebody else who is foreign, you automatically cling on.” (audio below)
Priscilla’s closest friends are still back in Brazil – and she tries to go back to see them most summers.
Identity
Being the daughter of an Australian father and Brazilian mother, Priscilla sees herself as a blend of the two – “the in-between” or “the best of both worlds.”
“I’m not your loud and welcoming Brazilian, and I’m also not your close-minded Australian.” (audio below)
Priscilla has always had a knack for picking up languages and speaking them without a detectable accent. When she was in Brazil, people would ask her if she was American, and when she speaks Spanish to customers at work, they think she is from Mexico.
Priscilla wants her children to have the opportunity to travel and learn about other cultures. Still, most importantly, Priscilla wants them to have a “home”. She wants her children to feel like they belong where they live.
“New Hampshire is the place that my kids know the most. I don’t want them to feel the way I felt traveling all over.” (audio below)
Home
Soccer is Priscilla’s passion. She doesn’t play it as much as she used to, due to a couple of injuries, but it is still a big part of her life in New Hampshire. It’s one way she stays connected to her Brazillian roots, and it keeps her feeling young.
Priscilla works in customer service. She finds it strange that people don’t socialize after work like they do in Brazil. In Bedford, people go straight home after work, especially in the winter. The United States may be where she lives, but Brazil will always be her home. She misses the warmth of the people.
“The people in Brazil seem to be happier than here. You see a lot of poverty, but you also see a lot of happy faces, even when life is rough.”
#FINDINGAMERICAN
To receive updates on the book release and exhibition of “Finding American: Stories of Immigration from all 50 States” please subscribe here.This project is a labor of love and passion. If you would like to support its continuation, it would be greatly appreciated!
“I don’t know anything about my hometown Kigali, Rwanda, besides the stories I have heard from my parents. I have no connection to Rwanda besides the blood that is flowing through my veins and the language I share with my parents. Rwanda is the country on every document that I have.” (audio below)
Mukesha’s parents have told her stories of what it was like before the genocide, what their childhoods were like – playing under the trees, watching the stars at night – stories of joy. Once the genocide started, the stories are sad – running away and being torn from family.
Her parents are reluctant to talk about Rwanda; it is a reminder of how much they have lost.
Above: Mukesha’s pre-school graduation shortly after moving to South Africa
South Africa
In Rwanda, her parents had good jobs and were living comfortably as middle-class citizens. When they arrived in South Africa in 1998 as asylum seekers when Mukesha was six, they couldn’t enter the formal labor market. Her parents ended up doing odd jobs to put food on their table. Mukesha is grateful for all the sacrifices her parents have made.
A diverse place, Mukesha is happy to have grown up in Durban. Still, as she aged, she became more and more aware of being a “foreigner”: bringing a different lunch to school and braiding her hair differently from others. She remembers in sixth grade getting called “ kwerekwere” – a derogatory term to describe foreigners. To fit in, Mukesha found herself drawn towards friends who were South African, and avoiding kids, who like herself, were from other parts of Africa. (audio below)
Life was callous for those who weren’t South African.
Above: Mukesha’s First Holy Communion
Dreamer
Mukesha’s faith has played a pivotal role in her development.
“We didn’t have much in South Africa, but we had our faith. We would say the family prayer together. I remember thanking God for braces before I could afford them.”
Mukesha says she has always been a dreamer. “I was kind of delusional, to be honest.” She wanted to become a teacher, a profession she started pretending to do very early on in her life.
“I used to teach math to dolls with missing arms, and teddy bears with missing eyes.”
Her mom told her that teachers don’t get paid much, and that ended that dream. When it came time for university, Law was her first choice. Her parents explained to her how nobody would hire her as a lawyer in South Africa since she was a foreigner. Instead, her parents wanted her to be a doctor or nurse, as it wouldn’t matter if she were a “foreigner.”
Her second choice was a degree in Media Communications and Business Management, which is what she ended up studying. She had grown up watching and wanting to be like Oprah, so working in the media seemed exciting. (audio below)
Resettlement
The “xenophobic attacks” that swept South Africa were the catalyst to her family, starting the resettlement process in 2008. Mukesha describes how these attacks began as some people making fun of “foreigners,” and escalated to people like her being burned alive. She remembers all five of them being in a room presenting their story to a UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) caseworker. Mukesha was 15 at the time, and what her parents said surprised her. She didn’t know the struggles her parents had been having – how hard it was to be a Rwandese adult in South Africa.
“I felt like I had been in the dark all my life. OMG this is what they go through every single day in taxis, at work, on the bus.”
The family did these interviews several times; then, they separated them to do individual interviews to make sure their stories matched up. It felt unnecessary, and Mukesha felt like it was “reinforcing trauma.” Her family waited in a state of limbo – hoping to get the word. She would go to school to write a test and think ‘should I study for this if I am going to America tomorrow?’ It wasn’t easy for her to finish college with so much going on in the background. They waited for six years. Finally, in 2014, the same day Mukesha graduated college, they found out that they had 48 hours to pack and be ready to leave for the United States.
“I should be celebrating. I am getting this thing I always wanted, but what about my friends? How do I say goodbye? It all just happened so quickly.” (audio below)
Hillbillies
Before boarding the plane, their caseworker handed them their resettlement package, and said, “Oh, by the way, your family is going to Kentucky.” Mukesha had never heard of Kentucky. She had heard of Los Angeles or New York, but not Kentucky. Mukesha googled Kentucky on her phone, and all she saw was farms, farmers, and the term ‘hillbillies’ came up, which she didn’t understand. This surprised and angered her. The address on their resettlement package was for the resettlement agency (Catholic Charities) but Mukesha thought that was where they were going to be living. When she googled the address, it was a church!
“I was like, ‘Mom; they are taking us to a church!’ I was already mad that we were coming to Kentucky, and now we were going to be living in church! My mom said the novena like ten times and the rosary, ‘God, hopefully, we are not going to a church’. I was freaking out. This is America; I’m expecting big things! As we are landing, we start to see bridges and houses, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is actually a city.’” (audio below)
Arrival
Mukesha had never been on a plane – especially one landing in a snowstorm. After arriving in Kentucky, the person who picked them up spoke to them in a “deep Swahili accent,” which Mukesha thought was funny since her family can speak English. Another volunteer warned them that the neighborhood they were moving into wasn’t the best.
“It’s important to remember perspective – you can only see what you see based on where you are standing. For me, it seemed like a nice apartment with three bedrooms! I can share a room with my sister, and my room has a door that you can close! The fridge was stocked, we had vouchers, and we ate as a family for the first time in years.” (audio below)
Shock
For the first two weeks in Kentucky, they stayed inside their new apartment. The one thing they noticed right away was that there weren’t a lot of people around.
“Where are the people? In Africa you see people walking around. People in America don’t walk. We started to feel nostalgic for the whole community vibe.”
That first trip to the supermarket overwhelmed Mukesha and she found herself asking: “Why do we need two aisles for cereal?” (audio below)
Another shock was when Mukesha’s family took the bus to their ESL (English as a Second Language) classes.
“That is where I saw the racial divide. The people on the bus looked like they were struggling. They were no different than the people I had seen in South Africa. This was not something that I ever expected to see here. The places the bus was driving through looked really bad.” (audio below)
Her family discussed their collective shock after taking the bus that first time. They were so confused by how this level of inequality and poverty could exist in America. In contrast, the church the white woman invited them to, used a bible made out of gold.
“The entire church, besides our family, was caucasian. They drove proper luxury cars! The neighborhood where the church is is very different from where the ESL classes are. This is when the divide hit me the first time. What’s happening here mirrored South Africa. Even though this is the country that everyone looks up to, it is not all roses and butterflies.” (audio below)
Amazon
Mukesha’s first job was at an Amazon warehouse, dealing with customer returns.
“When I got my first paycheck, I almost lost it.”
When she mentally converted the money to South African Rand, it was a lot, and this motivated her. This money meant she could finally get the braces she prayed for. Mukesha liked her manager and the job, but there was a lot of negative energy coming from the people she worked with. They complained a lot and thought her positivity was strange. She could feel the negativity rubbing off on her. The question she had for her fellow employees was, “If you don’t like the job, why don’t you leave it?” Now she realizes it isn’t easy to leave a job if you have bills and dependents. This job taught her a lot and it allowed Mukesha to be able to meet a lot of American veterans. She couldn’t believe the hardships they faced, after sacrificing so much for the country.
“I had always wanted to meet an American veteran. Why would people who served the country come back and not be helped?”
A lot of people she worked with didn’t know any black people or any Africans. A coworker in their 40s asked her if she had a pet giraffe. An older white male coworker, who she considered a friend, told her how “paying taxes sucks.” When she asked why, he said, “Us Americans, we pay taxes to bring people like you here.” These comments frustrated Mukesha – she was paying taxes too, and her family had to pay back the money received for the flight to America. (audio below)
Storytelling
Mukesha hopes that by sharing her story she can help the youth be more informed. It is for this reason that she has seized every opportunity to speak publicly about her experience as a refugee.
Above: Mukesha sharing her story with a group of middle-grade students
Many of the students she has shared her story with have written her letters that she has kept. One note from a student named Jordan says: “I have a completely different outlook on refugees now”. (audio below)
“Every time I’m feeling discouraged I read these letters for a reminder of how great life is.”
Crossroads Ministry
In 2016 Mukesha started working at the Crossroads Ministry – a retreat center where privileged students come to have relationship-building opportunities with marginalized people in overlooked places. Mukesha’s job is to lead these students as they visit agencies where they can connect and find commonalities with people different than themselves – whether it is a refugee, or an elderly person, or someone with substance abuse issues. The most important thing is that these students identify that this person they are connecting with is a person first before being a refugee or female or Somalian or an alcoholic. Mukesha hopes to plant seeds that change perspectives on preconceived notions and show these students, that we must understand the complexity of everyone, and avoid believing there is a single story. (audio below)
“I remind the students that this won’t be the last time you are at a crossroads with someone who has been marginalized. What do you want to do? No one is voiceless – some people’s voices aren’t being listened to. I tell students to be the voice that will amplify.”
Future
Mukesha regrets how she and her siblings used to complain to their parents about the life they had growing up. She knows now how much they gave up for them. Mukesha is happy that her parents aren’t merely trying to survive today. She knows that they don’t have their ideal jobs, but they do have a home and a car, and they are safe. In the future, Mukesha would like to pursue a college degree in the USA, since employers in the US don’t recognize her degree from South Africa. She dreams of making a film or writing a book about “third culture kids”.
“Besides the stuff that is on the surface, there is so much more. When you are a young refugee, growing up in a culture that is not yours, you are sometimes delusional to reality because your parents shelter you. I want to write a book about the difficulties of being a ‘third culture kid’. I want to explore the trauma of being a young kid, moving from one culture to another and how it affects you into adulthood.”
Other than that she wouldn’t mind becoming “rich and famous”!
Amplified Voices
Mukesha wants to continue trying to amplify the voices of people being persecuted and advocating for Louisville, and Kentucky at large, to be welcoming to refugees and immigrants [see the above photo of her discussing this with the mayor of Lousiville].
“I want to be the voice that is going to amplify the voice of that refugee girl sitting in a refugee camp, thinking she is never going to leave. Your circumstances don’t necessarily determine your future.”
*Update: Since the interview, Mukesha decided to take the leap of faith and go back to university as a full-time student. She is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership and Learning at U of Louisville. She is still at Crossroads Ministry, but as a part-time retreat associate, so she can focus on her academics.
#FINDINGAMERICAN
To receive updates on the book release and exhibition of “Finding American: Stories of Immigration from all 50 States” please subscribe here.This project is a labor of love and passion. If you would like to support its continuation, it would be greatly appreciated!
Anna was born in Labartoov, Poland, in the late 1970s and lived there until she was 16 years old. It was a small town, established in the 15th century and not particularly well now or famous for anything. It has three churches and “is one of those towns in Poland where everybody knows each other.”
As a child in Poland, Anna played outside a lot, but she thinks kids then grew up faster. Drinking and smoking at a young age was part of the culture. Her first drink of alcohol was at the age of 12.
Anna was a Polish Girl Guide [see the photo above], which she describes as “military-ish.” They had squads, platoons, and ranks, and, like Scouts in America, they learned how to survive in the woods, build shelters and tie knots.
Father Leaves
Anna’s dad fled to the United States when she was six. The Iron Curtain was still up, so there was no chance that he would be returning. He received political asylum, and Anna wouldn’t see him again for seven years.
“I remember my first communion, and my dad wasn’t there. It is a big deal since almost everybody is Catholic in Poland. It is a right of passage – you get the dress, a whole ceremony – he wasn’t part of that.” (audio below)
She was used to receiving a lot of positive attention from her dad, so when he left, Anna took it very hard. His departure was even more difficult as her mother, who was an English teacher, was not very loving or patient, and her much older brothers were very hard on Anna.
“I remember the first time we were able to call him; we had to go to a cousin’s house who had a phone. We set up a time to talk, and I couldn’t talk to him because I was so upset that he had left us. I refused to get on the phone.” (audio below)
Before he left, her father had been working in a communist factory, where everybody was getting the same minimal pay. He was a mechanical engineer, and there was no potential for advancement in Poland. Her mother told Anna that her father had left for the United States to find a way to make more money to provide a better life for the family. During this whole time apart, her parents stayed married, which Anna isn’t sure whether or not it was the best idea. Anna didn’t understand all that was going on between her parents.
Lacking Support
In Poland, you have to pick a major when you go to high school. All that Anna cared about was getting away from her mom, who was continually telling Anna she wasn’t good enough. She remembers her mom telling her, “become a hairdresser because that’s all you are good for”.
“I always tell people that I didn’t have dreams growing up. My mom always used to put me down. It didn’t matter what I wanted; my mom would bring me down. I never had anybody motivate me or encourage me in any way. I didn’t have any talent; at least I didn’t think I did.” (audio below)
By then, both of her brothers had already moved away to the US, so it was just Anna and her mom. The high school Anna wanted to go to was in a town 20 miles away, so she filled out the paperwork and her mom said she submitted it. She didn’t.
“She didn’t tell me until the day of the entry exams. I was so heartbroken, betrayed, and angry at her, and life in general. I didn’t care and I didn’t want to go to school. All my friends were doing what they wanted to do, and I didn’t have that chance.”
Anna gave her father an ultimatum – he was going to bring her to the United States, or she wasn’t going to high school at all. She knew he was cheating on her mother.
“The reason he didn’t want me and my mom there was because it would interfere with his extracurricular activities.”
United States
Anna’s father submitted the paperwork for her to immigrate and in February 1994, in the middle of her high school sophomore year, Anna and her mom arrived in New York. Her parents were constantly fighting, so it wasn’t long before Anna decided to move out and head to California to live with her brothers.
“It was the best decision I’ve made. It was beautiful. The high school I went to was awesome and diverse and close to the ocean. It was the United States that I imagined.”
She went from taking ESL classes in sophomore year, to being in the English honors class her junior year. Anna was starting to see that she did have talents despite her mother’s misgivings.
“This gave me the confidence I was always lacking. I’m not stupid. I can do it. I proved myself.”
She was happy to finish high school, but she didn’t know what to do next.
Recruitment
Anna went to a junior college in Southern California, thinking more about Malibu Beach and hot guys, than academics. One day she got an unexpected call from a military recruiter: “Have you ever thought about joining the military?”
The recruiter was giving her his best pitch. Anna was sold when he started talking about all the travel she could do as part of the military. Her mom never let her travel when she lived in Poland.
“I only told my two best friends I had joined the army. I thought I would fail and not make it through basic training since I had no faith in myself. You don’t know how much you can do until you have a drill sergeant yelling at you! I excelled and I was also a very good shot.” (audio below)
Military
After completing basic training in South Carolina, she became an administrative specialist – “a secretary basically”. She ended up in Fort Zil, Oklahoma, which was a culture shock.
“Oklahoma – where everybody has accents, wears tight wranglers, cowboy hats, and drives trucks. I cried when I first got there; this is not California!”
The military stationed Anna with a field artillery unit, which was almost all men. During this time, she started taking college classes, which the military paid for, and she became an American citizen. After four years in Oklahoma and at 24 years of age, she still didn’t know what she wanted to do as a career.
Anna decided to extend her contract, and in 2001 she was stationed in Germany where she stayed for almost three years. Germany is where she met her now-former husband, who was also in the military.
In 2003, Anna arrived in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, six months pregnant. Although she was only in Arizona for a year, she loved it.
“I loved Arizona. I didn’t think I would love being in the middle of the desert. It’s beautiful, and the people were super nice. Nobody is as nice as they are in Arizona. Even at the DMV, when you go to register your car, they are nice!”
Anna and her husband decided to settle in Lakeland, Florida, where he grew up.
Nursing
Anna had been studying business administration while in the military, but she didn’t want to work in that field. She met a Polish woman who was working as a nurse and realized she could do that too. A few months before she finished her college degree, she took the necessary sciences and got into nursing school.
“I didn’t know what kind of nurse I wanted to be. One day I floated to ICU, this guy who was 40 years old and coded. All the nurses started doing CPR, and I just stood there and said, ‘I want to be that when I grow up’! Nurses handle everything and that’s what I do now.” (audio below)
Above: “This light comes from Florence Nightingale, the first real nurse. During the Crimean War, she was taking care of sick soldiers and would make rounds with the lamp. All nurses were required to carry a lamp. Ever since then, it has become a symbol of hope that nurses carry. We give that hope to the hopeless.”
“In the ICU, it is always something. You have to be knocking on death’s door, whether it is your heart or multisystem organ failure. Our eyes are on you all the time – two patients per nurse. That’s why I like the ICU; it is always something, not just an earache.”
Audio: Anna explaining how it is hardest dealing with the younger patients who experience trauma
Divorce
It was during nursing school that she realized that her marriage wasn’t going to last. When she and her husband split up, her children were two and four years old, and she was still in nursing school. “It was hell! Harder than basic training!”
“When I was going through everything with my ex-husband, I noticed I would get very frustrated with them, and that was not who I wanted to be. I did not want to be my mom. I’ve got to be better than that.”
Audio: Anna reflecting on becoming a parent
Now her children are teenagers, and both are involved in competitive cheerleading. Anna clarifies that cheerleading was their idea, not hers. While it is both time-consuming and money-consuming, her girls really wanted to cheer. (audio below)
“I want to be a parent, but I also want to be a friend. I want to support them in whatever they choose to do.”
Above: During Hurricane Irma, Anna’s daughters stayed in the basement of the hospital while their mom worked upstairs. In the aftermath, the backyard needed a new fence, and the trampoline remains upside-down.
Lakeland
Anna describes Lakeland as a city that is very southern, racist, small-minded, with “not a whole lot of anything going on.” At the same time, she thinks it is a good place to raise kids. Still, she wishes her children could be exposed more to other cultures.
“I’ve met a lot of people who haven’t seen snow or been on a plane. You live in the United States, and you haven’t seen snow? A lot of ‘Oh, I’ve got everything I need right here’.”
There aren’t a lot of Polish people around in Lakeland, but she’s never felt excluded by the local community.
“I’ve never had anyone make me feel like I was invading their country. Do I get Polish jokes? All the time. Blonde jokes? All the time. It is what it is.” (audio below)
Republican and pro-Trump is the norm in Lakeland, Florida. Anna is proud that her daughters are developing critical minds and thinking about some of the ideas they are encountering.
“My daughter was the only student in her class that was anti-Trump. First off, you are a girl, and as a woman, you can never support Trump. She was the only one! When we drive together, I use that time to discuss different issues. I try to talk on her level. You can see the wheels turning.” (audio below)
Missing Poland
Anna misses the social life in Poland. She thinks the everyday interactions between people in Poland are more genuine.
“When someone asks you ‘how you are doing?’ in Poland, they really mean it – they want to know. Nobody is going to say, ‘I’m fine’ even though their house is on fire!”
Anna finds conversations are not as authentic as she remembers them being in Poland. (audio below)
Anna wants her children to feel connected to Poland and has already taken them to visit the country several times. The last time they were in Poland the girls remembered how delicious the bread was, and they learned a few words.
“They’ve already got the travel bug. I always tell them the world is so much bigger than what you see. You just have to open yourself up to that.”
She can’t wait to take them on a trip to Europe.
“They are going to try some Italian wine! I don’t want them growing up sheltered because then the kids go crazy. By the time they hit college, all the kids go crazy here. Everything is too taboo!”
Polish Christmas
At Christmas, Anna misses the holiday as she remembers it from Poland.
“Christmas is the happiest holiday in Poland. All the other holidays in Poland are sad. Halloween is sad and the same with Easter. We don’t have egg hunts and the Easter bunny – you fast for 40 days, starve yourself, go to church every day and pray for hours and hours. But Christmas is happy.”
She has tried to keep some of the Polish Christmas traditions going here in Florida because she knew her girls would like it. It involves a red soup called barszcz, not eating meat on the night of the 24th, and only starting dinner (with up to 24 different dishes) once the kids have spotted the first star
“You always set the table with an extra setting for an unknown stranger. If an unknown stranger comes through and knocks on the door you are ready for them.”
After dinner, the family goes to midnight mass. When you return from the mass you can eat sausage, drink, and party. (audio below)
Anna continues to try and be a mother very different from her own, as she encourages her girls to pursue their dreams.
#FINDINGAMERICAN
To receive updates on the book release and exhibition of “Finding American: Stories of Immigration from all 50 States” please subscribe here.This project is a labor of love and passion. If you would like to support its continuation, it would be greatly appreciated!
