For years, English had been one of the biggest challenges in my life. When I first came to America, I could barely understand what people were saying to me. I depended on teachers, interpreters, and other students to help me communicate. Even simple conversations could make me nervous.

But by the end of elementary school, my English had improved so much that I was finally able to leave ELL classes.

That was a big moment for me.

I could speak English almost fluently now. I didn’t need nearly as much help as I once did, and for the first time, I was about to walk into middle school feeling like I could actually communicate with everyone around me.

I was still living in Lewiston, Maine, and life was becoming more stable for my entire family.

My parents had changed a lot since we first arrived in America too. They didn’t need as much help getting around anymore. They had decent jobs, had learned some English, and were becoming more comfortable handling things on their own.

Financially, we were more stable too.

My siblings were still in school, and they were doing well, but they were also dealing with some of the same things I was dealing with.

Because even though many things were getting better, one thing hadn’t completely disappeared.

The bullying.

Some students still made fun of where I came from. They made comments about my country, my appearance, the clothes I wore, and even my accent.

When I was younger, those comments affected me more. I was already trying to understand a new country, learn a new language, and figure out where I belonged. Having people make fun of me only made that adjustment harder.

But as I got older, I started looking at it differently.

I realized that I couldn’t control what other people thought about me.

I couldn’t control what they said about my country.

I couldn’t control whether someone liked the way I looked, dressed, or spoke.

And I began to understand that I would probably meet people throughout my life who would judge me before they really knew me.

So instead of giving those people all of my attention, I started focusing more on myself.

I focused on school.

I focused on improving my English.

And I focused on becoming more confident.

Then, in seventh grade, I tried something completely new.

I joined the track team.

It was the first sports team I had ever joined, and I became a long-distance runner. I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I started, but I quickly discovered that I was good at it.

And more importantly, I enjoyed it.

Running gave me something different to focus on. There was something exciting about being part of a team, practicing, competing, and seeing what my body could do.

For a kid who had spent so much time trying to fit into a new country, being part of a team felt special.

When I ran, I didn’t have to think about my accent.

I didn’t have to think about what somebody thought about my clothes.

I didn’t have to explain where I came from.

I just had to run.

Looking back, middle school was another turning point in my life.

The problems didn’t magically disappear. There were still moments when people said things that hurt. There were still times when I was reminded that some people saw me as different.

But I wasn’t the same kid anymore.

The boy who once sat silently on a school bus because he couldn’t understand what the driver was saying could now speak English almost fluently.

The family that once depended heavily on other people to navigate life in America was becoming independent.

My parents were working.

My siblings were moving forward.

We were financially more stable.

And slowly, all of us were building a life.

We had come a long way from the family that stepped off an airplane in Houston in the middle of the night, exhausted, nervous, and unable to speak English.

We still had challenges ahead of us.

But for the first time, it felt like we weren’t just trying to survive in America anymore.

We were starting to build a future here.

And life was getting better for all of us.

Starting another school could have felt like starting all over again. But this time, things were different.

When we first arrived in Houston, almost everything around me felt unfamiliar. We didn't speak English, we didn't know many people, and even simple things like riding the school bus could turn into confusing situations.

Lewiston felt different.

I was still struggling with English, so I took ELL classes at school. I always tried to speak for myself first when talking to my teachers or other students. Sometimes I could get my point across, and sometimes I couldn't.

But when I got stuck, I wasn't alone.

There were plenty of students from my country who already knew English and could help translate for me. The school also had interpreters available when we needed them.

For the first time since coming to America, I was surrounded by people who understood where I came from.

There were many Somali and Kenyan students, along with students from other African countries. Because of that, making friends was much easier for me this time.

I didn't feel as lost.

Outside of school, things were getting easier for my family too.

We lived in a big apartment, and our neighbors were friendly. My family started meeting more people from our community, including many people from the same country as us.

That made a huge difference.

When you're thousands of miles away from the place you grew up, hearing familiar languages and being around people who understand your culture can make a strange place feel a little less strange.

Even my parents were adjusting more easily.

There was still one thing we had to get used to, though.

The Maine winter.

At first, the snow was tough for us. We had come from Kenya, then lived in Houston, Texas, and now suddenly we were living somewhere where snow was a normal part of life.

Eventually, though, we got used to it.

And getting to school meant experiencing plenty of that cold weather.

Every morning, we had to walk about 45 minutes to school.

I still remember one particular morning.

While we were walking to school, I saw an older lady from my country running down the street.

A dog was chasing her.

She was screaming like crazy and trying to get away from it.

I thought it was hilarious.

To understand why, you have to understand something about where I come from. A lot of people in my community were not comfortable around dogs, especially compared with Americans who often keep dogs inside their homes as pets.

That was actually one of the things that surprised me about America.

It seemed like almost every household had a dog or a cat.

Back home, I wasn't used to seeing people treat animals that way. So watching this lady running away from a dog while screaming at the top of her lungs was a moment I never forgot.

Looking back, those little moments were part of us adjusting to our new life.

Things that once seemed strange slowly became normal.

English was becoming easier.

I was making friends.

My parents were adjusting.

We had people from our community around us.

Even the snow didn't seem as strange anymore.

America was finally starting to feel more like home.

But that didn't mean I forgot where I came from.

I still missed my country. I still remembered the life we left behind, the people we knew, and the place where my childhood began.

Maybe that was the strange part about starting over.

America was becoming home, but Kenya was still home too.

And at 10 years old, I was beginning to understand that sometimes you can carry two homes inside you at the same time.

To be continued — Part 6

We were moving again.

Houston was the first place we called home after coming to America, but life there wasn't easy for my family. My parents still didn't speak English, and the language barrier made almost everything more difficult.

Finding jobs was hard. Transportation was another major problem because my parents didn't drive, and Houston was a big city where getting around without a car wasn't easy.

It was also expensive for a large family like ours.

On top of all of that, we didn't really know many people. We didn't have a strong community around us that we could depend on when my parents needed help understanding something, filling out paperwork, finding work, or simply figuring out how life in America worked.

My parents had come to America hoping to build a better life for their children, but Houston was making that difficult.

Then they learned about a place that might give our family a better chance.

Lewiston, Maine.

We had family there, including one of my cousins. There was also a larger community of people from the same country as us who had already been living there for years.

For my parents, that was important.

There would be people who understood where we came from, spoke our language, and could help us communicate while we continued learning English.

So once again, we packed our belongings and got on an airplane.

This time, we flew from Houston to Portland, Maine.

When we landed in Portland, my cousin was waiting for us. He had brought one of his friends with him and an extra car because our family was too big to fit into just one.

From Portland, they drove us to Lewiston.

But Maine introduced us to something we had never experienced before.

Winter.

When we arrived, there was white stuff covering the ground everywhere.

None of us had ever seen snow before.

At first, we thought it was salt.

I still remember arriving at our new apartment and getting out of the car. Instead of going straight inside, I was curious about the white stuff covering the ground.

I bent down and touched it.

It was freezing cold.

That was the first time in my life I touched snow.

It might sound like a normal experience to someone who grew up around snow, but to me, it was completely new. I had grown up in Kenya and then spent my first months in America in Houston. Now I was standing outside in Maine during winter, trying to understand why the ground was covered in something cold and white.

It was another reminder of just how much my world had changed.

Our new home was an apartment on the second floor.

One of the first things that made us happy was discovering who lived downstairs.

They were people from the same country as us.

Unlike my family, they had already been living in America for quite a few years. They knew English well, understood how things worked, and knew how to get around.

Almost immediately, we had something in Maine that we didn't really have in Houston.

A community.

There were people who could translate for my parents when they needed help communicating. They could help with transportation, job applications, paperwork, and other things that were difficult to understand when you were new to the country.

For my parents, that support made a huge difference.

Lewiston was also easier for us to get around. More places were within walking distance, so my parents didn't have to depend on cars as much as they had in Houston.

The cost of living was more manageable too.

Eventually, both of my parents were able to find jobs.

That was a major change for our family.

With both of them working, our financial situation slowly began to improve. We also received assistance with things like housing, food, and health insurance while our family was getting established.

For the first time since arriving in America, it felt like my parents were beginning to find some stability.

While they were building a new life for our family, I had another challenge waiting for me.

A new school.

Again.

This time, I started fifth grade.

Walking into school in Maine was different from walking into fourth grade in Houston.

I still wasn't fluent in English, but I could understand much more than I could when I first arrived in America.

I could communicate.

I could have basic conversations.

And I wasn't completely lost anymore.

I started making good friends.

There were still a couple of students who made fun of me, just like I had experienced in Houston. But there was one major difference this time.

I could stand up for myself.

In Houston, when someone made fun of me, I didn't always have the English words to respond. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn't say it.

Now I could.

That might seem like a small accomplishment, but for me, it represented how much had changed in such a short amount of time.

Less than a year earlier, I had arrived in America unable to speak English.

I had struggled to understand my teachers.

I had started learning the alphabet while other kids my age were doing regular fourth-grade work.

I couldn't even understand why another student was asking me to move from his assigned seat on the school bus.

Now I was in fifth grade, making friends, understanding more of what people were saying, and beginning to speak for myself.

I still had a lot of English to learn.

My family still had challenges ahead of us.

But Maine felt different.

Houston had been the place where we first learned how difficult starting over could be.

Lewiston became the place where we finally started learning how to build a life.

At the time, I didn't know just how important Maine would become to my story.

I only knew that, for the first time since coming to America, this new place was beginning to feel like somewhere we could stay.

There was one other family from Kenya living near us. They had only arrived about two weeks before we did, so they barely knew English themselves. Still, those two weeks meant they knew more about America than we did.

We quickly connected with them.

They showed us around, explained some of the rules, and helped us understand what everyday life was like. Looking back, it is interesting to think about. They were newcomers themselves, but to us, they already felt experienced.

We had arrived in February, right in the middle of the school year. My parents knew they needed to get us enrolled quickly. Despite not speaking English themselves and still trying to understand how everything worked, they managed to complete the process within about a week.

The following week, I started fourth grade.

I was nine years old, in a new country, going to a new school, and I couldn't speak English.

I was terrified.

My first lesson about American school actually happened before I even made it into the classroom.

On my first morning, I got onto the school bus and found a seat. What I didn't know was that the students had assigned seats. Nobody had explained that to us.

So I sat in another student's seat.

The student came over and told me to move.

I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.

Instead of trying to explain—which I couldn't—I just sat there silently and pretended like I didn't understand him.

Technically, I wasn't pretending very much. I really didn't understand.

Eventually, he went to the bus driver. She came over and told me to move too. Again, I stayed silent and didn't move.

In my nine-year-old mind, I was thinking, Why should I move? I sat here first.

The whole idea of an assigned bus seat didn't make any sense to me.

The bus driver eventually told the other student to sit somewhere else, and I could tell from her face that she was angry with me.

I thought the situation was over.

It wasn't.

The incident was reported to the school. My parents were contacted, I was written up, and somehow, after just one day of school in America, I received a one-day suspension.

So I attended my first day of American school and couldn't even return for my second.

That was my introduction to the American education system.

When I returned, another reality became clear.

Although I was officially a fourth-grade student, I couldn't do the same work as the other fourth graders because I didn't know English. While my classmates were taking regular fourth-grade courses, I sometimes had to learn alongside kindergartners and first graders.

It was embarrassing.

I was nine years old, but I had to start with the alphabet, counting in English, basic words, and eventually putting sentences together.

I knew I wasn't less intelligent than the other students. But when you can't understand the language everyone around you is speaking, it can make you feel that way.

And some students made sure I felt different.

There was one girl in my homeroom who constantly made fun of me. She would make comments about my clothes, my accent, and the country I came from. She would try to embarrass me in front of other students.

At first, I tried to ignore her.

Then she started doing it everywhere.

At that point in my life, I didn't have the English vocabulary to stand up for myself. I couldn't argue with her or explain how her words made me feel. I couldn't respond the way I wanted to.

Eventually, I had enough.

One day, we got into a fight.

We both ended up suspended from school for a week.

Getting into that fight wasn't something to be proud of, but I still remember it clearly today. I remember how it felt to have someone repeatedly try to make me feel like I was less than everyone else simply because of where I came from.

I didn't yet have the words to defend myself.

So unfortunately, I reacted in the only way my nine-year-old self knew how.

Thankfully, not everyone treated me that way.

I became good friends with our neighbor's daughter. She knew more English than I did, so whenever I needed help communicating or understanding something, I would go to her. She became my translator and someone I could depend on while I was learning.

And I learned fast.

For the first few months, English felt like a wall between me and everyone else. But little by little, that wall started coming down.

The alphabet became words.

Words became sentences.

Sentences became conversations.

By June, only a few months after arriving in America, I could communicate with other students much better. I was progressing quickly in school, and I no longer felt as lost as I had during those first few weeks.

Then the school year ended.

While my siblings and I were learning how to survive school, my parents were facing struggles of their own.

Neither of them spoke English. They also didn't drive, which made life in a city as large as Houston extremely difficult. Getting to work, taking their children places, shopping, and handling basic responsibilities became complicated.

The opportunities my parents had come to America searching for were here, but reaching those opportunities was another challenge entirely.

We would only live in Houston for about eight months, but those months became my first real introduction to life in America.

When I think back to that fourth-grade girl now, I don't remember her simply because we got into a fight.

I remember what the experience represented.

I had arrived in America unable to speak English. I was learning the alphabet while children my age were doing fourth-grade work. I wore different clothes. I spoke differently. I came from a country many of my classmates knew little about.

For a while, those differences made me an easy target.

But they didn't define what I was capable of.

Within months, the boy who couldn't understand why he had to move from a seat on the school bus was beginning to speak English and communicate with his classmates.

I still had a long way to go.

And just when Houston was beginning to feel a little more familiar, my family's journey was about to take us somewhere new.

By then, our family had grown. Just three months before we left, my baby sister, Fathi, was born. She was the newest and youngest member of our family. My parents were now preparing to take all of us, including a three-month-old baby, to a country none of us had ever seen.

Our journey did not begin at an airport. It began with a bus ride from our village to Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. Before we left, some of our cousins came to say goodbye. Everyone knew this was not an ordinary farewell. We were not simply traveling for a short visit. We were leaving behind our relatives, our home, and the only life we had ever known.

The goodbye was especially emotional for my mother. I could see how difficult it was for her to leave the people she loved. My father did not show his feelings as openly. It was hard to tell exactly what he was thinking, but I had a feeling that he was emotional too. He was probably trying to remain strong so he could keep the rest of us together.

After saying goodbye, we traveled by bus to Nairobi, where we stayed for about a week. Everything must have felt uncertain to my parents. They were responsible for taking a large family across the world while also caring for a newborn baby. Looking back now, I understand how much courage that required.

Then the day of our first flight finally arrived.

Surprisingly, we were no longer focused on the sadness of saying goodbye. Fear had taken its place. None of us had ever been to the United States, and we had no idea what was waiting for us. Where would we sleep that night? What kind of food would we eat? What kind of people lived there? Would we be safe? Would we be accepted?

During the flight, most of us were silent. Maybe the only person who was not quiet was my three-month-old sister. My mother looked especially worried and afraid. At the time, I was too young to understand everything she was carrying inside her. Now I realize she was leaving behind everything familiar while trying to protect and comfort all of her children.

After a long journey, we landed in Houston, Texas, around midnight. Everyone was exhausted. All we wanted was to take a shower and go to sleep. We had finally reached America, but arriving did not mean that our worries had disappeared. In many ways, a new set of struggles was just beginning.

None of us spoke English, so even simple communication was difficult. We could not easily ask questions, understand directions, or explain what we needed. Imagine arriving in a completely new country late at night and not being able to understand the people around you. It made everything feel more confusing and frightening.

The weather in Houston was not the biggest adjustment because it felt somewhat similar to the weather in Kenya. Other parts of American life, however, felt completely different. The towns, roads, and homes seemed huge and spread far apart. In Kenya, family and community were important parts of everyday life. In America, people appeared to value independence and personal space much more.

I also noticed how quickly people moved. Everyone seemed to be rushing somewhere and organizing life around work and strict schedules. Strangers might smile or start a friendly conversation in a store, but building deep friendships took much longer. Making friends was especially difficult because we did not speak English.

Food was another challenge. We were used to the meals and flavors we had grown up with in Kenya. American food looked and tasted different, and it took time for us to adjust. Even eating, something that should have felt simple and familiar, became another reminder that we were far from home.

Transportation surprised me too. America had wide roads and so many cars, but walking from place to place was difficult. Many areas did not have the type of public transportation we needed, and everything seemed too far away to reach on foot. Having a car appeared to be necessary for everyday life.

America offered the opportunities my parents wanted for us, but starting over was not easy. We had left behind our relatives, language, culture, food, and sense of belonging. We arrived with hope, but we also carried fear and uncertainty.

At nine years old, I did not yet understand how much this move would shape me. I was about to enter a new school without knowing English, try to make friends in an unfamiliar culture, and slowly learn how to live between two different worlds.

Our flight had landed, but our real journey in America was only beginning.

I grew up in a large family with three brothers and three sisters. I was the middle child, which meant I was surrounded by siblings older and younger than me. Our home was often busy and crowded, but it was filled with family. We didn’t have much money, and there were times when even basic needs, such as food and school, were difficult to afford.

As a child, I did not fully understand why life was so hard. I only knew that we could not always have the things other families had. Going to school was not something we could take for granted. Food was also not guaranteed every day. These struggles made me grow up faster and appreciate even the smallest things.

My father was a hardworking farmer. He owned chickens, goats, and camels, and he worked hard to provide for our family. Farming was not easy or predictable. The animals needed constant care, and our family depended on what the land and livestock could provide. Even when my father was tired, he continued working because he knew seven children were depending on him.

My mother was the heart of our family. She was loving, strong, and always found a way to keep us going. Even when there was not enough food, she did her best to make sure we were cared for. I now understand that she probably carried worries she never shared with us. She protected us from many of the fears and difficulties she was facing herself.

Growing up poor was painful, but it taught me lessons that I still carry today. It taught me not to waste what I have. It taught me that a person can be rich in love even when they have very little money. Most importantly, it showed me how much parents are willing to sacrifice for their children.

At the time, I did not know that my life would eventually change completely. I did not know that I would leave Kenya and move to the United States when I was nine years old. I could not have imagined how different America would be—or the new struggles and opportunities waiting for me there.

This is only the beginning of my story. In Part 2, I will share more about leaving Kenya, arriving in America, and what it felt like to begin a new life in a completely different world.

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