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23 The moment Augustine Neto landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, he knew he was far from the tropical and warm climate of his birth home in Nairobi, Kenya. It was January 2011 and the dead of winter, and his connecting flight to Tampa, where he was first planning on settling, was grounded due to inclement weather.
“The flight ended up being grounded for three days straight,” Neto said. “At that time, I wasn’t prepared in terms of winter clothing as I was under the impression my final destination would be Tampa.”
Fortunately for Neto, he had friends living in Manhattan at the time who agreed to pick him up and save him from a three-day sleep-in at the airport.
23 Abdirahman Abdalla was around seven years old when he went to his mother’s first-cousin’s wedding in Rochester, Minnesota. It was a sunny July day, and around 30-40 close family and friends gathered in his cousin’s home to celebrate the union. Clad in whites and creams with reddish-orange stripes, men wore suits and women wore the dirac, a traditional dress for formal occasions. Abdalla remembers watching his mother and other women performing traditional dances while joyful guests offered excited gestures of encouragement. He also wore a suit, which annoyed him because his little cousins were around at the time playing Twister, and it’s difficult to play Twister in a suit. After the wedding, everyone went outside where there was cake, and Abdalla remembers the entire scene as a really great time. In fact, as an American born first-generation Somali-American, Somali weddings are one of his favorite cultural traditions.