Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
My name is Nuriya Mukoma and I'm originally from Kenya. My Family and I moved to the United State when I was 6 year old. We were brought here through the immigration services. We are very lucky to be in the United State as you should know not everyone in Africa was brought to America. It was sort of a lottery pick. (Click image above to read entire story)
Hamida (in the pink) is the fashion expert in the neighborhood. She makes beautiful, colorful dresses, hijabs, and jalabibs for the other Somali women. Her skill and understanding of the sewing machine is uncanny! As we’ve watched her with the machines, we have wondered if there is a secret engineer inside of her. (Click picture above to read entire story)
Most of us have felt the angst of the job hunt. How much more for the refugee, new to our country, with no network to tap into or understanding of our work culture? Most of them really want to work as it is a source of dignity and a good step toward self-sufficiency. Thankfully there is a business in Denver that has changed their entire work culture in order to help their refugee-employees thrive! (Click image above to read full story)
Rakia’s story is one of deep sadness. She lost 6 children to hunger and sickness while in Africa. One of those children, a toddler, died in her arms while traveling from Somalia to Kenya. Soldiers looking for money or jewelry realized she had none and cut off the child’s foot. He bled to death before she reached the refugee camp. (Click image above to read the whole story)
When I first moved here, going to school was difficult. Kids were very mean to me. They teased me, stared at me and asked weird questions. They asked if I had hair under my hijab (they thought I was bald)! They asked me if I ate from the trash in Africa. They called me a rainbow because of all the bright colors I wore. (Click image above to read the whole story)
In America, everyone knows their birthday, but I don’t know mine. I guess there wasn’t a calendar readily available to my mom when I was born in the refugee camp in Kenya. Maybe that makes me different from other teenagers, but I have lots of similarities to them too. I like to drink coffee and hang out with my friends. (Click image above to read the whole story)
I have scars on my arm from a door I got caught in when I was young in the refugee camp. It’s’ the one thing I remember from our time there. But I have an even more painful scar on my memory from a day a couple of years ago here in America. My cousin and I were standing at the bus stop, just waiting, when an older woman came up to me and started screaming! (Click image above to read the whole story)
