 Hi, my name is Ann Smith and I'm here with the CEO and co-founder of Project Bizia, and he's sitting right over here, Anthony Bizia, and we have a special guest today. This young lady's name is Adirak Orem, but nobody ever calls her that. We call her Tutu, and I think your family calls you Tutu, and that's a lot easier to remember. We're here today to talk about cultural change and how difficult it is for immigrants to come to a new country and find that everybody is living certain ways, and sometimes very subtle things that they don't notice right away. We're going to talk particularly about gender roles, how gender roles change when you move to a different culture, and how this can be difficult for the family to deal with. But I'm going to ask Tutu to talk first, and Tutu, where were you born? I was born in Cartoon Uganda. In Cartoon Sudan, right? No, it's in Uganda. Oh, okay. And what's your birthday? February 26, 2002. Okay, and so you lived there until you were about three years old, and then you came to the United States. Do you remember much about living there? I remember how the houses were like, they were different from the houses here. They were unique, and they were hand-built, and they meant a lot, because you build them yourselves. What did people build them out of, whatever they could find? Different people built them out of different things. Some people, I guess, used bricks. Some people used mud. Some people used straw. They were all different. But the whole family, the parents and the children, would gather the things and build the house together. So the house was really your house. It was a home. I mean, Americans buy a house, and I guess we make it ours by what we put inside, and when we paint it and things like that. But it's not quite the same as building it. So you think the people there had a really close connection to their house. Yeah. What else do you, anything else you remember? No. No, okay. Now, you're from a particular tribe that lives in Uganda and in Sudan, I know, or South Sudan now, the Acholi tribe, which is a sort of medium-sized tribe. Your first language is Acholi. Can you say hello to me? Ni-ning. Ni-ning? Ni-ning. Okay. How old were you when you learned English? When you started, you told me you don't remember learning English, but you must have been about what? Five, I think. Five or so? Yeah. Okay. And your English is very good. And I asked you another question the other day, I asked you what language you think you think in. Yeah. And you said? Both. Both you think. Okay. How was your childhood growing up here different from the childhood of other American kids? Because you've been here since you were three, so you have a lot of American friends, I'm sure, especially once you started school. How do you think it's different growing up as an Acholi girl in a family of four and growing up as an American girl in a family of four? How's it doing? Well, I feel like I am more responsible and mature than my friends because by the time I was nine, I already knew how to clean the house and in my household, you're responsible for your things, you're responsible for your room, and everything pretty much always has to be clean. But I feel like at my friend's house. My American friend's house. They rely on their parents to do that for them, so their parents cook for them, their parents clean for them, and yeah, so they rely on their parents for almost everything. And you are again, how old are you? I'm 12 now. And I think that what you just said is probably very accurate. You are in many ways more responsible than most 12-year-olds that I taught when I taught public school. I mean, I'm always saying, how old are you? Right? And I think it's because you act more mature than an American child the same age, which is, I don't know, I think it's good, and it has some downsides, which we'll talk about in a minute. Were your parents tough on you compared to your American friends? I mean, what happens when your American friends don't get good grades or do something wrong? What do you think, compared to how you might have been disciplined by your parents? Well, we get our report cards, and then the next day, my friends will be like, oh, I got a long lecture about how I need to do better in math or something. But I would get disciplined differently, depending on if I did good or bad. I would get a good job or something like that. If you did well, yeah. But if I didn't do well, then they wouldn't show that they were disappointed, but I could tell they were disappointed, because they want the best for me, because they didn't get the chances that I got. And so, yeah. So part of that's discipline. But I think part of it also, in your family anyway, is that your mom and dad talk to you about the opportunities you have and how important an education will be for you, because they didn't have those same chances. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, yeah, Americans take a lot of things for granted. I'm going to say that very honestly. Not everybody, but many do. Now you have a brother, right? Do you think it's the same in your family for the way your brother is treated, and you are treated, or in general, with African families? Do you think the boys are treated differently than the girls? Yeah. I feel like my family, not just the people in my household, but all my families are close to ours. What's called extended family, yeah. I feel like they're all stereotypical. Like, to them, guys are just supposed to know how to fix their bike or fix the TV when it's broken. But the girls are supposed to know how to do the dishes and cook and clean. And yeah, I don't agree with it. Yeah, so you said that when you were, what, eight or nine, you were already cleaning the house and taking care of younger brothers. But your brother might not have been doing the same thing at that age, and he might still not be doing some of those things. No, he helps around and cleans sometimes. He's actually kind of used to it, because he lives with three other girls. Ah, okay. So he's outnumbered. Yeah. Okay, okay. But in general, in a larger extended African family, and I'm going to ask Bazia a little bit about that, too, in a minute. But you play sports now. You've played several different sports, and you play now on a team. There are a basketball team with both boys and girls. And supposedly now it's equal. But do you think when you're playing just with all kinds of kids, Americans, Africans, all kinds of kids, do you think the boys and the girls on the same team are treated the same way? No, there are two girls on the team, me and my other friend, Hayley. And if one of the boys have the ball and I'm open or Hayley's open and nobody else is open, it's just the two of us. They still won't pass to us, because they think, oh, they're girls, they're going to get the ball stolen for them, or they're going to lose control of the ball. They can't dribble like us, because we're boys and they're not even supposed to be here. They don't know how to play as well as us. They need to be on their own girl team with their own level. So the thing in the head is still there? Yeah. So they won't pass to you, even if you are open. They'll look around for a boy or their friend and pass to them, even if they would be better off passing to you. And yeah, they don't play fair, but there's nothing you can do. And you and I talked about this too a little while ago. I said, well, maybe we should just give up. There's something called Title IX that insisted that girl sports and boy sports be equal. And then in the last 10 or 15 years, they now have mixed teams much more often than they used to. So I said to them, well, maybe we should just go back to the old way, but you had a comment about that, an opinion. What do you think? Should we just put the girls on one team and the boys on the other and forget about this equality thing? No. No matter how many times they tell you that you're not as good as them, you still have to prove them wrong. Because just running away from the problems isn't going to make a difference. You have to show them that you are as good as them. And if you're not as good as them, then you have to show them that you're better than them. Ooh. And you just, yeah. You don't give up. No, don't give up. Thank you. We may come back to you, but I'd want everybody to remember what Tutu said, because I think it's a much deeper message than just about playing basketball. Bizia has been working closely with some of the adults in the South Sudanese community here. And he had a very interesting experience just in the last week with one group of people who were from South Sudan, the Zandi tribe. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about how that happened? It was planning a Christmas party, I believe, was what was happening. Yeah, it was kind of a small gathering in how to plan the party for Christmas. And one of the things, because according to the African culture, they almost put the lady to cover the food and other. But when I was there, I was just kind of listening to what is going on. And I think what has happened to me, I'm a man. I don't believe in a complaint, but I believe in, what's the next move? We can talk 10-hour, two-hour, but what's the next move? So I'd like to make idea of the manual of if you're doing a party, tradition supposed to be different food. But Christmas is something supposed to be like in the purpose of Christmas, how the family to be together. So since the lady said they can't even stand behind the onion or other, it was going over the limit. It's a lot of work, a lot of work. So I decided, we, like a man in the same meeting, we said, we're going to help, and we're going to try to eliminate the way they cook, because we don't want heavy food. We need everything light, or chicken light, or meat light, everything could be light, and to be in a small plate. So if, like I think you told me, that if this was a gathering to remember someone who had died, or a very important traditional celebration, there are certain foods that would have to be served. But this is an American Christmas party. Yeah, it does supposed to be in something light. What I'm concerned is they're for Jesus born to bring people together. And if you're bringing people together, then you don't want just the men and the children enjoying the food and the women going, oh, I'm so tired of peeling onions, right? I mean, that's the one other thing. And we try to take that idea of just the woman who cook, or who she, the one, do everything. And it was a good time, because the men shared to be cooked with the ladies, even in the kitchen, even to cut the onion. And it was good. And I'm hoping we're going to add more change in the society of South Sudanese in the general, because we're working on to take the idea of name of tribe, because it's still connected to those small things. And when we became a nation, we need to talk about what means became a nation. Because a tribe, I don't really buy in the way it is, but I'm proud to just say I'm from South Sudan. Only if you're going to ask me Pacific, according to South Sudan, have 10 instead, I think that would make more sense. Because at the same time, I feel like we limited ourselves. We try to be under kind of group. And when you see the passport, you don't see Asholi tribe. You don't see Zander tribe. You don't see Denka tribe. You don't see Muro tribe. They will say South Sudan. I think through this, what I'm doing, what I believe, I think we need to start raising a different expected. And there's one thing even myself, when you ask me, where are you from, I'll say from Africa. I don't go Pacific, because it doesn't make sense. But I think part of this, and you were telling me this not too long ago, that part of the problem is that some of the people have never been more than 10 miles from where they were born until they got on a plane and came here. In other words, the tribe, the village, the little small area they grew up in was all many of them knew. So to suddenly start seeing a state and then a country and then the whole world, it's a huge step. And I'm also looking into marriage. If you have a man and woman who come here married with three or four children, and the wife has always done the cooking, she's always done the cleaning, she's always done all these traditional things, you said to me it can't happen overnight. How is it going to change? How is the attitude between the men and the women and the families towards their children? How is it going to change? For me, if you think what I'm doing through the project and change have to be two people, the mother and the kids. And the mother, she's the one who all the time was a kid. And this is the one other thing through my project. You see I walk a lot of time with a young lady because maybe I can say example like Tutu right now. I'm trying to give her to be who she is, not what we want her to be. And another thing we need to talk about what we have in the back in the day. But the culture, he need to be updating. It cannot be 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we're going to just say, oh, that's the way it goes. No, time requires thinking and belief since South Sudan be starting off fighting or whatever since 1955 until 2005, South Sudan became a country. We need to be able to take the good part of what we went through and transit to this young generation. And it requires a lot of discussion. Discusses. Slow changes. Changes and you have to be open talking ideas, you know. And I don't want everybody to start talking about, I'm from South Sudan before you say, I'm from Asholi, I'm from Zande, I'm from Muir because when you go to the level of the national, you don't say, I'm Asholi. Even in your passport, they don't put Asholi, they put South Sudan. And I think that mean people start united. But what I see in the TV of South, they don't talk about united. United, you don't unite people just a word. You need to be practicing the visual. That's right. That's why the really change. And I want to close our little discussion today by asking you a question I forgot to ask you. When you're a parent, which I know is probably long down the road, are you going to raise your children the same way you were raised with that much responsibility when they were little? What's the downside of that? Yes, actually, because I feel like it prepares you for things in the future and there's only so much you can teach your children. And then one day they're off on their own. Yes, you're right. And you have to do the best you can do. And I think that you, it's good to start early. So if I can teach my daughter to ride a bike at only age four, then I'm gonna do it. If I can teach my son how to do the dishes at age seven, then I'm gonna do it. Good. And your dream, I'd like to share that as a closing note. What is your dream? What do you want to do when you go to college and then get an education? I want to be a surgeon. A surgeon, wow. Special kind, I think you told me. Either a brain surgeon or a cosmetic surgeon. Cosmetic surgeon? Yes. Oh, okay. Wow, that's a terrific career. I wish you a lot of luck. Thank you. I'm Ann Smith, speaking for Project Bazeer. Thank you very much.