 Thanks so much for being here. I'm Sarah Campbell. I'm the executive director of Portland Public Library and we're just so glad to have this turnout today and this opportunity to have a conversation with Ethan Strimling and Abdi Norvden who are our special guests today. Just wanted to take a minute to say, I don't know whether is it better close or Can you hear me? Okay, in between. Okay First off, I just want to draw your attention to the fact that this is part of our literary lunches and we have some flyers at the back that have some of our upcoming literary lunches on them. These are very exciting. We do them all as dialogues now, which has turned out to be a really great format. Also, we have a special spotlight series and we have one tomorrow evening, Thursday evening with Rick Russo, Richard Russo and Monica Wood having a conversation together. So I hope that you'll consider coming back and joining us for that. Two very strong local favorites. For the literary lunch series, we have fantastic partners and I ask you to join me in thanking Coffee by Design for providing our refreshments and our long-time partner Longfellow Books right across the square who have books here. So huge thank you to Ari. Ari has books, has Abdi's book here for sale and Abdi will be staying after to sign copies and to have a chance to meet you and we're especially grateful to Longfellow because you share 10% of the cost of the book with the library as a donation and part of our partnership. Twenty! Today it's twenty! Thirty? No, we want Longfellow Books to be good and strong. Well, this is a particularly important conversation today, certainly very timely as we in Portland strive to be a safe welcoming and very productive diverse city, and so we're thrilled to have the opportunity to talk so closely with with Abdi and Ethan. Just want to introduce Ethan, although he may need very little introduction. He is the current mayor of Portland and he was a former state senator for six years and we're especially glad to have Ethan having this conversation with Abdi because of all of his work directly supporting the experience of the immigrant and refugee population here in Maine and the greater Portland area. Prior to becoming mayor, Ethan was CEO of LearningWorks, which is a nonprofit organization that provides opportunities for the immigrant and refugee community and other underserved communities at-risk youth and low-income families and the mayor has also supported a number of endeavors to build integration and to bring our immigrant and refugee neighbors into the political life in our city. So just briefly, oh, yes, here and here is Ethan Strindland and just quickly, Abdi Norifton arrived in Portland and here's Abdi arrived in Portland in August of 2014 from a refugee life in Kenya and as he describes it, he became a permanent resident and not a refugee anymore. Abdi, yeah. Abdi works as an interpreter for the Somali community who have immigrated to the state and he was accepted to the University of Southern Maine where he will soon be studying political science. So Abdi, welcome, Ethan. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much for having us and for hosting this event today. This is a I hope to be very informative conversation, but also informal and hopefully you and I all get to know each other a little better, but most importantly I hope everyone here gets to know you quite a bit more and I hope you all buy his book before you leave. I think it's really important to support the kinds of efforts. It's a beautiful book. I will say up front. I didn't get all the way through it but I've read most of it and it's a beautifully written and just tells a remarkable story, so thank you very much. It's not gonna be boring. It will not be boring. You'll be hanging on the edge of your seat for quite a bit of it. So I want to dive in. We'll get to the book a little bit, but I think it's important to sort of talk a little bit about some current events that have been happening. Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld a travel ban that the President Trump had put into place. You had some very strong statements about that. I think it's very related to the book that you wrote. Your statement was the White House betrayed my American dream and makes me feel the America, feel that America is no longer the exceptional nation for everyone. Very strong statement and I'm wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on that a little bit why you made the statement and how you feel about it. So I can elaborate that sentence that the mayor has just read. So in the eyes of millions of people out there that are not in the United States, what makes America great is the exceptionalism of America, the reception of America, the democracy, the tolerance, the freedom that America provides and the opportunities. And I will tell you why these things that I just mentioned which are great characteristics of America had saved my life. So I grew up in a war zone where you're just surrounded by destruction and militias and everything else, but somehow watching American films, American movies actually gave me some hope where like I realized you know out there, there's a life even though you know it's a movie. But somehow you realize that this connects you to a life that is not exactly what's happening in Somalia. So at this point I created myself from the guy who was running all over the place bare feet, hangry, into an American and I asked my friends at that age you know to call me American. So at this point the feeling that I had in my heart that one day I wasn't quite sure 100% if it would ever happen but I convinced myself one day I would be able to move out to the land of the free. And then what happened? Because of this feeling that I had because of this inspiration that went into my heart got me completely not do what was going on in the city because there was a gilded soldier you know people were recruited into the army and then by 2006 a group of Slamis come all over the place and they have been demonizing America. So to go back to the question this is a gift a really good gift and it makes the groups like ISIS and Qaeda, Taliban or al-Shabaab which is in Somalia it makes them so happy to hear this administration doing with what it's doing and it just shows them wherever they are you know in Syria and Somalia and Yemen it shows the communities that they are oppressing to say like this is what I told you America is a hostile place it's an enemy and you see that today the president of the United States is saying this and somehow they're trying to convince that this is not a ban on anything else but a Muslim. So the image it weakens the image of America it strengthens the image of America's enemy that's why I'm saying this is a betrayal to my American dream because the America that I moved to was the America that I wanted to find a shelter peace and prosperity away from recruitment into this type of group and now what what this the White House is doing today is completely counter to what I've always believed they're just trying to encourage and kill the hearts and hopes and dreams of those young generation that are living out there exactly through going through the same things that I was that I was going through they probably have dreams they probably are watching movies as we speak now but unfortunately they don't believe that they're going to be coming to the US because of the ban and what else what other options do they have so this is an opportunity for for ISIS or al-Shabaab or Boko Haram to go around and say look you don't have any other option so you're stuck with us so you you know you need to be part of us so that's my reaction to the travel ban it's not going to make America great again it weakens America's image backstage when we were talking just before we came out you mentioned that a lot of people that you're working with in the Somali community that many are actually now going back to Somalia choosing that that life is perhaps better than the life that they experienced in coming to the United States or coming to Maine do you think that this travel ban is adding to that feeling that people want to go back to your home country or is there something greater can you walk us through a little bit about why you think people now are actually making the choice to go home opposed to staying here and making this their future so the the people are are tired and exhausted from um I was telling the mayor a few minutes ago I interpret for someone who had been in the US for 20 years and I was here three years and 10 months and somehow my my English is from the movies right well thanks to commandos on terminators you know I would and uh I'm gonna ask you about that in a minute because I want to understand not many people say they watch Schwarzenegger movies and that makes them want to go to America so I'm gonna I want to ask a little bit about that but first tell us why people are going back so well they say I sound better than Aaron Schwarzenegger which is good um so people are moving out mostly because in the first place they came to the United States seeking peace and stability so somehow they have been here even though they become citizens 20 years a long time or have green cards but people have been here temporarily they didn't believe that he is home and the reason for that is the fear uh and I want to teach you a little bit about Somalia Somalia is a homogenous community one language one culture we all look like so so in this case um even throughout the civil war people are smiling they're tracing they're just going to places as long as you can afford uh something to eat so what people are doing today is they have been in the US for 20 years it doesn't matter if you clean hotels or walk up Walmart or graduated from college they put together some money and they're able to go back in the saver areas of Somalia and Somalia has uh it's a semi desert it's dry but specifically in the north people are moving back there because somehow it doesn't have a lot of presence of of Al Shabaab but in this case the ordinary people that live in the environment in the area are tired of the war and they're looking for uh something better you know they're not interested in in the war anymore and they have they have been seeing this for 27 years as we speak so people are moving back realizing that um the life here is going to continue and Somalia is not changing so somehow they believe that they can be part of the change so what they're doing is they're investing their money flying back home and building structures you know some uh I know some people who built uh hospitals and you can you can do that with $3,000 which is not a lot if you work um several hours in in the united states for several months so you can put together that money and then moving back on somehow they're just investing you know that money and helping the communities that are in there I agree at some point and again I disagree because if you see me I'm not really here temporarily I moved to the U.S. on a flight one night for those of you who heard this American life piece um how many people heard that piece oh wow that's a good number okay so there was a piece on this American life a podcast called Abden the Golden Ticket when I left Somalia I said I'm not gonna come back and then I left Kenya as a refugee and I said I'm not gonna come back and I came to the U.S. and I said I'm not going nowhere so with this election or whatever happened now and people American saying I'm gonna move to Canada you know I just give them this funny look it's like it's up to you I'm not crossing into any border so I'm here and he's not the king he's gonna be living soon so um to so that's that's why I think people are moving back somehow and it's also related to the kids you have kids here in American schools they only teach one language which is English so somehow the kids are growing up in this environment where assimilation is a word that people don't like actually who agrees with me most immigrant communities agree with me assimilation actually means leaving behind your heritage and everything else and completely melting into into America and becoming an American so look at all these white people your grandfathers or if you go back like three generations where do they come from Scotland other places and now you have an American accent and who are you you're an American so somehow today's immigrants don't really want to go through that we're living in an age where flights are easy you can leave from here 20 hours you're in Africa so people want to connect stay connected to their countries and specifically a country like Somalia which if you look 27 years of war it seems like we're going to the same root of Palestine if you look at the map today you're not going to see Palestine at all so we're somehow going that way where we feel like Ethiopia is pushing its borders towards us Kenya is pushing its borders towards us and we have the largest sea coastline and people are coming fishing and dumping their stuff in there and then what's going to happen so it creates some fear in the people and me thinking about this you know this kind of thing I'm like well I can do something so I can be the two of them so I was thinking a word called salad instead of melting pot you know the melting pot like will you melt but then the salad it has all the ingredients the tomato and cucumber and all of these things and then the tracing and what happens it's delicious I like that yeah I would I think actually that what has made America as great as it is is that the immigrants in the past have actually not given up their own identity still very connected to who they are and that they make our culture stronger and deeper I think it has built what has made the parts of America that are great is that people don't melt that they become the salad so thank you for that imagery so so let's get to the book a little bit I listened to a bunch of the interviews that people had everybody always asks and I feel like I should ask it here because I think your response has been really important for people to recognize why did you write the book what is the what what started you down that path Tony Morrison famously has said when somebody asked her why did you write your first book she said I wrote it because I wanted to read it and that I needed to see it so I could read it and that was her way of communicating whatever it was and she was happy that others wanted to share on that story as well so I guess I would ask you why did you write this book in America you have thousands of authors thousands of books and American like in Maine only there's like hundreds of authors like everyone wrote a book but in my in my community in the immigrant community I'm so honored to be part of the few the minority people who thought of putting the stories that they have into words so that other people can read and this is something that could help other than me going all over the place and talking to people so that's what I what I did before I wrote the book I got I was on the radio I did a citizen journalism when I was in Mogadishu I talked to MBR and I realized that people have so much they're craving for for more they they want to hear more and the day that I decided to write this book was when this American life episode went on air and I received thousands of messages from everywhere saying like this was amazing and then I said that's only a little bit of the story I know some of you guys are asking why call me American I'm not American yet right I'm this funny immigrant guy who just came in and waiting for another year to become to become a citizen but let me tell you this today as we speak the take a moment and think about this what does it feel like to become a combination of a Somali a Muslim an immigrant a refugee a diversitive is a lottery winner a person of color these are the scary things that you can hear on the media today especially with with the White House that we have on the the Europeans pushing bad immigrants so I am a combination of six things that I just mentioned um and my book is not called call me Somali it's not called call me immigrant it's not called call me um call me a refugee or a diversity lottery winner this is a a book of a fundamental human desire for freedom independence and most importantly safety and peace so if you if you read this book you will you will realize why what they're saying today against immigrants that um you know the moving population of today from everywhere except the US and Canada everyone else is you know on the move except some countries in Europe we are not rabies this we're not insects infestations what did he call us so many things um you realize they have humanity and the desire that we have for countries like the United States which in uh in our eyes is an exceptional place where you know uh if we go through risks and determination we're going to be able to make the dream come true that's exactly my story and that's why I wrote this book to just explain that we're not here to steal or to take anything from the US government I will tell you this I came to the country as a diversity winner not as a refugee which is a funny thing that's a that's a fight I felt so hard because I couldn't come to the US as a as a you know as a refugee I wasn't allowed to the government United States embassy was not calling me for an interview and they were not doing it they only bring in nine percent of the entire 25 million refugees out there and then the rest of the like over 90 percent of these refugees are living in the neighboring countries like uh middle class or low-income countries like Kenya so what did I do I applied for the lottery and somehow the US State Department we're just wondering who the hell is this guy you know this refugee blaze a green card lottery and he wins and what are we supposed to do with this guy you know and this is a time when Somalia was under the um countries of terrorism the US has considered anyone who comes out of that place has a red flag on them specifically if you're a young man and have no wife and no kids and I had a heart but my physical appearance looked like to them as a church as an al-Shaba because if you look at the uh seven or eight Somalis who attacked the mall in Kenya and these uh cameras call them they all look like us you know when I was growing up as a child I thought that all Americans look like but they probably have the same feeling but um I just wrote this book as a response to say that you were wrong to just wonder who I was this is who I am I am an American because you yeah you don't you don't have to to be born in the US to be American you can be American anywhere and what does what does that mean to you being an American so it can mean many things but to me to be American means to be um someone who has an identity do you know that refugees don't have identity seriously we don't I mean I'm Somali I don't have a birth certificate so when the refugees they all put down January 1 for all of us because we don't have identity with us uh refugee idea is not something that you can get on a flight and go somewhere uh Somali password doesn't exist so I grew up in this environment so to me it's an identity I uh that's what America means to me I came in landed in logon airport and I was wondering if the gravitation felt the same but it looked same like Africa you know um and uh they took my fingerprints and a week later my green card had arrived in the house and you can't imagine my sponsoring family's here tonight I was running all over the place you know felt like Ray nobody's gonna do anything to me right now even though that had changed lately but that was the feeling I had so do you not feel and by the way I didn't know your family is here where are they here on Natalia oh great thank you very much for all you've done so do you not consider yourself Somali or how does that part of your identity still still be part of how is that still part of you that's a very good question my friends argue with me and I still have my childish attitude when I was so young I denied Somalia I denied the tribes and everything else and I called myself American so um no I um I am Somali and I have not abandoned Somalia not at all because part of me is still in Somalia uh my mother is there my sister she has kids and I'm financially responsible for doing that um I can't go back at all it's dangerous um and they're leaving in in in the war zone um and there's I mean so I don't know what's gonna happen in the future but this is the feeling that I have for now um with through all the uh difficult life that I have had in the past so to me it's like a relaxation period now where like I just want to tell myself I'm American and that's something important to mention first because I can't say I'm not American I'm Somali I can't say I'm not Somali I'm American I can be both so that's where I am right now and you um and just uh from our process so everybody knows well I'll ask a few more questions for the next 10 minutes or so and then we want to open it up to you so if you have questions give you an opportunity to ask Abdi directly what it is that um you may have um you talk a little bit obviously not just a little bit but quite a bit in the book sort of um can you talk about the moment of arrival and getting here and the expectation of what you expected to feel and how the reality of what you felt met that expectation and then I want to talk about a few years later how you're feeling about that expectation versus what you're feeling but at the moment I just like people to hear a little bit about the moment after the incredible journey you had to go through in which you were clearly focused on this is where you wanted to be and you arrived can you talk a little bit about what that what that was like I arrived in late 2014 and that uh it was August 11 the the evening that I landed and that that evening um a young black man was was killed by by a white officer I think in Missouri and his name was uh Michael Brown and I was I was in the terminal at the airport and it was all over the breaking news and um it was an introduction to America to me welcome to the United States and on top of that the you know when you when you come to to the country they ask you to uh to mention if you are a Caucasian or Asian or Latino or black and African like African that kind of thing so they give me that form to fill and I was standing there for 15 minutes wondering who I was and uh and then someone helped me and they said well you're black or African-American so I ticked that so what does that show you I've never identified myself my immigrant friends can share that as well but where we come from we could identify ourselves either tribes or ethnicity or something like that but not the skin color that we have so that was another surprise to me it was like I thought Eddie Murphy and uh you know and Denzel Washington were like uh everybody else you know Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis I mean they're not different that's the feeling that you have when you watch the movies and that's the feeling the feeling that I had when I came to the US and I'm like you can be anybody else you know you can be side by side with this person and you don't have you know to mention your thing but I realized that's not the reality and um funny thing I ended up in Maine one of the widest estates in the country I ended up in Yarmouth specifically I haven't seen any diversity in the area so walking around you know and the thing and I found this insulation job that I was doing and you know you look rough and all that stuff and you know just walking around so we had to tell everyone don't call 911 on this guy he's he's with us you know he's in the he's in the area and then people got to know me and so nothing had happened but that was actually to me the shock of America we're like where are these guys Cravers where's the madness where's the police chasing the tags you don't see that movement that you see in the movies you see this quietness and a little bit of privacy but I didn't give up now I eat apple pies steaks burgers American food and I eat a traditional meal um and the good thing about America is that like you can go to any restaurant um so it's it's a mix of both like how America has introduced me to some African nations that I would never meet like I haven't met a Congolese a Nigerian in Somalia in my entire life I haven't seen them so to me it was a surprise to be in the line behind this guy at Boston when I landed and I I thought he was African-American at some point and he just gave me this African accent I'm from Nigeria and I said oh wow great nice to see you and then we talked a little bit so yeah it's actually America is multi more than multicultural than I thought if you ever come to back home where we play soccer you can see at least 15 language being spoken all over the place and people communicate in their native language and we hang out we play and it's a tough game but then at the end of the day it's a handshake you know I'm saying all right have a good evening and then next day we come together so somehow I found an identity of America but a multicultural America and America that gives me some wonderful friends friends that do not accept to me only because of the sameness of believing in what they believe but America that's interested in the difference that I have people ask questions like what is it like what do you eat what's your music like what's the mosque like so I I was really surprised in that part of America where like the white people that were born in Maine are so much interested in knowing about my culture and my music and my life in the past so somehow that gave me a funny feeling we're like okay wow great you know people are so much open to this and then there's the other part was like the this tribe I walked with the insulation who called their wives all the ladies who can't say lobster they say lobster I mean I'm not trying to say anything about the main accent but this was this was a tribe that I worked with and I was I was the one out like sitting in the track and it's called outside and they're smoking inside and I was like wondering what's going on you know and I told the boss can you send me to work with someone who's not doing anything that they're doing and he said well you're the only one you know and so that was another America to me how some America is actually uneducated doing drags and being arrested and missing some teeth and have tattoos all over their bodies that was yeah that was actually something else it you know just reminded me how I have to explain Africa itself even though I don't I'm not an expert in Africa because I've never been out of eastern Africa I've never gotten in the you know in the central or anywhere else but then they asked me like you know how the monkeys or how the elephants and and somehow I have to say like you know I grew up in the Civil War so I haven't seen any elephants at all you know so and so tell us share with us a little bit about how America has met what you expected it to be and the ways that it has failed in meeting what you expected it growing up you had this we don't shoot people up out of helicopters the way Schwarzenegger does most of the time but you know you really had this dream to be here very young nickname all of that and you got here and now you've been here for a while can you reflect for us a little bit on both how we have met what it is that you were hoping for what you expected to feel that freedom and in the ways that perhaps we have come up short I have a chapter in the book called English to Arab Arabic to English which is a funny part my mom wanted me to be a chef someone who grows the bird and wears the Islamic dress and becomes a permanent mosque goer and someone who's dedicated because that was at the time the fashion in Mogadishu because people believed that we're in the Civil War because God was angry with us so my mom was part of the community that believed the same thing she said oh in the 80s and 70s we had nightclubs music and white people in bikinis running all over the place so I think God is angry with us for that to happen now we need to reconstruct our identity so that peace can come and she always prayed for an Islamic state which actually eventually her prayer was answered and it became al shaba but what did I do I protested I said mom no that's not the way I'm going I see something else so I taught myself English by watching all these movies and I believed that America is the answer to to my desperation at the time some things have changed America is you know kind that's not have this the feeling that I had at some point you know we're like if if you're not here if you are somewhere else and you have never been to the U.S. the feeling of the word in Somali called Bofis which is a longing a need a desperate need to get to America and just have an ice cream it's just heaven that's it you don't need to go to school just stay there and have ice cream I had I went to Ben and Jerry's a lot this place called Gifords in Yarmouth and many other places and I had their ice cream and now I feel like you know I have had enough so let me take a break you know so so there's there's a little bit of fatigue that I feel from the energy that I had as young but then there's the other America that I got myself into which is like look ahead of you look to the future what are you gonna stay at college and what do you want to do and then there's all these opportunities that I wake up every morning thinking I'm gonna do something but I don't remember one day in Somalia or Kenya where I woke up thinking I'm gonna do something I you know I was like the cops are gonna come today and they will take you that was the feeling in Kenya and in Somalia it's like you're not gonna come back home a bullet is gonna go through your head or an explosion or a roadside bomb but the the feeling here something I actually honestly I say thanks to God every morning when I wake up feel like wow you know nobody's out there who's gonna have point their gamb points of my head nobody's gonna blow me up so I have some sort of you know waking up and half plans you go to work or you go to meeting or you go hang out with friends or the coffee and isn't that something amazing no it's it's few things that you take for granted the few things that American it's a privilege that so many Americans take for granted but to us you might find me walking around going to the coffee and I just enjoy that one minute of walk you know it just feels wonderful that you're not coming after me you're not telling me what to do and that's America you know you can do anything that you want so that's that's that's the ways that we've come up short in what you expected us to be uh yes um I I never expected an American president would disappoint me yeah I mean it's it's a shock isn't it trust trust you will read the book but this is funny bush announces a war in Iraq um actually Afghanistan and then it was Osama against Bush and this was when I was practicing my English all over Mogadishu because we didn't have the Islamic revolution yet and I was supporting Bush I know don't get me wrong but I had no idea I had no idea what I was doing I don't know he was a Republican that is dangerous to admit in the city of Portland but right be all right right but to me to me it was just the the feeling about everything in America and uh I read uh the art of the deal yes I read that yeah well I didn't know this guy was gonna be president I thought he was a wonderful American trust me I you know my brother and I we would just like he would take and read one page and I would read one page and this is when we were stuck in Kenya in one room and trust me I was smiling I thought everything in there was true turns out it's not he didn't even write it so that is another thing about America that's like wow that's not true it's not America actually it's not true what I felt did you have a ghost writer for your book or did you have a ghost writer for your book or did you actually write it uh max max alexander is here so I wrote I wrote I wrote the book but I I want to tell you the most difficult part of writing the book I do the translation in my head like you know I I'm thinking in my native language I'm not there yet to think in English so I've been thinking in my native but the words became English so I'm putting down and at some point I read what I wrote what I you know what I was trying to say in my head and it seems like I'm not it's it doesn't sound like what I did so max has been working with me to figure out that kind of feeling but it's my words it's an English it's not my first language so which is also a great accomplishment actually yeah it is beautiful prose so we're going to go to questions in one second so please compile your question in your head last question before we get there so your father played basketball right a bit of a basketball star so I got to ask you are you basketball or soccer which one I'm not into basketball not into soccer are you who are you rooting for in the world cup Somalia is not there so uh I'm not rooting for any African nation which is interesting I'm with Brazil and I've been with them for a long time you're a Neymar fan is that the yes well I was for Ronaldo from first in 98 you know okay and then later years but I still stick with them it's like funny because I have no connection with Brazil it's another thing that introduces us to other people I've never been to Brazil I don't speak their language Portuguese but somehow I feel that their team plays much better so I'm sticking with them all right all right for you rooting for mayor I actually like Brazil I'm a Neymar fan too but I love Messi I mean how can you not okay sorry Argentina is awesome so anyway since the U.S. isn't there all right so why don't we turn it out to you and if you have any questions about either the book itself or if you have any general questions I saw somebody in the back we'll start with you who raised your hand so if you could come forward maybe a little bit and so people can hear you that would be cool I know that Portland mean is a very welcoming community and we do so much for immigrants or we do quite a bit but I was wondering both as an immigrant and an interpreter for Catholic Charities what can we do more what's the gap what's the biggest gap you see in our support for refugee asylum seeker immigrant community it's I see I the thing I see is that disconnection people are not really connected very well like if you look at the apartments where the immigrant communities are leaving like let's say a third floor and then there's a white family that lives on second floor and they're not saying hi to each other so that's where we should begin to first try to get these people to talk to each other and sometimes you know when when we have been through wars and all of that easy things that Americanis think are easy can can be frightening and scary to us like it was just like me going to Dunkin Donuts I'm trying to order something out of that menu and I was freaked out even though I speak English I was really freaked out first would they like will they understand if I say hot chocolate which turns out to be hot chocolate you know things like that so I think what we need and what I'm trying to do every day is don't be scared just express yourself sometimes we might be a very conservative restricted kind of culturally but it does not hurt for the person to get connected to the other person so that's what I feel that there's some sort of disconnection and the best way that we can connect them is to do music events for example you know where you can have this guy play the guitar and the other person can can play the drums and say like you know we can actually mix this together and it sounds like like I was talking about the solid main I mean Portland is is it's a pretty good like I was in Minnesota the other day and it's what it has the largest Somali Somali area and I went to this place called Lillan Mogadishu and we were doing the recordings we someone had a mic on my face and we had people approaching us you know just wondering what was going on and I it was my first day and you know I was saying like well I don't know because I don't live here but I'm I'm here because I think that the community is large here and then everyone showed up and they started speaking English and I tried to communicate in Somali and turned out most of the guys who were there were born in Minnesota and had could not understand Somali so that's another thing and the best way to do that is for the families to start um some sort of you know getting the kids listen to music I know so culturally sometimes it's not appropriate to listen to music but I understand that it's it can give you the words and the stories of course because we have wonderful music from Somali in the 70s and 60s and the stories they tell because we're traditionally um our society we speak and in the way we speak we turn that into a poem or a sing a song and then we need to encourage that uh in every community you know for uh if if you play your Nigerian music in your car and roll down the window and driving on congress street that's fine to me you know I love it and nobody's gonna say anything so I think that is what we are missing the the connection um yeah does that answer your question any other questions yes over here in the back and then we'll come to you yeah right here yep did I what have you sent your book to the president oh to the president um I know I wish I had his address what's what's the address of White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue it's pretty easy baby you know what I should do I would say I read um I read his book so you should read my book yeah yeah I went out of the deal yes helps cut some red tape in america's culture more times uh you keep sending the american so that uh I ask you uh as a self-described american do you see a problem about an american city mayor even strongly empowering muscle males in the arena of first amendment freedom and conversely as everyone knows the town disempowering certain born-again biblically females in the first amendment arena by doing things like favoritism based on religious category in other words I mean do you think american government should not discriminate on the basis of religion well that's uh take the last part you don't have to comment on her initial part about first of all I think the mayor is doing a wonderful job beautiful job and encouraging the way I see things that he does and I follow in social media and I love to come to the meetings I I think he's encouraging every culture and every faith and and that's one thing good for example if he encourages muslims to to come out and you know speak up or exercise their faith that's not a bad thing it just shows they it kind of answers the question of what I was talking about earlier where I said people are moving back to Somalia because they feel like you know they don't have things that you know the spies in their life including exercising their faith of course they do there's a mosque in the area and all of that but somehow if the mayor shows them that you know that's great we're doing that and I'm the mayor of this city it might actually make it easy for them to say like great I'm enjoying living in this country and I feel that America is you know exactly the place where you can be free and and can can exercise your faith and honestly mayor Portland has given me the opportunity to to reconnect with myself I as a child you know believing that I was American I avoided going to the mosques and my mother would chase me down the street and I was pushed to do that and I ran away from it because I was feeling she was taking something away from me and when I came in Kenya they came police wouldn't let us go to the mosque and when they almost died when this mob of gangs you know chased everyone out of the mosque and then I decided not to go to the mosque ever again so technically I could never peacefully exercise my faith until I came to Portland you can drive to the you know the parking lot at the mosque and do whatever you want to do in there and get out and nobody's pushing you or doing anything and so that's a beautiful environment that that needs to be you know to be done but everything else that she said about women and all that I don't know thank you for your statements I appreciate that very much certainly freedom of religion is very important in our city yes please over here I really appreciate what you said about being grateful would you mind standing up but I think it might be easier for people to hear I appreciate what you said about being grateful for the safety and the freedom of just walking via coffee and so we have those freedoms and we all should be more grateful another freedom that we have in in the US that I think people don't realize is everywhere is the freedom to pursue a different profession young people were a banker and they wanted to be a teacher or they were a you know a teacher and they wanted to be a doctor and we don't realize that that's pretty amazing we can zigzag and choose and reinvent ourselves that's sort of an essential quality I think of being an American you can reinvent yourself so if you've had you know a couple hundred years what are some of the professions you might like to reinvent yourself into oh that's a tough question well 200 years there people might be living on mars you know who knows and then there will be other other things to do but but there's I mean there's so much I'm now studying political science which is a funny thing and I might be getting into social studies and I went to college in Kenya I learned journalism because I believe that I'm a storyteller and I know how to tell stories and that was one point you know trying to get me do something but when I came to America I said goodbye to journalism because my stories are not going into the radios anymore and then I was like trying to invent myself again thinking like what's the one thing that you can do not only for America but for the world and America has the readiness for that that it could it could give me yeah thank you over here yeah yes yeah I'm the golden ticket yep but I was wondering if I think that you deserve to have your family have you tried to apply for their immigration to the states and how difficult would that be in your family in the states? I have a green card now and the way that I've got my green card is through the diversity lottery and I want to tell you this the US the small amount number of refugees that the US is bringing actually not now but they used to bring some to the country they they had received some sort of assistance through trauma counseling and all of that things but unfortunately when I won the lottery the US government no longer considered me as a refugee so I landed in Boston and I was on my own except when this family actually had if I didn't know them where would I leave you know how would I get all the money on all of that it takes five years for anybody from the time you get the green card to the time that you can apply for your citizenship I totally understand that there might be some in the crowd tonight that have green card for 10 years and may not want to be Americans but to me I have nothing to lose and this is what I need if they could call me tomorrow for a interview to become a citizen they would ask few questions who was the 45th president or what what are the three branches of the US government which I already feel like you know I'm ready for it but unfortunately I can't vote I still have a green card so I I I'm part of the permanent residents in in the US actually there's almost millions of them right now but then coming from Somalia with a band you know under what they they upheld yesterday it just freaks me out so that's why I wish it was almost five years now so that tomorrow I could go and apply for for the citizenship but one more year to go and then after that I can bring my family Hassan is my brother and you heard this American life and sadly in this American life he's in Kenya and he's still in Kenya it's married to a wife and has twins he got accepted to Canada the US the US government the US denied him forever and they said all you know you can't even try no more but we got together there's a team Abdi and now became team Hassan my brother's name and it's it's like eight people including Sharon and we raised money actually a lot of money 28,000 dollars and through sponsorship with the refugee agency and now he's going to be in Toronto very soon. No, three years. I think it is not central to where people can take away from you and I just just want to get back to that and my question is clearly both right now men and you understand that just people can hear you a little better yeah okay in New America so I don't refer to brain gain which is what's happening in most cases unfortunately and I'm wondering how do you bridge that conflict? I don't think American America is very incisive everybody wants to be part of it but if we keep indulging in this I don't know how to call it maybe it's I don't know if it's a madness because it's not really the most romantic way of saying it but how do you bridge that conflict? I mean I know how to deal with conflict. I feel like in America America is very incisive and I want to go on to it but at the same time I have those traumatized at home and I've decided to go right at some point because I feel like that's the most honorable and everything to do so how do you just how are you very able to just quiet those voices inside you because I didn't know that you have those how do you just decide to leave all that behind and be like I want to go on to America because I feel like Africa leaves us. America is just fine you know Trump is just another episode he's going to be able to continue things so how do you mean because in a position that you are in right now you have a voice you can either tell young kids uh African young kids hey we have to go back do well for the excellent that's good we have to go back to the old nation but how do you just manage to be like yeah let's go to America it's it's very good this year. That's a good question. Thank you. That's his name. BDG that's French. When I say refugees don't have identity actually there's a difference between refugee and immigrant if you're an immigrant coming from Bruny, Rwanda, Congo you have an identity you have a government you have peace but you if you're coming from Somalia where we lost everything I'm talking about my generation that grew up in the civil war and had never never seen a anything that could get me connect to my country music was banned and it's gone and our musicians died or displaced from the country so that's why I'm saying we lost our identity and when you come to Kenya refugee is your identity but it's also status it's not your joy so people don't I never said well call me refugee so I was kind of lost that's why I'm saying we actually needed an identity until I came here and became a permanent resident and this was you know I'm speaking for majority of the refugees but they could agree with me and that's why I'm saying I got an identity when I got here but the question uh is I would say don't be scared get into it remember when I said eat apple pie on steaks do you do uh thanks given on Christmas do you do you rub giftess yes it's beautiful don't be scared of it I mean I know some people are so freaked out of that no I know I'm trying to answer the question exactly I totally understand what you were trying to say but the thing is I'm saying just I think that you said something like how can I belong and then still you know have my heritage and everything behind me so I'm saying if you really the only where it's like don't melt and melting is a problem so you can be the solid so if you melt which actually means now you speak your native language so melting actually means you won't be able to do that and you're gone you know you're you're just an American and you're lost somehow your identity is gone so you'll call yourself American but if you really do everything that Americans do if you become you know a book reader or a star war fun you know this madness Americans do that's America I mean there's nothing wrong with that but at the same time you can still watch movies from your country and you can fly back of course as long as no one is going to shoot you and spend your summer oh you're not going back I can't go back but I will go back if there's peace but I can't go back because my country is completely not in the same situation as yours we have madness craziness going on coming from America can kill you oh hell yeah I know these streets where I used to run around I want to go by them revisit and be part of the construction well what I meant was I actually did I say I will never go back I don't say that so what I'm trying to say right now if you look at Somalia the next 20 years I'm not hopeful I'm somehow pessimistic of how things are happening but if miracle happens and we wake up tomorrow and everything is settled down and my mother calls me and she says I'm walking all over the place I'll definitely go but now I'm disappointed I'm disappointed because I want to bring my family out not really me go join them so which just shows you how pessimistic the situation looks I gotta we gotta we're like oh I want to get one more see if there's anybody else out there appreciate it is there anybody else who has a quick question we got about one minute so I want to just jump to it so somebody in the back sounded like they had theirs and then we'll come in yep yes I'm a volunteer with refugee and immigration services of Catholic Charities and I just want people to know that on July 14th that's a Saturday from three to five at Shebra's High School there is World Refugees Day celebration and so as a way to support the refugees in our community and get to know them and eat some really wonderful food and hear some good music and some speakers I would invite you all to come to Shebra's on that thank you for that announcement all right we had a question I think up here so I want to just give that opportunity please stand up I did not take any structured classes the first words that I learned from the movies were all swear words the f-word the s-word I thought everyone in the US as well I'll be back with those your first few words I'll be back to Somalia someday but no unless I came to Ken until I came to Kenya and we went I went to college for like a year and that was so helpful to get me be able to get to know how to write better yeah all right we are going to have to wrap up I do want to Abdi's going to stick around so if anybody wants to ask him a question he'll he's happy to sign books I really do hope all of you here buy a book if you haven't already I want to thank Longfellow again for what they're doing and thank the library Rachel's or anybody else that we need to be thanking besides anything you want to say to wrap it up all right so thank you you I really do want to I want to thank Abdi I want to thank Abdi for his courage because it takes a lot to write to tell your own personal story and to be willing to stand up in the way that you have so thank you for all you're done and how you've helped made America great