My Family: From Migration To Sierra Leone

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My family is made up of two cultures deriving from two different continents, Africa and Asia. When upon introducing myself to other people, I just say that I am African because that is more easier to believe than me telling them that I mixed with anything that has to do with Asia. My great grandfather migrated from Lebanon to Sierra Leone. The information of whether he brought any family members with him is unknown, but what is known is that majority of them were/are still in Lebanon. A few years living in Sierra Leone, he met my great grandmother. The two together had seven children: (not in order) John (my grandfather), Aboud, George, Elias, Mary, Sarah, and Hannah. My great grandfather would travel back and forth from Sierra Leone to …show more content…

Yatta and John had six children together: (not in order) Ann-Marie, Gloria (my mum), Abdallah, Romano, Mariama, and unknown. Unknown and my grandmother died during war time in Sierra Leone. After a few years, John left Sierra Leone and was only able to bring two children with him to America, Abdallah and Mariama. Until Valentine’s Day of 2005, Gloria, Romano, and Gloria’s daughter, Yatta, moved to the US on refugee status. Ann-Maria was the only left behind. She still lives in Sierra Leone with three children and Yatta’s brother, Mohammad. I believe that I will follow in the footsteps of my family and move somewhere completely different. Maybe somewhere in Europe or Latin America! Who knows! I’m not a big fan of change, but moving somewhere else and learning the ins and outs of a place just sounds thrilling. My immediate family speaks Creole, Sierra Leone’s national language, and Menday, our tribe language. Our culture is not really a culture per say, but just something we like doing. Africans and Middle Easterners are all about family. We like to be close knit people and know everything that’s happening in everybody’s lives! We cook together, and dance together. In my culture, there are no true words for aunt or uncle or cousin; everybody is your mum, dad, or brother or sister. When cooking together we cook big meals such as cassava leaves made from the leaves of the cassava vegetable. This dish, I would like to believe, originated from my country, but some countries in Asia also cook

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