La Sonya

I've just finished putting my green chair back inside my apartment, I've turned the kitchen lights off and it's the end of another wonderful Friday night Pasta Night. Pasta Night is when the other RAW expats gather together in my kitchen, cook a simple dinner and hang out. It was born when I first got here out of a desire to carry on a family tradition of sharing the Friday dinner together and starting the Sabbath (Saturday, the day I go to church) off right. After a long busy week it's nice to slow down, cook a meal with friends and chat about life. It is an always evolving party. At one point when Re-Knee was here we had to make sure we didn't cook with A LOT of different foods that she was allergic to (tomatoes, garlic, gluten, etc) it was a fun challenge and we were all in support of it. That was how we ended up branching away from always cooking actual pasta. Since then we've experimented with recipes, making everything from roasted capsicum (bell peppe...

The week I decided to visit Cambodia to interview with RAW Impact , back in November, I was introduced to my new friend Khunara, known as Ra here in Oakhurst. She is a wonderful woman who survived a horrific time in Cambodia in the 70's. She is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge. Her story of survival is not one she likes to talk about very often. She was much younger in those days, a young newly wed and during that time she was separated, by force of the Khmer Rouge, from her husband for some time. During which she didn't know if he was alive or not. After a tale that is hard to follow at times, she was beautifully reunited with her husband. With herself and one other friend being the sole survivors of her village she and her husband made there way to the city of Los Angeles, California. It was there that she was welcomed to a country she now calls home. A place that helped her to heal from a terrible time. It was in this city that she and her husband had their only son and they le...

Gabriel, much like his Biblical namesake, is a guardian, a messenger and a friend. I first met him the night I arrived but I remember him best my first Friday night. I had only been at home for two days and was still very new to life here. Mary was at work and I was left to open the Sabbath alone. I remember opening the door to the porch off of my room and hearing beautiful acapella singing and sitting down on the porch to enjoy it. Then Gabriel came to guard the house, he turned on the porch light and sat down next to me. We discussed the beautiful music, where it was coming from and the local fruit trees. Thus began our friendship. Gabriel was the first person to sit down with me and teach me Kiswahili, mainly because he doesn’t speak much English, but we get along well with the words I’ve learned in Kiswahili. We patched together sentences in Kiswahili and English, using my dictionary and charades. It is Gabriel’s son, Onesmo who has also joined in the force to help me learn Kiswa...