NYIBOL’S STORY
Nyibol was on track to graduate from high school – until she met an unlikely foe: her age. Nyibol turned 20 before she could graduate and was forced to move to a school for adults. She chose to work instead and found a job as a cleaner at a printing company. Soon she quit in frustration, saying later, “I did not come to [Canada] to clean.
She experimented with different entry-level jobs as she tried to find one that would fulfil her. She took a position as a security guard at Edmonton International Airport, but that didn’t last long either. Next up in a series was another security job where she watched patients at a hospital. She stayed there for two years before moving to Brooks, Alberta, to work at a meatpacking plant to make better money than she’d ever made before.
Eventually, Nyibol returned from Brooks. She had been dating someone who was not Sudanese – against her parents’ wishes – and the relationship got serious. “[David] was like, ‘Do you wanna move in with me?”’ Nyibol laughs now, perhaps at her own naiveté. She neatly packed her bag and was ready to go when her mother came home after work. Her mother was surprised – and furious that Nybiol had found her own partner without their input – but she left anyway. Not long after leaving, she found out she was pregnant.
She was young and a little stunned (when her breasts hurt, she thought that she might have cancer). “Nobody was excited; nobody was sad,” she says on finding out she was pregnant. “It was a strange feeling.” Nyibol didn’t tell her family, and she didn’t visit them until six months after their son, Jacob, was born. Scared and nervous, she stayed in the car while David took Jacob to the front door of her parents’ home, promising to join him if things went well. When Mary opened the door, Nybiol recalls, “She made this big scene. She threw herself down. She was like, “you’re coming to kill me!” Then Mary slammed the door, shutting them out completely.
Reflecting on the experience, she speaks about the cultural gap that has widened between her and her mother. “Although I love her to death, I don’t like certain things my mom believes in.” These cultural codes seem uncompromising at times. Like her husband, Jok, Mary wants her children to be well-educated, to have happy marriages and successful careers, but Canadian culture puzzles her. She thinks children here have too much freedom, that it turns their children away from them. (Her mother, Mary, told me, “We Sudanese women are not happy because a girl doesn’t listen anymore to you. That’s why I have high blood pressure. Because, when you think about it, back home kids respected their parents.”) Mary and Nyibol struggled for years, first avoiding each other and then, gradually, mending their relationship. When Nyibol’s relationship with David ended, she returned home.
Thinking about the generational and cultural challenges Nyibol faces, I remembered one of our conversations when she said she doesn’t feel like she belongs to Canada. In 2008, she returned to Sudan and then got a position with Habitat for Humanity International. When the contract ended in early 2009, she stayed on in Sudan, calling her son, Jacob, in Canada often to tell him she loves him. I don’t know if she will come back to Canada to stay. Her sister, Monica, meanwhile has faced her own challenges as she reconciles her dreams for a career with the reality of her daily life. NEXT: Monica’s story…
Category: First Job, Profiles, Work
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