It took 32-years of living to finally feel content with my life. 32 years filled with countless ups and downs; moving countries, identity crises, horrific and near-death experiences, LOTS of hard work and determination, marrying the love of my life, having the most beautiful children, and falling deeper and deeper in love with our little family every day. I am grateful. Not only for the good, but also the bad.

I thank God for my mom and I’s vacation to the U.S. that turned into me permanently living there for 18 years. It was a difficult decision; much more difficult than I could comprehend at the age of 12. My mother stayed with me for the first 6-months as I adjusted to my new life. After our trip home during my summer holiday, however, she ended up remaining in Zanzibar to continue working her multiple jobs as a medical provider. She needed to do this so that she could contribute to our household income, which was under $800 a month; enough for us to live a comfortable, middle-class life in Zanzibar. Despite having an American child that she gave birth to on U.S. soil 12 years earlier, she was not allowed to work nor remain in the U.S. for longer than the duration of her 6-months tourist visa. She did not qualify to apply for a resident permit until I turned 21-years-old; when I would most likely not need her nearly as much.

I cannot thank my parents enough for the amount of sacrifices they have made for me throughout my life. I would not be where I am today if it was not for their hard work and investment in my future. If they had not invested in making my life in the U.S. possible, I would not have grown into the best version of myself. While growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my feelings towards them often felt complicated. Now that I think about it, what I felt was most likely loneliness and anger. As I grew past teenagehood, however, I realized more and more how lucky I was to have had the opportunity to attend middle and high school, and later, university, graduate, and post-graduate school, in the U.S. The U.S. school system, especially the higher-education, allowed me to develop in remarkable ways. Until this day, when I pass by the very first school I attended in Zanzibar, a government school called Kajificheni, I am in disbelief. That little girl seems like a completely different person.

When I first moved to the U.S., I barely spoke English and had a weird sense of fashion, in the eyes of other 12-year-olds in America anyway. I wore platform sneakers, belly shirts, shiny metallic and leather pants, suede sweat suits, black lipstick, and everything I saw Aaliyah, Brandy, Monica, and TLC wear in music videos. My childhood best friend, Ashmina, and I were obsessed with American pop-culture. We would rewind our cassette players multiple times to listen to 90s R&B songs and write down the lyrics, or at least what we thought the songs were saying. Even if the words or their spelling did not make sense. We would also get matching outfits based on what we thought the current fashion trend was among the American musicians we saw on T.V. I am thankful for Ashmina and she will forever have a special place in my heart. We thought we were the coolest kids on the block and so I was pretty sure that I would have no problem fitting in in the U.S. I was wrong.

I went from a super conservative school in Zanzibar where I was labeled as “wild” by my teachers simply because I refused to cover my head and was friends with boys, to a junior high-school in Brockton, Massachusetts. As my American friends and I would say, Brockton is HOOD. It was not an easy transition and my “weird clothes” did not help. I remember one girl telling me that I was “dressed like a hoe” before I even knew what that meant. The only “come back” I knew how to say was  “your mama… your sister…” etc, to any insult she threw my way. Unlucky for me, her sister also went to the school. It was the first fight I almost got into in the U.S. Somehow I eventually managed to (kinda) fit-in and make some friends in Brockton.

Once my mother returned to Zanzibar after our initial six months in the U.S., however, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to live with my aunt. It was in Cambridge where I met my lifelong best friends. I will forever be grateful for the fact that a “cute boy who looked like Lil Bow Wow” lived across the hallway from me and my new “friends” used me to get close to him. Words cannot express how much I appreciate them for getting to know and seeing me past my shiny pants, Dada sneakers, and weird accent (at that point it was a mix of very broken English and the slang I picked up in Brockton to try to sound American). We became so close that we are now family; especially my forever best friend Martina. Her and I are connected in ways that even we don’t understand. She is one of my soulmates (yes of course you can have multiple). The amount of times her family was there for me when no one else could deserves its own blog post.

I am thankful for my high-school Geometry teacher, Ms. O’Reilly, who convinced me to attend the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, despite being accepted into other private colleges and universities; including some that offered me a lot of grants and scholarships. If I had gone to Simmons College, where I really wanted to go, not only would I have accumulated a massive amount more in student loans, I also would not have met Sam, the love of my life.

Sam and I had seen each other plenty of times before around the UMASS campus of 24,000 students. In fact, one of my Cambridge best friends, Mason, had a tiny crush on him throughout our college career. He was unavailable then but she was still infatuated by him, which I never understood back then. I worked as a security guard (HA!) in his building and I would playfully roll my eyes every time she came to “keep me company”  so that she could interact with him when he passed by.

We had a great time in college, but I was always in and out of depression spells. Back then, I didn’t even know that I was depressed. The way I dealt with my depression was by spending my time studying in my room. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even leave to go eat. Mason and I would order baked chicken and broccoli ziti or jumbo pizza and eat in. I will always be thankful for the effort Mason put it to try to get me out of the room. Including the one time during a depression spell that I agreed to go to the cafeteria with her. This is when Sam and I walked past each other, like we had many times before, but this time, our eyes connected. Not in a flirty way, because he was “Mason’s man,” but in a very intense “where have you been all of my life,” type of way. We didn’t speak and I don’t even think we said hello. We didn’t need to.

The way Sam and I started dating deserves it’s own blog post but basically, for weeks after the cafeteria incident, we would bump into each other a lot more than usual. As if nature was determined to get us together so that I could follow him to Washington, D.C., the first place in the U.S. that felt like home and also where I flourished the most during my time in the states. I saw him everywhere. Him and Mason knew each other through mutual friends so we would always say hello and keep it moving. I apparently did not smile much, according to Sam. Then our other mutual friend, Steven, who I became close with about a month before the cafeteria incident as he was going through a breakup, informed me that Sam was inquiring about me. So I inquired right back. I will forever be grateful for Steven for mentioning him to me; if he hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have bothered.

One evening, I called Sam through Steven’s phone and finally convinced him to leave the library and come “party with us.”  When I was not in a depression spell or have to head to clinicals at 4AM, I partied hard. He met us out and we danced all night. After getting permission from Mason, we even had our first kiss. After that, we were inseparable.

A month after our night out,  he graduated and moved back to his home in D.C. to start his teaching career. He came to Boston to visit me a month later. Then we would spend hours talking on the phone, texting, writing emails, fighting, “breaking up,” and visiting each other until a year and a half later, when I graduated, packed everything I own in my Honda Accord, and drove South to D.C. with no plans. Little did I know, this WAS the plan. Another one of my Cambridge best friends, Rahel, accompanied me on this 8-10-hour journey. I will forever be grateful for Rahel because if it weren’t for knowing that she would be “right up the street” in Baltimore, where she was attending university, I probably wouldn’t have felt as comfortable taking the leap into the unknown. I am grateful for the way things unfolded in D.C. My life and career fell into place within a few months. That is how I knew that I was exactly where I belonged.

I thank God for our children not only for motivating me to be the best human being I can be, but also bringing us to Costa Rica. If it were not for Abey, I would not have quit my 6-figure job so that I could spend more time with him. If we were not pregnant with Soraya, we would not have moved to Costa Rica and meet our midwife, Rebecca, who showed me that I too can own a practice. Learning about Rebecca’s solo midwifery practice in Turrialba inspired me tremendously. Soraya’s birth was the “final piece of the puzzle.” It was so beautiful that I could not stop thinking about how traumatic pregnancy and childbirth often is in Zanzibar.

11-years after our night out in Amherst, Sam and I, together with our two children, are now back in Zanzibar to finally be with my parents and start a Family and Women’s Health Practice. More and more I realize that everything was supposed to happen exactly as it did so that I can be right here, right now, building WAJAMAMA Wellness Center. A health center with a mission to empower, protect, and advocate for women, children, and communities in Zanzibar. A center that even I, for many reasons, desperately needed while growing up in Zanzibar. My vision and purpose in life has never been clearer. I am happy.