Interviewer: Heqiu Liu
English 191
Interviewee: Ibrahim Ahmed
Interviewee's country of origin: Somalia
Interview date: 11/06/2010
Interview #3
Me: Could you please tell me a little bit about yourself, such as your name, the country you are from, how long have you been here, and your major?
Ibrahim: Yeah, Ibrahim Ahmed. I’m from Somalia. I was born in Kenya 1991. I have been here now for year. And I am majoring in electrical engineering.
Me: First, I would like to know your greeting customs. We know that people in the United States say, “Hi, how are you” and shake hands when people first meet. But, how do you guys great each other? Is there anything special there?
Ibrahim: Yeah, it depends. We have cultural greeting with Assalam Alaikum. In English, it is like ‘Peace Be Upon You.’ That is the first one. And the other thing we have different greeting customs. We have Somali people from the southern side and Somali people who are from the northern side. So for the southern side, people are born in Kenya. We say, ‘Setahay.’ In English, that means ‘How are you doing?’ the other thing is like we say, ‘Subah wanaagsan!’ that means ‘Good morning!’ we also have ‘Galab wanaagsan’. Also you can say when you want to say ‘Good bye. Good night.’ ‘Good night’ we say ‘Garitibulle Ossetian.’ The other thing is that we normally shake hands when we greet each other. Sometimes we don’t see other for a week or some days, we will hug each other. And the other thing unlike here, when you greet with your friend, maybe you hold his hand, people tell you two men cannot hold hands and walk together. But in country, it shows how much we love each other. So it is Ok.
Me: If I was a good friend of yours and I want to pay a visit to you one day, how would you treat me as a guest in your house?
Ibrahim: The way I would treat you depends on the situation. But whenever if you like call me say, ‘Ibrahim, can I come to you?’ I will tell you, ‘ Oh, you can come, I’m ready.’ Anytime whether they want to visit you, we feel like we are very important people. We will welcome. What we will depends. If you come to my house every day, I will prepare you for some drinks, like tea, milk, or water, or juice. But if you come especially once a week, once a month, I will prepare for you good meal, like maybe I will cook for you meat. I will cook you goat meat. We will also have pasta. We also eat banana. Those are nice and delicious things we prepare. Whether you come, the food and the drink are ready. Everybody in the family will come. They would like to talk to you. ‘How is everything?’ ‘How are you doing?’ And we normally talk you strangers you know. When we see people from other parts of the world, we like to talk to them and ask them, ‘How is your country? What you guys…’ we need to know more about strangers. When American people see someone they don’t know, they don't talk to them. If you are in this room, they won’t ask you, ‘Hi, how are you?’ they just keep quite. When we see people from China, we will go to them and ask about their country. When we see people from America from Europe, go to them and ask them.
Me: Next, I want to know what you guys usually do for entertainment.
Ibrahim: Uh, it is like…it really depends for entertainment. People have different hopes. We don’t go to parties, drink. In our culture, we don't drink. What we do entertainment is that we get together as a group, maybe with your relative, families, friends, get together, like five, six, twenty person, just have fun, ask them about their background. Maybe tell a story. What is you experiences during the week. We come together just talk, talk about our day lives. That is how we normally entertain. Sometime, if one of your friends going to marry, we will collect some money, so we can give the person who is going to marry. We will eat food, enjoy things. That is the party we go, only wedding. And just have our own parts of drinks. And if you come as group, stay for maybe one of my friend’s apartment. My friend will bring us juices, drinks, tea. And we have to tell a story. Mostly, in the weekend, like last night, I went to visit my friend. We just talked what happened during the week.
Me: what sports do you usually play?
Ibrahim: Like me, I like watching soccer. I am fan of Arsenal. Very nice football they play. Sometimes go with friends, just play around. Especially, during the weekend, we watch, we enjoy the soccer. I don't like American football. Physical violence. But what I like about them is basketball.
… we talked something else.
Me: Then, I would like to know something on your family structure. What are some of the roles that family members play?
Ibrahim: My family structure is totally different from the United States of America. We are collective culture. One thing we do is we share the work. The father will do a part. The children will do other parts. And the mother will do… And we don’t have specific roles for every person. But helping the family, everybody will do their parts. Today, if I need to wash cloth, I will go clean the laundry. My mother will cook the food. My father will go the market and buy food. But today if I do the laundry, tomorrow I can go to buy food.
Me: How many family members usually live together?
Ibrahim: usually like five or six family members. But you can have twenty three people live together. Like my mother gave birth to twelve children, seven boys and five girls. And my father has other wives. They also have kids. So almost twenty kids. That is why I have twenty three together. It depends. Some people have one kid, some people have two kids, and some people have ten, six. Not like here the average they have is two kids. So no restricts. It depends on how man … we don’t have specific number of kids. It is how…
Me：Next, I would like to know something on your food culture. What do you have for your diet (such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner)?
Ibrahim: Sure, the breakfast we have is called Anjera. For the lunch, we normally take rice or pasta with bananas. We like eating bananas. Every meal we take with bananas. If it is breakfast, we eat a piece of banana. Lunch is the most. For dinner, it depends on the family. Sometimes what we take is called Gitther. It is made of rice and beans cooked together. Or they call it Anbulo. It really depends on the family members, people like different flavor.
Me: Are there any types of food you usually don’t eat in your home country, but you eat here?
Ibrahim: There are many vegetable I have never seen before, but I eat here. But we have something called food taboo. So we don’t eat pork, like any kinds of food (made of pork), bacon, ham or whatever. They are cooked different ways, we don’t normally eat any type of food from the pig.
Me: Do you go to Chinese restaurant?
Ibrahim: Yeah, I go to Chinese restaurant or Pakistani restaurant. They don’t cook with pig. That is why the pork is separated. So we got there, take the rice, add some chicken or fish or shrimp.
Me: Finally, I would like to know your body languages. Do you have any special and interesting body languages?
Ibrahim: yeah, our body language is very important. That is why we can know the person whether he is annoying. We chat with person with our physical language. It is more important than our verbal language. We nod head this way; this is mean ‘Ok’. This is (Shake his head) means ‘No’ just like in every other culture. If you see this (hold up his thumb), it means not really good. It is sarcastic. If you see some say ‘Thank you’ like this (with his thumb up), but that thank you is not a good one, it means the opposite. If people are showing this to you, it means you are not good. Uh, eye contacts. Here you can see, even the professor, we call him like Professor Coffey. But back into Africa, we use the word ‘Sir’. We respect them. we don't call their names. We call sir or teacher. And the other thing we have is that the elder, we don't give them eye contacts. So we just look them, that means we respect them. I feel uncomfortable when I call their names. You have to treat people of you age and the elder differently and people will treat you nicely.
Me: we have a lot of common in body language. How you do use your body language when you say someone is out of mind.
Ibrahim: when you say someone is out of his/her mind, we say like (making a circle around his head using his index finger). That means your mind is upset-minded. And this one (knocking his head with his index finger) is different, that means you are mad.
Me: I think we are done. I appreciate it.
Ibrahim: thank you very much. What is your name?
Me: Heqiu. We can keep in touch.
Ibrahim: Can you write me your email?
Me: Yeah.
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