My parents were born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and raised in northern Lebanon in a village called Rahbe. They came to California as refugees in the late 1970’s. Although I was born in the Bay Area and raised in New York, I grew up connected with stories, languages, music, food, clothing, memories of our homeland and cultures through my family. This gave me a love and appreciation for learning, preserving and protecting cultural memory as a practice of healing in the present to consciously build loving and just futures.