Hope for Mohammad's family: For a Safer Tomorrow

Mohammad Abu Ajwa is 22 years old , lives in Gaza Strip in Palestine, and attended a year of high school in the United States at Pembroke Hill in Kansas City, and he now has two US families that consider him our son.  

Below is Mohammad's personal statement about his life and dreams:

When I was sixteen years old, I saw a balloon with helium in real life for the first time. My American host family was shocked when they learned this—they knew they were hosting a kid from Gaza, with a different culture and religion, but they found out they didn’t understand what my life was like back home.

Not many people know about the realities of living in the Gaza Strip. The entire fenced-in area is twice the size of Washington D.C. with three times the population. Until I moved to Missouri with the State Department-sponsored YES Program, I had never been outside of Gaza, or even more than a few miles from my home. Before traveling to the USA, I thought five kilometers was a long distance, as it’s half the width of the Gaza Strip, until I ran it in my American neighborhood. I spent my first 16 years in what is by definition a concentration camp. 

Growing up, I heard the sounds of rockets and bombs from my bedroom. Despite living so close to the border, I’ve never been, because if people get too close, they’re at risk of being killed (plus, if my mom found out, she’d kill me faster than any IDF soldier). The two border crossings aren’t open on any regular schedule; to leave, we have to wait until Israel or Egypt opens them, and we never know when that will be.

Electricity is only on for four hours daily, and we never know when it will come on. This causes many problems for our healthcare system, and our infrastructure is weak because of our inconsistent access to power.

My dad worked for the PLO, or the Palestinian Liberation Organization, when I was young, until men from Hamas came into his office with guns and forced him out. We don’t agree with the actions Hamas takes, but they maintain power by force and we are subject to their rule.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for much longer than I have been alive, though it has worsened in my lifetime. In 1948, the United Nations designated Palestine as Israel, and after years of war, the current borders were drawn, with Palestinians now mostly living in Gaza and the West Bank. In my lifetime, there have been three official wars. I didn’t choose this; I was born into this life.

Despite how different life in Gaza is, I’m a lot like a normal American. My favorite activity is playing basketball, and while in America, I got so good that I eventually was able to beat my host dad. I watched all ten seasons of Friends on my host family’s Netflix account (and yes, my host sister and I fought over who got control of the TV). I learned English through video games, and by watching TV and movies. Though I came from a war zone 7,000 miles away, I made American friends that made me feel like one of them.

In return for showing me their culture, I taught my American family about mine. We made maqluba while video calling my real mom in Gaza. I brought gifts for my new family so I could share Palestinian culture with them. In many ways, I’m both an American and a Palestinian, and my family spans the globe.

I want the opportunities of America, but I also have a duty to my family in Palestine; anything I do, I do with them in mind. There are a lot of things I want: to buy my parents a nicer house, to support my siblings, and to see my little brothers grow up to be anything they want to be in life, not limited by the fence around our territory. For right now, though, I just want to leave Gaza and attend an American college, so that I can someday turn these dreams into realities.