Hoover Celebrates Diversity, Generosity
Backstage at Hoover High School, Sawa Kuku and her friends giggle nervously.
The three girls from Ethopia are getting ready to go onstage in front of a large crowd in the Hoover High School auditorium.
They’re dressed in bright, colorful gowns with elaborate jewelry and hairstyles, just the kind of style Ethopian women would wear to weddings and fancy parties.
“We want to share our culture,” Kuku says with a smile.
Dozens of students like them are wearing traditional clothing from their home countries, a necessity for the annual Hoover Diversity Assembly. The show features music: Love ballads and anthems from Olympics gone by, a wedding dance between bride and groom and fashion shows featuring beautiful gowns. Some of the models walk barefoot.
The dances draw cheers and a Latino cowboy in a white coat and hat gets the crowd going. But there is silence when Than Soe Moo and his friends line up on stage.
“When someone calls Karen or Karenni people Burmese, it hurts us,” Moo said. “We are not Burmese. We are not citizens of any country.”
Moo shares stories about villages burned and people slaughtered.
“The Burmese people tried to kill the Karen people,” Moo said. “That’s why we had to move to another country. If we still lived there we know were going to die soon.”
It’s an all too familiar story, says Community Schools Site Coordinator, Gretchen Critelli.
“One in five students here, minimum, is refugee,” she said.
Moo smiles after his monologue and tells us how grateful he is to be living in Des Moines and going to Hoover.
“Very, very happy to come to school,” Moo said.
Critelli said the positive outcomes are in many ways thanks to community supporters who donate clothing, schools supplies and DART bus passes, to fill the gap school buses don’t cover.
“Kids don’t get a ride from school unless they’re at least three miles out,” Critelli said. “So, imagine in the middle of winter where we have our immigrant refugee students having to come to school in sub-arctic temperatures.”
Critelli said this performance is a thank you to all of those supporters.
For Nibrar Abdalla, a junior from Africa, the performance is about reminding her classmates the halls at Hoover are filled with opportunities to learn about the world.
“Everybody’s different,” Abdalla said. “Not everybody is the same. We wear the same thing as they do, but we still have a culture.”
