Oral History Program Joe Nahas Interviewed by Colby Peterson 31 March 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joe Nahas Interviewed by Colby Peterson 31 March 2017 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Nahas, Joe, an oral history by Colby Peterson, 31 March 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joe Nahas, conducted on March 31, 2017 at the Salt Lake Community College, Meadowbrook Campus, by Colby Peterson. Joe discusses his life and his experiences as a minority leader in Northern Utah. CP: My name is Colby Peterson. I am the interviewer for this interview. We're interviewing Joe Nahas. Joe Nahas is a program specialist in community capacity building for Department of Workforce Services and Refugee Services Office in that department. Joe's a former mentor of mine and also a former refugee. Joe is from Sierra Leone. He came to the United States as a refugee and has worked his way to the top. Right Joe? JN: Thanks Colby for having me. CP: Great. So, this is for a course, MPC 6400 Leadership in Communication. So, today we're going to be talking with Joe about some of his experiences as a leader, back in his home country and also here in the United States in the refugee communities of Salt Lake. We're just going to go through a few questions and get his insights. So, Joe, first of all can you start by telling us about your background, maybe your childhood, your teen years, where you grew up, some of the things you used to do, family values, education, those kinds of things? JN: Well, that's going to be a really long story, seeing as I'm 51 years old now. Yeah, I remember. I was born in Southern Sierra Leone, from a town called Bo. I grew up with my dad and my mom. But, like most African families, it was a polygamous type of family. So, my dad had four wives and I had to grow up in that environment. I remember, when I was little, my dad loved me so much, 1 simply because I always listen to instructions. If he tells me to do anything, I always do what he tells me to do. So, I had a personal connection and a relationship with my dad. He made me in charge of coffee making. So, early in the morning, it's 6:00 a.m., he's going to wake me up. I have to go outside, take my axe, break firewood, make a fire, without even an oil, and make his coffee, even before I go to school. So, even after school, I have to come sit by him. If needs anything, he's going to send me. I was spent, we spent most of the time together every day after school. But, I noticed that when I was in like first grade, I was not doing well in school. I remember I had to stay in the class for the first year, the second year, going in to the third year and I told him, "I'm not doing well at school. Something is just wrong." He said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "Can I go with my sister?" Because, my sister was, she was married then. So, he said, "OK. We can ask her." Then, he asked my sister and I was allowed to stay with my sister. And from that time, I did do really very well in school and I finish elementary school, I went to what we call secondary school. That was like a junior high and high school put together. So, I did very well on the national exams. I went to Crested King's College, it was a Catholic school in my town and I was there for six years. So, you start from one, from two, from three, from four, from five, and you go to six, which is two years: lower six and upper six. I remember, when we went from five, we were preparing, you have to take a 2 national exam and we didn't have teachers at that time. So, I told my friends, I said, "Hey, we don't have teachers. We have to do something, because the exam is coming. So why not organize us in to study groups?" So, we agreed to do the study groups. I said, "Well, each one of us, take one topic from me on these subjects and you can teach us. Now another person takes another topic and come teach us." So, that was what we did and we were prepared for, I mentioned the exam, and all of us in that group were very successful. So, we got promoted to the next class, which was the from six, the lower six, forward. And, we still had issues, but my problem was, as I look at the link from one to two, there are no teachers. So, usually, I would just take a walk along the corridor to see what's going on in my free time. So, I didn't go to the library, I went to check in all those classes. I would find that, most of the time, there are no teachers in the class. So, I would always walk in to the class and ask them, "Hey! What are you supposed to be doing?" They would say, "We are having Math." I said, "OK. Can I teach you?" So, that was what I was doing. As a student, I was teaching from one, from two, even from three classes. I was so, I didn't know, I was just doing something really cool for them. Until, we were in our school, we had like 3000 students. A big school. So, they usually divide the school into four parts. They call them four houses. So, we had four houses in one school. So, each house has a captain. So, to get a Captain, there is always an election. So, we went to this big meeting from my own house. I was 3 not even thinking about it. So, some of the people wanted to run for the captainship and I was just sitting in the back and all of the young boys say, "This is the guy we want." They just voted for me, right there. CP: They just nominated you know? JN: They nominated me and I was in no position to... CP: Oh! Wow. JN: I became the captain for that group. CP: Why did they choose you, do you think? What was it about you that they liked as the captain? JN: Well, in life really the little things you do is what really matters, not the big things. Those times I went to those classes and met with those students and helped them with their classwork, there was no teacher. I didn't know most of them, but they knew me because I was in their classes teaching them. So, those little things really made a difference for them. So, they were really very grateful for what I was doing for them. CP: So, you went around and mentored them, help them get through those tough exams and because of that time that you spent with them, even though you necessarily didn't have to, that was what made the difference. So, when the time came to find a leader, they went back to you, because you had been a mentor to them? JN: Correct. CP: Awesome. JN: Even when I was little, my sister, I was always very obedient boy. And all the 4 rest, you know, they were really troublemakers. So, my sister would say, "I'm leaving. I'm traveling. You are in charge of the house because, I know you're not going to cause any trouble. But, those guys, if they cause any trouble, let me know." So, she would travel and come back and everybody was complaining. She'd say, "I know Joseph is not part of this. You guys explain what happened." So, she always trusted me for a lot of things in the house, because I listened to her and I was always respectful. CP: That's great, Joe. And so that kind of lead in to my second question, which was "What experiences did you have in childhood, teen years. Adult years that led you to believe that you were or could be a leader?" And so, it sounds like, you know, this experience where your sister put a lot of trust in you was really critical in helping you understand that, you know, you could be somebody who could lead others because of the core values that you had within yourself. Right? JN: Correct. I still enjoyed that privilege, because even though I'm the last but one member of the family, the entire family considers me to. CP: Alright, sorry, we're back. We had a little bit of technical issues there, but we're making it work for us. So, Joe I want to continue our conversation and you talked a little bit about those core values and about how your sister trusted you an awful lot because of how reliable you were and how honest you were. Can you tell me more about, I feel like those are a couple of your core values. Can you tell me more about what your core values are and how they've influenced your leadership experiences and/or abilities? JN: Yeah. It is really, really very important that you ask me this question and this is 5 something I take very seriously, even with my own family. We have established what they call, what we call the five core pillars. One is God. Two, family. Three community service. Four, education. Five, the career. So, that's what we have established. Within the framework of family, we emphasize three things: honesty, respect, and hard work. We emphasize those ones to our kids. We try to teach our kids those core values. I need it when I go out as I talk to communities and families. I try to share that kind of thing with them, because it's really hurtful and some of the things we do, sometimes, they are beyond our knowledge. Sometimes it's supernatural. We have to ask for good things, then we can receive them. So, I try very hard to make sure they understand this and even if you asked even my smallest communities, you asked them, they're going to tell you about those five core values. So, it's been our guiding road for most of the time. And, truly, it makes it easy. It make parenting really easy because everybody works within the framework and we have less trouble. Well, less trouble in the family and even within our community. CP: That's great. And so, you know, when you guys establish those core pillars, was it sort of a conscious decision by you and Saran to say, "These are who the Nahas family is and we want to teach our children that"? Or did it, was it more of an organic process you just kind of thought of it as it came and then one day you just said, "Oh yeah! This is who we are"? Was it more deliberate or did it just happen? JN: Well, that's a very interesting question. We have been talking about it for a long time. We go out every Sunday. We sit down in the evening and have a family 6 meeting. We didn't record that much, but the one thing you never understand about kids is that they really listen to you. CP: They do? OK. This is good news. JN: And it wasn't something that really touched touch their heart. They took it really seriously and I told you about how the pillars came about. So, my son had to go to the bathroom. He had washed, it took like a long, about thirty minutes in the bathroom. So, I came, I said, "Why are you taking so long? Other people want to use the bathroom." So, I didn't know he was really, he was in there writing on the mirror. I know many times, it's hot in the bathroom. It's so misty in the middle. So, he was writing. That's how he wrote all those five pillars that came into the bathroom. CP: He wrote them? JN: He wrote them. CP: Wow. JN I started reading and I said, "Oh!" I said, "You wrote these ones?" He said, "This is what I was doing here." I said, "OK, put it on paper and come share it in the next meeting." So, that's how we established those core values. CP: Yeah, and so where did he where did he get them from? Did he get them from school or something like that? Like, how did those come out? Or, was it something you told him previously and then, like I said, you guys crystallized them, wrote them down on paper after that after that day in the bathroom? JN: Every Sunday, there's a family meeting. We meet around six, seven o'clock. We 7 spend, sometimes two, three hours just talking. Or, of course, we read our Bible, then we go on to discussion topics, ask questions. We pray for people that need help. We pray for a lot of people that are in the family, we pray for communities, we pray for sick people, homeless people. Yeah. So, I always tell them, I say, "Put others first. Don't put yourself first. Make sure, even before you pray, pray for, there are a lot of people in the hospitals that are seriously sick. Think about them. Pray for them. Think about the homeless. They are in the cold right now. Think about them. Pray for them." So, we try to establish those core things and, I think, I believe, it's really happening them. CP: Nah. That's great. So, I kind of want to ask you to name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader. Maybe someone who has been a mentor to you and why and how did that person impact your life generally and your leadership abilities, specifically? JN: Yes. One man was a mentor and the second person is my wife. Well, let me talk about this man. He is called Ali Bangura. And, in my country, I was working at the university and he was just promoted to being a minister like you, what do you call it? Like the Secretary of State in America. We call them ministers. CP: OK. In the government? JN: In the government. CP: OK. What was his role? JN: He was a minister for trade, industry, and transportation. So, when he got the promotion, he just sent to our university, our local university there and said he was looking for somebody good to work with. So, they recommended me. 8 CP: Oh! JN: He called me for an interview. I went there. We spoke for about one hour. Then he asked me, "Can you start tomorrow?" I said, "No I cannot start tomorrow. I have to, you have to give me like, one month to start working with you." So, I went back and asked for permission and I started with this man and I didn't know, in Africa, they do wiretapping all over the place. He taps everybody's telephone. For that first two or three months, yeah. He knew exactly who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. And, one day, they just called a big meeting with everybody. He said, "You see this guy here? From now on, you have to talk to him if you need anything from me." So, I was surprised. I said, "Oh! But, I'm not a civil servant." He said, "Well, they have to talk to you, because I have observed you and you seem to be a really good man." And we became really close friends. Up to now we are still very close friends. And he told me once, he said, "Between me and you, just the two of us, we can run, we can rule this country very well without any issues." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "I trust you. I have a lot of faith in you." Well, this was a really, it's hard to find them in Africa. What I found in this guy, honest guy, hardworking, has a vision for what he's doing. And, I learned a lot from, just from him, within that time I was working with him. It's surprising, we are still friends, up to now. I still talk to him, even though he's in Sierra Leone, I always talk to him on the phone. He even came to visit me last year. He was here for some time. Well, 9 he's one of the really good guys that mentored me and gave me proper insight as to how government works, what are the things you are expected to be doing when you're working for your country. So, he actually proved to me that you have to be selfless if you want to help your country. And another one, my wife, too, has been one special person in my life. When I, I was not really a bad guy, I became really focused on family after I met my wife. And she just changed my life. So always talk about family. We started having kids, and oh, with all the things we went through with life, with the war in my country, and up to this time, she has been just the backbone of our family. I call her the brain and I'm the machine. So she gives me the ideas and I just put it in to action. So, she is just a really, very important person in my entire life. CP: That's great Joe, and I, I actually had not heard that story ever, about your job with the government in Sierra Leone before. So, now we're going to kind of bring things a little bit more local. I wanted to ask you, as a minority leader in northern Utah, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges and what do you do to overcome those challenges? What do you think? JN: Well, I came as a refugee and, generally, it's huge and when you come as a refugee, it is totally different system, the different culture, different background, entirely different from where, from what we are used to, but the cultural adjustment is so huge, it's one of the biggest challenges any refugee will face. And how, whether you are educated or not educated. If you are educated, it helps a bit. If you are not educated, it's even worse and it's one of the biggest challenges, because it's a complicated system based on rules, based on 10 procedures, based on policies and for somebody who is not educated to live, to survive in that kind of system, really it's confusing and is the biggest challenge we see among refugees. We see they a lot. You go to any home, you see there is a problem, any home there is a problem, because they're confused. They don't understand and it gets to the point wherein they just give up because they don't see themselves as having any control, any authority anymore. Even within their own family domain. So, you see there are families that are broken. The kids, most of them are in jail doing bad stuff, because they don't understand how the system works here. So, the biggest challenge is one of cultural adjustment and it doesn't help when you are illiterate. You are even illiterate in your own language. It makes it more difficult. CP: Yeah. And sometimes I noticed, working with some communities, like that some languages don't even have a written script for their language, you know? It's just, it's just oral. So, so what are you doing or what and what are people doing to sort of alleviate this problem of understanding the system, the new system that people are being injected in to? How do you help people understand and not become overwhelmed? JN: Yeah. It is a really tough one, because it's a huge refugee population here. And, of course, they give them some cultural orientation when they arrive, but it's just very limited. To have to know about the United States within three hours. It's just doesn't work. And, well, like I said early on, really the little things you do, it's what really matters to your family. We do workshops. We do meetings. It helps the people, a very limited effect. But, what really helps people is when you reach out 11 to them and you go in to their home and sit down with them and listen and understand what's going on and try to help them in different ways. So, at that level, at that micro-level and those little things you tell them really impacts them. And, we see that, I see that, I've noticed that activity that's helping them, because when I go to homes and talk to families, we're trying to get them out, some of the kids, we put them in school, try to put them to work and even the parents try to get them working. But, it's one of the biggest challenges we experience as immigrants, particularly refugees. CP: So, it sounds like mentorship, you know, like you look you talked about before, just having somebody to help guide you through that system. But, also community, you know, people working together, because very often somebody in the community will have some knowledge and they can share it with somebody else and that can help them get through some of these tough times and gain that knowledge for themselves so that they can be successful. JN: Well, that's why we fund, we have been helping to form them in to community organizations and nonprofit corporations. So that they can help their own members. So, at least we are in every community, you may have at least ten people who can, who understand the system or understand the laws and policies and procedures and where to go for what. You have those kind of people. So, they are helping a certain community member. Sometimes it's community members. Sometimes, it's friends. So, that communal kind of living helps and that's what, that's why some of them are successful, because they engage with their communities and if they 12 need something, they ask. They talk to their leaders or sometimes, they come to our office and ask. So, it's, if you ask, of course, you can get help, but if you don't, if you don't, then it becomes a problem, and, sometimes culturally, people don't just talk about their family situations with other people. It really impacts adversely, because by the time they, they realize that something is wrong, then it's too late. So, we encourage them, “Hey! Don't hide anything. You need to talk to somebody. Find somebody you can confide in and talk to them. They can give you advice. They can direct you. They can connect you and you can get some help.” The good thing about that is there is help for everything and help for everyone, as long as you know what you want. CP: OK. Joe, I wanted to ask you, you know, and you started, you started down this path a little bit. You, I guess, you're like the perfect interviewee. But, you talked a little bit about some insights or some advice that you might give to those refugee leaders who are starting those community organizations and trying to help their communities grow. So, if you could give some pieces of advice to those leaders, maybe they're starting out, what would you, would you say to them on how to be successful in that role? JN: Well, once you get to the United States, hey, you have to get a goal and the goals are always really simple. You... English! You have to know English, of course. Some people come here, they speak English which is good. Well, most of them don't speak English, because they come from the camps. Some come from English, French-speaking countries. Some come from Arab-speaking countries. So, it's that kind of situation. So, English is one of the biggest things. 13 So, you make that a goal, to learn English. You make it a goal to get some education. You have to. Whether it's function literacy or go to college, or go to university, get some formal education. That should be a goal, if not even for you, but for your family members, your kids. Make sure that that is the goal and the other goal is to get a good job. If you want to do business, you can do business, also. But, at least you can take care of the economic aspect and be self-reliant, because you don't want to be dependent and be a burden on the government for a long, long time. So, you have to set those goals. I know, for you to get to those goals, you need fundamentals to take care of you, of course, you need to see family, you need a stronger family. You need a good relationship between husband and wife. You need to preserve your own culture. You need to understand the American culture. Always the fundamentals, you need to take care of. So, make sure you take care of those fundamentals, because once you take up the fundamentals, you can begin to achieve your dreams or the goals you have set yourself. CP: That's great. So, like you, said the first thing, you know, set those goals for yourself, so that you know where you're going, you have the roadmap to success, personally. And then, once you kind of get to that level, where, you know, maybe someone has been elected to one of these boards, what are some insights that you might give them on being a leader in northern Utah? How do they become successful as leaders in the nonprofit? JN: Well, the concept of leadership for these guys, when we work with them, we tell them, "Hey! It's not about you, it's about your family, your brothers and your 14 sisters", that's how we tell them because they are your brothers. They are your sisters. It's about helping them. So, whatever you learn, you make sure you transfer those skills to them in different ways. Um, either through a meeting or through a mediation when there's a dispute or with the parents and the kids, because it's hard in this system. Over there, the job of the family is really split between you and your neighbors. So, it's like, it takes a neighbor to raise a child, which makes it easier for us over there in Africa. But, once you come to the US, that job is solely your job. It's like your full time job. So, responsibility, 90% of the time, the kids go to school, but your job becomes even bigger, because it's a difference, an independent kind of system. You take care of your own, your own issues. They find it really difficult to understand that you have to be taking care of your kids, even the kids, they are going somewhere for a school function. It's not, you don't even see them. If the kid has a game, you don't even see them. They don't show up, because they don't think that is their job. CP: Wow. JN: You have to understand that it's a different system. It's a different culture. Your child, your responsibility of families are 100 percent, in this instance. So, they have to understand. So, we try to tell the leaders, "Hey! They don't understand the child, anybody that comes in, if the government comes in, they are only trying to help you. If the school comes in, they are only helping you. If the police comes around, they are only helping you. It's your job. That is your job. It's not like over there, where you leave your kid the whole day, you just come home and you see 15 the kid and he's still fine, because other people are around, taking helping to take care. But, here, it's different. If you leave your kid, you can be, you can be doing something really dangerous, which he doesn't even know he is doing. So, we try to tell them, "Your leadership is not about being the president. You have to be serving your people and helping them to adjust to this new system that is completely different from what you knew originally. CP: Joe, thank you so much for talking to me today. I know we are a little, a little bit later than we had planned, but due to technical difficulties, but thank you so much for chatting with me today and sharing your insights on leadership. JN: Thanks for having me. 16