American dream: Ugandan refugee flees dictatorship, graduates from Herzing nursing school – Hearld Independent & McFarland Thistle
When Richard Onyait stepped out of the airport and onto American soil for the first time, he remembers thinking his ears would break.
Onyait fled a dictator-occupied Uganda six years ago, and landed in Boston in the dead of a blistering 2015 winter.
“My ears were freezing cold to the point where I thought they would break if anything touched them,” Onyait remembered about stepping off the plane in Boston. “My first time venturing out was when I visited the Boston Center for Refugee Health, and there was a very kind woman there who taught me how to wrap a scarf around my head to keep my ears warm.”
Landing in Boston during one of the city’s coldest winters on record was the shock of a lifetime for a then 32-year-old Onyait, who had lived his whole life in Uganda.
Uganda has been governed by the same president, Yoweri Musevini, for the past 35 years. Musevini rose to power in 1986, and has claimed every election since.
“[Musevini’s] desire to hold on to power, some of us have fallen victim to that, and that’s how I found myself in America,” Onyait said. “It’s a difficult thing to leave a place you’ve been used to. Luckily for me, I found a new home by fleeing the dictatorship that was ravaging Africa.”