South Africa

Dama moved to South Africa at the age of eleven, he lived in Pretoria which is one of the largest cities in South Africa. He attended a local English speaking private school that taught the Afrikaans and Sotho languages. He picked up on different South African slang terms while attending the school such as Yoh, which is an exclamation of surprise, and Eish, which is an exclamation of worry. While at school Dama learned how to play rugby, one of the most popular sports in the nation, which he says is more simplistic than American football.

Dama’s favorite trip within the nation was his trip to the township that the South African liberator, Nelson Mandela, grew up in. He is widely studied and respected as a beacon of freedom within the nation. As such Dama studied Mandela and his history of struggle in school. He says that seeing Mandela’s house in the township was inspiring in that it showed the poverty that someone could rise out of and go onto do such great things. Seeing the poverty in South Africa opened Dama’s eyes to how much of the world lives and interacting with these people led to his realization that more attention needs to be paid to how the poor live.

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Russia

Dama moved to Moscow, Russia when he was six years old and attended primary school from first to sixth grade at a French speaking International School. His favorite place that he visited in Russia was St. Petersburg as there was one of the biggest art museums in all of the world there. It also had a palace called Peter Hoff in St. Petersburg which is breathtakingly beautiful, it has a massive fountain in front of the palace and a statue of Sampson wrestling a lion.

His favorite thing about Russia was playing in the snow which he had never experienced at such a level before. Although he lived all over Europe he had never experienced weather to the extreme that it had in Europe.

Dama also quite enjoyed being able to visit the Red Square in Russia which contains Lenin's Mausoleum. He said it was fascinating to see Lenin's embalmed body, Dama said one of the most interesting thing that he learned was that Stalin had actually been embalmed and kept in the mausoleum next to Lenin for a while but was taken out during the de-Stalinization of the USSR.