Host: Meg Bowles
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Meg: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles.
One of the first questions we ask when we meet someone new, is where are you from? Today, we'll hear four stories that have some connection to home. Whether searching for a place to call home or running away from one in search of another, there's something in us, humans, that inherently wants to belong to a place.
Many of us can relate to the deep desire to leave our childhood homes behind, hoping to find a place where we feel more in our element, or maybe we simply crave adventure like our first storyteller. Suzi Ronson shared this story of running away with a proverbial circus at a Mainstage we produced at the Union Chapel in London.
[cheers and applause]
The theme of the night was Coming Home.
Suzi: [00:00:53] Hi, everybody. I was born a few years after World War II and brought up in a nice house in a typical suburb of Southeast London, Bromley in Kent. My parents both worked. My father was a long-distance lorry driver and my mother was a shop assistant. They got married shortly after the war simply because that's what everybody did. The government gave generous allowances and my brother and I both had free milk at school, a third of a pint in a glass bottle with a silver top.
I don't think my parents expected too much of me after school. I think they thought I would grow up, have a bit of fun, get married and have some children. The swinging 1960s changed all of that. I mean we had the best music in the world. It was a great time to be a teenager. Fabulous fashion and the pill. [audience laughter] Twiggy was my fashion model of the day and everybody wanted to look like her. She was a tall, skinny girl with a flat chest and flat hair, and I wanted to look like her too, but no chance. I was completely out of style. My hair was thick and frizzy and I couldn't do anything with it. I wore horrible glasses and I was had a waist and hips. I even tried Coca Cola cans in my hair to try and make it straight, but it didn't really work. I wasn't good at school and I didn't like school.
So, when I was 15, I went to the Evelyn Paget College of Hair and Beauty in Bromley to study hairdressing. I passed the course and was transferred to the Evelyn Paget School in Beckenham, which is where I met Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones was my quarter to three shampoo and set on a Thursday afternoon. [audience chuckles] Sometimes she would have a little trim and a chocolate kiss rinse and I think I permed her hair once.
As I would do her hair, she would chat to me about her son David. She would say, “You know, he was always been an artist and he sings in a band.” It was the same kind of conversation week after week, and I would nod and smile. She seemed so proud of him. I didn't really take much notice until one day she said, she mentioned the song, Space Oddity. [audience laughter] I looked at her and I said, “Space Oddity. I've heard that on the radio. Are we talking about David Bowie?” She said “Yes, I'm his mum.” [audience laughter]
I mean who knew? And there was a buzz about David in Beckenham. He paid at the three tons, albeit folk songs but he had the hit Space Oddity. I hadn't heard much more from him, so I thought he might be a one hit wonder. [audience laughter] First time, I saw David he's walking down Beckenham High Street in a dress. He's with this girl with skinny black pants on. I met the girl. Mrs. Jones brought her into the salon. It was Angie, David's wife. I liked her immediately. She was so cool and fabulous and she looked so great. I mean, she certainly didn't shop in Beckenham. [audience laughter]
I heard a bit about her life. She did David's Lights, and they used to run around London and go to all the clubs. It just sounded so glamorous. Didn't see her for a while. And then, when she came back, it was Christmas week. She's coming for an appointment Christmas week. Every self-respecting salon in the land is busy Christmas week. So, I took her to one side and I said, “There's no appointments, Darling. Here, take my number, give me a call, I'll come to your house and do your hair.”
Well off, I went to Haddon Hall, which was the name of their home. It was about a mile out of town. A huge mansion that had been divided into flats and they had the middle floor. I'm curious. I've heard about her life, I'm curious about the way she lives. So, I walked into the house, into this massive living room which was completely overwhelming. But it wasn't that so much. It was more the way it was decorated. A dark blue carpet, dark blue walls and a silver ceiling. It was so calm. There wasn't much furniture, a couple of couches, a chair or two, some cushions on the floor and the rest of the room was completely covered with record albums and musical equipment.
David and Angie were sitting by a large bay window and they were discussing the merits of cutting his hair short. He had this long, blonde, wavy hair at the time. They asked me my opinion. I said, “Well, you know, no one else has got short hair. Nobody. You'd look really different.” So, he comes over with this magazine cover and there's this Kansai Yamamoto model and she's got this short red hair. And he said, “Can you do that?” Well, as I'm saying, yes. I'm thinking to myself, it's a woman's hairstyle [audience laughter] and how am I going to actually do that? But inside, I'm excited, because this is a time to be creative. I mean, fantastic looking bloke, tall and slim, long white neck and a beautiful face. I thought, if I can pull this off, he's going to look great. [audience laughter]
So, I guess it took me about a half an hour. I chopped his hair off. After I'd finished, his hair wouldn't stand up. It just flopped. I'm looking at it, I'm panicking and I can see he's not looking too happy. So, I said, “As soon as we tint the hair, it's going to change the texture. It's going to look great. I can promise you, it's going to stand up.” I was praying I was right. [audience chuckles]
I went and experimented with color, and I found the color red hot red with 30 volume peroxide to give it a bit of a kick. But there was no product in those days. You didn't have gels or fixatives. There was nothing to help me make it stand up. So, I used God. It was anti-dandruff treatment that I'd used on the old girls at the salon that set hairlike stone. [audience laughter]
The second he looked at himself in the mirror with that short red hair, any doubts he had completely disappeared. Angie and I looked at him in awe. He looked fantastic. He gained a couple of inches with the height. A huge wave of relief washed over me. I'd done, I’d done it standing up. I was so relieved. I'm packing to leave and she says, “Well, how much do we owe you?” I said, “Oh, £2, please.” [audience laughter]
They called me and I went up to see them at a place in London. The band were playing and I went to see. I still wasn't sure what kind of a following he had. He played folk music. I wasn't quite sure. I walked in, the place is packed. It's a college. The kids are about my age, but they're not like me. I mean, they're well educated. Everything that I wasn't. Lights went down, some music came on and the band took to the stage. It was a real oh, my God moment for me.
I mean, David was Ziggy Stardust. He had full makeup on. His hair was flaming on his head. They all wore costumes. The band had this flat, velvet pastel color suits tucked into their boots. David had a similar a look on. When they played, the place rocked. They were so good. This wasn't folk music, that's for sure. They were amazing. What a great band. I went home thinking to myself, well, my God, I didn't expect to see that. I think Angie Corman said, “Come to the house, we'd like to talk to you.” So, I went up to Haddon Hall. And Freddie Burretti was there. Now, Freddie had helped design the costumes with David. I went up. He was so fey and fabulous. I was entranced to his mannerisms, the way he talked. I mean, he was fantastic, Freddie. I'd never met a gay man before. [audience laughter]
At some point during that evening, David leans over and kisses Freddie full on the mouth. Well, I didn't know which way to look. [audience laughter] I looked at Angie and she's laughing and I'm thinking to myself, I'm completely out of my league here. I wasn't like these people. I didn't know who Nietzsche was. I'd never heard of Lou Reed. I certainly didn't know who Andy Warhol was. I'd never seen guys kissing before. I was from Beckenham. [audience laughter]
Angie takes me to one side later that evening and says, “You know, David and I have decided we want you to come on the road with us. So, you're to go tomorrow to Mayman offices in London and discuss your wages with Tony Defries, David's manager.” So, the next day I go up to the offices in London, heart in hand, and I talked Tony. And by the end of the afternoon, I've got the job. I'm driving home and suddenly sinking in, I'm going to go on the road with a rock and roll band. I mean, it's like a dream come true. I couldn't believe it.
I went to Evelyn Paget's the next day and gave him my notice. [audience laughter] My boss said to me, he said, “Suzanne, you should think carefully before you give up a well-paying, secure job.” [audience laughter] I looked at him and said, “Yes, I have.” [audience laughter] After this, of course, my confidence knew no bounds, because I've done David's hair. So, I met the band at the flat and I cut Woody's hair, the drummer, who was a bit like a short blonde Bowie. I cut Trevor's hair off and sprayed his sideburn silver. The only holdout was Mick Ronson. He didn't want to look like David.
So, then I started on the road with them and we even did Top of the Pops. David, they played Starman. During the chorus, David draped his arm around Mick Ronson's shoulders. I think it shook Britain to the core, certainly shook my mum and dad. [audience laughter] It was great. David was always so ambitious. He wanted to do rock and roll theatre. So, we started Finsbury Park, the `Rainbow Theatre. We were there like 18-hour days. There was scaffolding and mime artists, dry dice and fantastic lights. It was an amazing show. We were all sworn to secrecy, no press, no cameras, no nothing. But we made such a big deal of it and it made the show so appealing. By the time it opened, everybody came.
I think the only person that didn't like it was Elton John. He walked out halfway through saying, “That's not rock and roll. He's never going to make it now.” [audience laughter] Well, I could feel the momentum gathering. We're driving around the country in a bus and fans were following us. It was a really great time. Everything was going so well. I was with David all the time throughout that period. I would be with him before the show, doing his hair, his costumes, getting me everything he wanted. I was his personal as well as his hairdresser.
He did many costume changes, and one was during the Caton solo. He would come to the side of the stage, I would have a Gitane cigarette and a glass of wine, and he would take them and I would change. While Micky is wailing 10 seconds and 10ft from where we were, it was exciting, but we had it down to an art. We went to America and we really traveled in style in the States. We stayed at the Plaza Hotel in New York and the Beverly Hills in California. We were in Ziggy's world and no one wanted to go anywhere else. I mean, I never wanted to go home.
We had a great head team. This group would go ahead of us to a different town. It was Cherry Vanilla, famous groupie and Lee Black Childers of Warhol fame. They would go into a town and they'd go to the clubs and create a big fuss and get the people to come to the gigs. And it was very successful. Oh, I met Iggy Pop in California. We went to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and he said, “I want you to dye my hair blue.” I said, “Okay.” So, I dyed his hair blue and I said, “You might want to wash it a couple of times before you go back in the pool.” [audience laughter] Well, of course, he completely ignored me and dived in the pool, and there was a blue streak from one end of the other at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool. I think he was asked to leave after that.
I even went to Japan with David and I met Kansai Yamamoto and picked up some fantastic costumes of his. It was great being in Japan. I was being noticed. Suddenly, I was the one. I was suddenly cool. Everybody wanted to know me the girl with the thick hair and the glasses, suddenly I'd become the one to be. I went back home after one of these tours. I walked down Beckenham High Street. I looked in the window of Evelyn Paget's. My God, it looked so small. Thank my lucky stars I wasn't there anymore. Beckenham hadn't changed, my family hadn't changed, but I'd changed so much. I was a million miles from where I'd been before.
The last show that David ever did was at Hammersmith Odeon. He just stood on the stage and said, “This is the last show we're ever going to do,” and played Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide. It was sad to say goodbye to Ziggy. I think we were all sad to say goodbye to Ziggy. But I didn't go home. I went to Italy and fell in love with Mick Ronson, the guitar player, and moved in with him to London. It was a great ending for me. I am thankful for my luck. I'm so grateful that I met Mrs. Jones and Angie, so grateful I gave them my telephone number. Otherwise, somebody else might have lived my life. [audience chuckles] Thrilled that I met and married the guitar player, the late, great Mick Ronson and had a beautiful daughter with him.
I met so many interesting people throughout that time and heard so much wonderful music. I'm so grateful for David for taking a chance on me and taking me on the road with him. My haircut's on British currency now the Brixton £10 note. [audience laughter] Who would have thought I could have done that? [chuckles] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:14:48] These days, Suzi Ronson lives in New York City. She's working on a book about her experiences touring with both David Bowie and Lou Reed. The rest of her family, including her daughter, the singer songwriter Lisa Ronson, live in London. Susi says she swears someday she'll go home for good.
[David Bowie's song]
Coming up, two stories of how heartbreak can sometimes force us to reevaluate our relationship to home, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[David Bowie's song]
Jay: [00:15:25] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg: [00:16:02] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
Just when our next storyteller, Denis Repp, started to feel like he was putting down some roots, things suddenly shifted. He shared his experience at an open-mic StorySLAM we produced in Pittsburgh, where we partner with public radio station WESA.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Denis Repp, live at The Moth.
Denis: [00:16:22] So, it was about a year ago that my girlfriend broke up with me. In hindsight, she did the right thing, [audience laughter] but I didn't see it coming. So, it left me off balance for a few weeks. For one thing, when you have a breakup at this time of year, I had already started some Christmas shopping. She had let me know some things she wanted. She wanted a fancy fleece blanket, for example. I already got that. It was in my living room waiting to be wrapped. And now, being who I am, I had already lost my receipt, so I couldn't really return it. [audience laughter]
So, my first inclination was just to actually give a tour and be done with it. I asked my friends at my bar about that, and it was a unanimous response, “Don't you dare give that to her. Find anything else to do with it, but don't give it to her.” So, I didn't. Also, I had been accustomed to going to her house a lot, and helping with the house, and helping with her, and taking people to dance class and helping with homework. And now, I had none of that to do, and so I had a lot of time on my hands.
So, I spent a few weeks doing a lot of nothing, until a friend at work suggested I needed to do something, and I needed to maybe volunteer somewhere. She suggested a dog shelter near my house. Sounded good to me. I like dogs. I certainly had the time, so let's try that. So, I became a dog walker at a shelter near my place. When you do that, you commit to go an hour a week. With the state of my life, I was going five or six days a week, at least an hour a day. Walking several dogs, just walking them, giving them a little break, getting them out of the shelter, exercising them, trying to get them ready to go home with somebody.
Now, at our shelter, the average dog stays there for about 56 days from the time it comes in until someone takes them home. Now, that includes the dogs that come in, runaways, broke off the chain. Their owner comes for them a day or two later. So, at the other end of the spectrum is the hard cases, the guys who have been there for a long time, including a dog named Lake.
All we knew about Lake, was that he was about two years old. He was found at a county park running near a lake, which is how they named him. [audience laughter] And Lake just could not catch a break. He was a gorgeous dog, really very smart, but he had some stranger danger. And so, his first response on seeing a man was to try to attack him. The kind of dog, you look at him, people think he's a pit bull. He's not, but he certainly has some terror in him. He liked women, he liked kids. But a guy would see him or he would see the guy, and he would not get a second look. Because when you're looking to adopt a dog, you don't want your first interaction with a dog to be, the dog's trying to kill me. [audience laughter] So, he never got a second look.
So, Lake was there for weeks and then months and then years. Lake was at that shelter for over two years. Around the time, I started walking, he'd been there a year and a half and I got the same response. The first time he saw me, he was trying to kill me. He got better. A steady stream of treats calmed him down. Eventually, my walking skills got to the point where I was allowed to walk him. We were great. He was one of our favorites. He was everybody's favorite. Everyone who worked there, anyone who knew him, and all the staff, any volunteer who knew him loved this dog and we just wanted to get him home with somebody. Well, you can see where this is going. [audience chuckles]
I was getting toward the end of a long home improvement project. As it was coming toward the end, I decided when it was over, I was ready to take someone home and it was going to be Lake. So, I put my name in and they approved me. Now, there is at the shelter, there's a whiteboard in the office where they put the names of all the dogs that are coming and going. So, we know Opie has a meet and greet next week, and Chance is going home and Iris is at the vet. People just know. And then, the day Lake's name went up there, I'm told that anyone who came into the office cried, including me.
Well, the day came to take him home. It was a big day. A lot of the staff came, volunteers came just to see him off and they all brought their cameras with them. So, there are pictures of Lake walking out of that shelter for the last time and going to his car. There's a picture of him in the backseat of my car in his seat, looking out the window and I swear that dog is smiling. [audience laughter]
There's a picture a short time later in his new yard for the first time by himself. His own yard. Not as big as the yard he left behind at the shelter, but this one's all his. There's another picture of me on one knee with Lake's face in mine, and we're facing away from the camera. He's giving me a big dog hug. With her looking away, so you can't see the tongue bath he's giving me, [audience laughter] and you can't see the tears on my face. Everyone who overlooked him for two years, they're all suckers. [audience laughter] And one more thing, we had the blanket I never gave to my girlfriend. Lake finds it very comfortable. [audience laughter] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:21:44] Denis Repp still volunteers at the shelter twice a week. He says, “Lake is doing great.” He sent in some pictures, and in every one, Lake has the most enormous grin. Denis says his home is a little bit of a disaster with the combination of bachelor and dog who likes to chew up his toys. So, any potential new romances will have to love Lake and be forgiving of the mess.
[whimsical music]
Back in 2012, it was reported that Jonah Lehrer had fabricated quotes attributed to Bob Dylan in a book he had published about creativity. What followed was a close scrutiny of his previous work, where it was determined that in addition to these made-up quotes, he had reused his own writing across various media platforms. He ended up losing his position as a staff writer with a New Yorker, two of his books were recalled and his career as a journalist basically came to a halt.
A lot has been written about Jonah's fall from grace. There are a lot of opinions about the mistakes he made, judgments about his character and about the public shaming that ensued. When I spoke to Jonah about telling a story, I was less interested in the details of what happened. That story had been told a million times over. I was more interested in what happens to someone who's at the top of their game, a sought after, writer touring around the country, speaking to large crowds, contributing to various publications and radio programs. What happens when that wave of success crashes and there are no more invitations or accolades. [audience cheers and applause]
Jonah shared his story about the days following these events at a Los Angeles Mainstage presented by Public Radio Station KCRW. Here's Jonah Lehrer, live at The Moth.
Jonah: [00:23:29] It was late at night. I was standing outside my house. I had just driven in from the airport. I was always driving in from the airport. I remember staring at the front door, knowing that once I opened it, my life would never be the same again.
That morning, I'd been in St. Louis, giving a talk to a thousand people at the convention center. Right before I step on stage, I get a call. I learned that another writer has discovered that I'd fabricated several Bob Dylan quotes in one of my books. I'd been a lifelong Dylan fan and was familiar with approximate versions of what he'd said. So, I put in those approximations to make it sound better, as if I'd actually done my homework and then I forgot they were there.
These fabrications weren't the only mistakes in my work. They were simply the worst. There is no excuse for what I've done, for breaking the most basic rule of journalism, “Don't make shit up.” Instead, all I've got is a long list of regrets about the kind of writer I'd become. I was driven by a mixture of insecurity and ambition. No matter how high I got and I got really lucky really fast. I was convinced it would all disappear, that I had to grab the chance and the checks while I could. So, I said yes to everything. Columns, blogs, books, articles, talks.
Instead of focusing on the difficult pleasures of writing, checking and rechecking my work, I judged myself by the superficial markers of success. The sound of applause in a hotel conference room, my Amazon sales ranking, an inbox full of invitations. And then, it all fell apart. I got that call backstage, and I knew right away that my career was over. People talk about public shame, about all the mean people on the internet. And it's true, there are mean people on the internet. But for me, and I can only speak to my own experience here. The private shame is so much worse. I can turn off my phone. I can’t turn off those thoughts about how I hurt the people I'm closest to, those I most respect. Those are the thoughts I'm going to be wrestling with for the rest of my life.
Above all, I think about my wife. I opened the door and there she was, sitting on the couch in a ponytail in her pajamas. I called from the airport, telling her I was coming home early, that I had terrible news, but now I had to give her all the sordid details. I remember the way she listened and tried not to cry. I told her that night to leave me, that I wasn't worthy of her and never would be, that I would be sad for a long time and she deserved so much better. But she stayed. And because she stayed, I have a story to tell.
The transition was sudden. I went from living a very busy life, full of deadlines to one in which I had nothing at all to do. But I did have a young daughter, which meant that I was stuck with childcare by the process of elimination. And the sad truth was that up to that point, I'd been a bad father. I was always gone, on the road more than I was home. When I was home, I was always staring at a screen which is probably why my daughter said apple long before she said dada. In fact, for the first 16 months of my daughter's life, I never put her to sleep, not once, not even for naps. But now, I was home, eager to make up for lost time, and I decided that parenthood would be my consolation. I would use my failure to become a better father to my young daughter.
Of course, I settled on this narrative for all the wrong reasons. I chose it mostly because it sounded like something I should say, “The appropriate turn in the movie version of my life failed writer becomes devoted family man, disgraced author turns into dad of the year.” That, at least, was how I imagined it.
One night early on, my wife had to work late, which meant that I had to put my daughter to bed by myself. I said, “It was fine, not a problem. I knew what to do.” I carefully repeated her bedtime ritual. There was sesame street and a glass of milk, followed by a long procession of books in bed. But nothing worked. She just kept asking for her mother. I begged, I pleaded, I read more books, I sang songs, I tried lying down on the floor next to her crib, but she didn't care. By witchy, who was I? Where had I been? And then, when I felt my own anger welling up inside, because kids, they can make you so angry, I exiled myself to the hallway. I sat there outside her door and I listened to my daughter very slowly cry herself to sleep. I sat there, and for the first time since everything had happened, I started crying too.
Years later, this is a memory that still makes me ache, that makes my chest all tight and hollow. Because it was there, in that hallway, that I finally felt the full scope of my mistakes. I wanted my daughter to be my redemption, my consolation and she wanted nothing at all to do with me. And those were just the nights. The days were just as difficult and endless seeming. It doesn't help that two-year-olds tell the truth. My daughter wasn't afraid of pointing out all my errors. When she complained, because I was doing it wrong, because I let the sunblock get in her eye or put her diaper on backwards again, I would get sad and furious, which only made me feel worse. This wasn't how the movie was supposed to go.
In the movie, my daughter never swallows a penny. In the movie, I don't have to spend the next week searching through her dirty diapers, looking for a coin I never did find. But children are forgiving and I kept showing up because I had nowhere else to be. One day, about a year into my adventure in fatherhood, my daughter invented a new game for us to play.
At the time, she was deep into Doc McStuffins, that Disney cartoon about the little girl who takes care of her sick toys. She decided that she was going to be Doc, which meant that I was going to be the sick toy. She told me to lie down and began looking over my limbs, asking for a medical history of every scar and bruise. “Here is where I fell down and cut my knee and got stitches. Here is where I banged my shin into the car door. I broke this finger playing basketball, which is why it's so crooked.” Then she'd get out her little plastic doctor kit and with the patience I didn't know she had, tend to all my wounds. At the end of a session, I'd be covered in band aids, gauze and scotch tape.
We played the doctor game every day for months. I thought I was taking care of my child, but really, she was taking care of me. When I look back on these last few years with my daughter and now my toddler son, the days I felt closest to them have often been the most difficult ones. Not the filtered portraits you share on Instagram, but the night when the kid pukes on you in your bed at 02:00 AM, or when the afternoon has dissolved into a series of crying fits about “No more gummy vitamins and this is the last book. Really it is.” And yes, “You have to brush your teeth. Do you not remember eating all those gummy vitamins?” [audience chuckles]
They are those moments when you realize that this whole situation only exists, that you are putting up with the fights, and the exhaustion, and the boredom and the boogers because you love them beyond words. I don't want to make it sound like I'm raising these kids by myself when the reality is my wife still does most of the work. I don't want to pretend that getting to spend the afternoon playing Harry Potter and searching for Goldbug means I don't sometimes miss the sound of applause. There are still so many days when I wish I could disappear my sins, purge my Google results, travel back in time and just do it all over again.
But I also know that the worst parts, those scenes I most want to forget, they're also the most important parts. The look on the face of my wife when I tell her what I've done, the sound of my daughter crying in the hallway because I provide no comfort at all. There's a line from the Sufi mystic Inayat Khan, “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” That's what happened to me. The best days for me now are when the happiness catches me by surprise, the joy it gives my son to watch the tire guys at Costco, [audience laughter] the dance party to Beyoncé that's interrupted when I realize my daughter knows way too many of the words to Drunk in Love, [audience laughter] that moment in every meal where things get so messy you stop noticing the mess and just enjoy the sight of a hungry kid smearing peanut butter into his hair.
Such as family life, sometimes you can't believe who you've become or what you're laughing at, or where you most want to be. Our attachments bend us in funny ways. I'm grateful that I got bent. I learned about love. My family taught me about love, and that has been my great consolation. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:34:48] That was Jonah Lehrer. Jonah lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids. In addition to acting out Harry Potter scenes and pushing around Hot Wheels, his kids still love watching the Costco tire guys. Jonah continues to write. His most recent endeavor is a book about the science of attachment theory. He says, “Writing is the way he thinks through things, how he wrestles with ideas and makes sense of himself and the world.” You can find out more about Jonah and the other storytellers featured in this hour by visiting our website, themoth.org.
Coming up a woman walks the entire eastern continent of Africa in search of a place to call home, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:35:50] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg: [00:36:45] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
And our last story comes from Abeny Kucha. We first met Abeny in when she called The Moth Pitchline. She left a two-minute pitch about her experiences in a refugee camp in Africa. When I spoke with Abeny, she regaled me with stories of what it was like for her when she came to America, how out of her element she truly was. She told her story at a Mainstage we produced in Portland, Maine, the first place Abeny called home in the United States.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Abeny Kucha, live at The Moth.
Abeny: [00:37:20] When I first arrived in Portland, Maine, I walked off the plane with my 12-year-old brother and my 8-year-old daughter and my two little boys, 4 years old and 2 years old. The woman from social services who met us took us directly to this room was the conveyor belt. I had never seen anything like it before. We stood there in silence washing the bags. And she asked me, “Do you see your bag?” And I told her, “I didn't have a bag. Only this plastic bag I was carrying. That's all we had.” And she said, “Right. Okay. Well, then let's go home.” And that word, home, I hadn't had a home since my village.
I was born in a small village called Bor in South Sudan. We knew Africa had its troubles, but we had food and we hate each other. Until one day, the spring after I graduated from high school, I was in the market getting meat for my family. Baskets were raised and people were shouting. The meat wouldn't go far, and we all wanted some. Over the noise and chaos, the unmistakable sound of gunfire filled the air. Some people dropped to the ground and some people ran. I chose to run. My stepmother and I grabbed what we could, and ran into the jungle and on to another village. It would be 11 years until I stopped running from that war. I never know peace in Africa again.
Later, I met my husband. All my children were born in refugee camps. Later, things changed from bad to worse. My husband was killed in the war and I lost my second daughter. She died of starvation and disease. We were wandering from place to place. So, when this woman said, “Let's go home,” there was nothing else I wanted. She brought us to an apartment. We had never been in an apartment before. We had lived with thousands of other refugees wandering from under the tree to under the tree. So, this apartment was different to us.
She showed us around the apartment. I remember when she opened the refrigerator full of food, but there was nothing familiar with us. We saw a big bottle of orange soda and we thought it was juice. So, we tasted it and it tasted very bad. [audience laughter] So, we left it. She showed us the bathroom and the shower. She showed us everything. But before she left, she said, “This is a fire alarm. When you hear it, just go. Go outside and wait there until it's all clear.” Then she left.
All five of us were standing in this strange place. Very scary. I told the kids, “Let's sit down. We are home now.” I kept remembering the word, home. I said, “We should really sit down.” There were two couches in the living room. My children had never seen a couch before or a carpet. So, I went to the kitchen to warm up some milk. But before we drank our warm milk, we heard a noise. And I told the kids, “Lets run. That's the fire alarm the woman was talking about.”
Back in refugee camps, we had a plan. Because one time, the village was attacked and I had to run with the children and it was very difficult for me to collect all of them. So, we made a plan that when something happened, my brother would grab the baby and I would grab my four-year-old and my daughter would hold my skirt when we ran. So, here we were in Portland, Maine, in this apartment, hearing this noise. So, we went into our plane and my brother grabbed the baby. I grabbed my four-year-old, my daughter held my dress and we ran out of the apartment. We stood there. I asked them, “Do you see the fire? Do you smell the smoke?” They said, “No.” We stood there for a while and we said, “We should probably go back inside the building.”
So, we walked inside the building slowly. But we didn't know which one was our apartment. [audience laughter] We looked, but all the doors look alike. We tried few of them, but they were locked. Later, I saw one door a little bit open. So, we thought this might be our apartment. I went in first, slowly. And it was our apartment. There was a woman standing by the door. She told us, she accidentally rang a doorbell. So, we learned it wasn't a fire alarm at all. It was a doorbell. [audience laughter]
The woman from social services would come to visit us from time to time. When she usually come, she would always find me sleeping. So, one day, she asked me, “Why do you sleep so much?” And I told her, “For the last eight years, I walked from Sudan to Ethiopia, and I walked again from Ethiopia to Sudan, and again from Sudan to Kenya and from Kenya to the border of Somalia. I walked from under the tree to under the tree, from hunger to hunger, from gunfire to gunfire, from death to death. I walked the entire eastern continent of eastern Africa with these children. I am sleeping, because I hadn't slept for eight years.”
Portland was different with my village. My village was a small village. It lies on the eastern bank of White Nile with maybe around 5,000 people. My father had four wives as a custom in my village. I lived among many brothers and sisters. I went to school and learned English, my third language. I was happy. But in Maine, we felt so alone. We were feeling alone. So, I asked for some friends somewhere, especially people from my tribe. A woman helped me to find some friends who made it to Minnesota. So, with the help of social services, we were able to move to Minnesota.
In Minnesota, my children had their first opportunity to go to school. I managed to enroll them in school. I bought them school clothes and supplies they needed. The woman who helped me told me that the kids would need to wake up early in the morning and go to the bus stop, school bus. So, she told me that we would need an alarm clock. So, I went to Kmart, and I asked the ladies there if they heard an alarm clock sounded like a rooster. [audience laughter] They helped me find one. We set the alarm clock.
In the morning, the kids wake up. I walked my 12-year-old brother and my 8-year-old daughter. I walked them to the bus stop. The bus stop was just behind our apartment. I watched them climbing onto the bus with tears in my eyes. The bus took off. Parents left. I was still standing there with tears in my eyes, wondering if they would come back, hoping they would come back to me. Later, I went back to the apartment to my little boys. They were still sleeping. My tears were still falling. I thought about everything my children had gone through, everything they had seen.
When my baby Jock was born, the village was attacked. Nine hours after his birth, I was forced to live with him. And now, we made it. My children would never walk 200 miles again. They would never starve again, and they will always be happy, even when I'm not around. Once again, I thought about-- Last few years when my daughter graduated from law school. [audience cheers and applause]
I was very so proud of all my children. Today, I think about that first day in Portland, Maine airport when the woman said, “Let's go home.” And home mean hope to me. Home mean I would never, ever run again. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:49:26] Abeny Kucha came to America in 1994, long before the well-publicized lost voice of the Sudan. She says, people in her village call her The First Cow. Because in Sudan, when they travel cattle across the dangerous rivers, they send one cow over first to see if it would be eaten by the crocodiles, to see if the path was safe for the others to follow.
Abeny has one son who was born in the US. The family calls him The American Boy. She told me he once called her from a nearby rec center a few blocks from their home, and he said, “Mom, come pick me up.” And she said, “No, you can walk.” But he insisted. And she finally said, “I walked from Ethiopia to Sudan and back again. You can walk.” And he said, “But mom, you didn't have a choice.” And to that, Abeny responded, “Neither do you.”
If you would like to hear more about Abeny, Casey Donahue, who oversees them off Pitchline, recently did an interview with her where they talk a lot about the differences between life in America and life in the Sudan. You can find that interview on our website, themoth.org.
That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]
Jay: [00:50:48] Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness and Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Most Moth events are recorded by Argos Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from David Bowie, Stellwagen Symphonette, This Will Destroy You and Regina Carter. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.