Pictured is the Josh and Jenny Angus family with their exchange student, Mohamed Hammam of Egypt, and their two sons Langston, a sixth grader, and Keygan, a sophomore.
A 15-year-old boy from Egypt is making his home in the City of Nevada, IA this year and attending Nevada High School.
Mohamed Hammam is part of the Kennedy Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES). Competition was stiff to qualify with YES. “Out of 11,000 applications, only 39 get selected,” he said.
The idea of coming to the United States through YES was given to him by a friend who came to Wisconsin last year. Mohamed, whose first language is Arabic, is also very fluent in English, which probably gave him an advantage over other applicants. When asked how he became so good with his English, he said a lot of it comes from watching “English shows and movies.” His favorite thing he watched was the ‘90s sitcom, “Friends.”
Mohamed is staying for the year with the family of Josh and Jenny Angus. Jenny said they knew they were getting a boy from Egypt long before he knew he was coming to Iowa. When Mohamed learned it was Iowa, he admits, he had to look up where that was. He wanted to know if it would be hot.
It was certainly hot, and humid, he agreed, when he arrived in August. He’s used to the heat in Egypt, but not so much the humidity. “It’s really hot in the summer (in Egypt), 80 to 100 degrees. A really tough winter is maybe 45 degrees,” he noted. He’ll probably see the coldest temperatures he’s ever experienced as we get into Iowa’s winter season.
Mohamed is already experiencing what it’s like to live in a more rural area. He’s from the City of Luxor, which is over a million people. The school he goes to, however, is smaller than Nevada High School, “because it’s a private school,” he noted. “We have one classroom per grade.”
Mohamed would have been a sophomore in his high school at home this year. He’s classified at Nevada as a senior, because that’s how all exchange students are generally classified.
School here is going well so far. “I’m taking Spanish, chemistry, business, speech and math,” he said. The subjects are similar to what he’s taken at home. He said here, chemistry is his favorite so far. “It’s really hard, but Mr. Brown (the teacher), he’s fun.”
Mohamed is used to starting the school day around 8 a.m. back home, but the end of the day is much different. “At home, we are done by 1:30. We don’t eat lunch at school.”
And sports and many other activities in his home country are not affiliated with the school. Those are a club activity. So, Mohamed has chosen to take in the extra-curricular experience while here. He was out for football and played on the JV squads. He even got in for one play in a varsity game at Knoxville and said that was a real “wow” moment.
He loved the atmosphere of high school football in America. “Everything was great about it. We don’t have that big school games, so being together and people are cheering, everything was great.” Now, he’s trying drama, and he plans to end the year with soccer, a sport that is big in Egypt.
With the Angus family — which includes Langston, a sixth grader, and Keygan, a sophomore, along with a college-aged Taylyn, (who is not living at home most of this year) – Mohamed said he’s getting to do many things.
It started in August with attending the Iowa State Fair. It was there that he saw a live pig for the first time. Being Muslim, he doesn’t eat pork. The family has also taken Mohamed to an Iowa Cubs baseball game, and an Iowa Wild hockey game, along with many community activities. “Every weekend we have stuff to do,” he said.
On Halloween, a holiday not celebrated in Egypt, Mohamed dressed as a construction worker and took in the experience of trick-or-treating with his host brother Langston. “We got a lot of candy,” Mohamed said.
At the time of this interview, he was looking forward to Thanksgiving, which the Angus family was celebrating with Jenny’s parents on their farm in eastern Iowa. Mohamed had already been to the farm once before this fall, noting it was interesting to see a house so far away from a city and surrounded by big fields. Hearing that Thanksgiving was about eating a lot of food sounded great to him.
When it comes to food, Mohamed said many things here are similar to what he eats back home. But soups and casseroles, Jenny said, aren’t familiar to him.
Rice and pasta are daily staples in the Egyptian diet. Mohamed said he’s missing things like Koshari, which is a popular dish with a base of pasta, rice, and lentils, topped with chickpeas, a garlicky tomato sauce, garlic vinegar, and crispy fried onions; and macarona bechamel, a pasta bake with penne, spiced meat, tomato sauce and bechamel (a roux of milk, butter, flour and seasoning). “It’s kind of like a casserole,” he said.
He was planning to very soon attempt to make the Angus family one of his favorite desserts from home — kunafa, a crunchy, buttery shredded phyllo crust with creamy milk pudding in the center.
Jenny said she finds some of his food habits interesting. “He puts catsup on his pizza, any kind of pizza. He doesn’t like eggs, or broccoli, or tuna, or strawberries.”
An interesting time of adjustment for the family will be in March when Mohamed will observe Ramadan, a Muslim ritual that includes fasting from dawn to dusk. “It will be different here with everybody eating when I am not,” he said. He’ll eat in the evenings after the sun sets and will get up early in the morning to eat before the sun rises.
Though he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, Mohamed is interested to experience the upcoming holiday with his host family.
Back home, Mohamed has three older sisters, and he said his parents are definitely missing him. His return home will happen in June.
Here are a few other questions we asked Mohamed, and his answers:
What will happen with your education when you return home? He will be a junior in high school next year, with his senior year after that. After high school he’ll attend college as everyone does in Egypt.
Will you travel to any other parts of the United States while here this year? Yes, he’ll take a trip to Washington, DC before returning home.
Was he interested in the recent United States election? Yes, he paid a lot of attention to it, because most of the people in his home country were very interested in it due to the Palestinian War. Friends were messaging him on Election Day asking how it was going. As to whether his friends were happy with the result, he said their reactions are similar to Americans’ reactions… some are happy, some are not.
What have you tried to emphasize to others here when speaking about your home country? That Egypt is more than just deserts and camels. We have different landscapes.
What are you enjoying most about the City of Nevada, IA? That I’ve felt very welcomed here. People are kind. They want to know more about me.
-Written by Marlys Barker, City of Nevada
