People of the Pack — Viviana Akot

Viviana Akot is a first-year nursing major.

Morgan Matzen: Where are you from?

Viviana Akot: I am from South Sudan, Africa.

MM: What brought you here?

VA: My parents wanted a better life for me and my siblings, so that’s why they brought us to the United States. They wanted us to have an education, because back in my country there wasn’t a strong educational system.

MM: When did you come here?

VA: I came here back in 2005, so it’s been 11 to 12 years now, I think? We moved around a lot. I first landed in Nebraska, and then from there I went to Michigan, then Columbus, Ohio and then here. I moved to Sioux Falls and went to Washington High School there junior and senior year.

MM: Do you remember anything of South Sudan?

VA: I came here when I was seven, so I do remember back home. But, it was kind of dark history back there, because there was war and civil violence going on. So as a child, it wasn’t really that happy memory.

MM: Would you ever want to go back?

VA: I have not gone back there for 12 years so I really do want to go back. The tension and the violence has gone down now, but they’re still working on it. I hope there will one day be peace over there. It’s a slow process. I have my grandma and my grandparents and a couple cousins and aunts over there.

MM: Do you hope to stay in South Dakota with nursing?

VA: Yeah, I do hope to stay in South Dakota for a while and then branch out. I actually want to travel the world too, but the steps are still in process so I’m not really confident with that yet. I would travel anywhere, I don’t care. I just really like being in new places and meeting new people.

MM: What’s something not many people know about you?

VA: I have six younger siblings. I am the oldest of them so there is a total of seven of us. The youngest is a year old.

MM: What’s something you’re really passionate about?

VA: I actually really like learning other languages. As of now, I speak three, so I want to learn more. I just like connecting with other cultures and learning about other people, so I am really passionate about that. Besides English, I speak my native tongue, Dinka, and Arabic in the Eastern dialect. I can only write in my native tongue and I forgot how to read Arabic because in English, it’s a different alphabet and the reading structure is different. They read from right to left. I kind of forgot about that. South Sudan was one of the largest countries there, but it’s split into two because the North was more Islamic and the South was more Christian, so they were at conflict, and it brought some of their language over to our language so that’s how I learned Arabic aside Dinka. Before I came to the United States, I moved from South Sudan to Egypt and I lived there for four years before I came to the US, so I learned Arabic there too.