Focal Point: Lives In The Balance
At the Eid service, patrons gather around a table filled with pastries.

Making time for traditions

Some U.S. immigrants and international students have followed two different calendars and work harder to maintain their traditions from home.

Story and Photos by Maya Aguirre  |  Data Reporting by Olivia Boyer & Kira Desai

Published on June 15, 2026 | Reported from Syracuse, New York

It’s about an hour before sunrise, and Xinyu Lu is on FaceTime with her mother. The first-year Syracuse University law student smiles sleepily, wishing her family members a happy Lunar New Year in Mandarin as they pop their heads into the frame. Lu tries not to think about the thousands of miles between her and her loved ones in China, or all the hours they’ve been celebrating while she’s been asleep. 

This is not Lu’s first Lunar New Year spent away from her family. Like many other international students, she’s come to learn that celebrations like these, which felt like a given back home, are something she must intentionally upkeep in the United States. 

From Kenya to Cuse

Coming to Cuse

From Kenya to Cuse

Abdirahman Abdi is a student, refugee, immigrant and nonprofit founder. Fueled by faith, giving back is his passion and what he aims to accomplish with the Sadaqa Foundation.

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From Kenya to Cuse

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Produced by Kira Desai

Transcript: From Kenya to Cuse

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity

 

Abdirahman Abdi: Ubuntu, which means I am because we are; we are, so therefore I am. You know, I am nothing without the community that’s behind me and in front of me.

Kira Desai: This is Coming to Cuse, a podcast about immigrating to the Salt City. I’m Kira Desai. Abdirahman Abdi is a Syracuse resident and a Kenyan refugee. He runs an international nonprofit called the Sadaqa Foundation to give back to the Dadaab refugee complex. We spoke to Abdi about growing up in Syracuse and building community.

Abdi: I was born in Kakuma refugee camp. So when I came here I was a refugee and an immigrant. So were my parents, but they were born in Somalia. Initially didn’t come to Syracuse, we went to Connecticut, Hartford. And I was 2 years old around that time. And I have a little glimpse of Hartford. I remember stairs and a dog for the first time. I’d never seen a dog and that’s pretty scary. But I think we adjusted well.

So when I came to Syracuse I was 4 years old and as a kid we moved to Oak Street, which is on the north side of Syracuse We then moved to the south side of Syracuse, which is down the hill from Syracuse University called Syracuse Housing Authority. Around that, we had a community full of people from diverse countries in Africa: so Tanzania, Burundi, we have people from Kenya, we have people from Somalia. We have people from Puerto Rico. Yeah, it’s a diverse kind of people.

So yeah, everybody was speaking different languages. And we all had, in a sense, different cultures too, as well too. As a kid I loved dancing. I learned dance at an early age, at 7 years old, and that’s all I picked up. Then soccer was another thing my uncle taught me. So even soccer was a thing that in Kenya they play, and in Somalia as well too they play the sport of soccer. And they brought that with them to Syracuse, you know. And as a kid I played soccer from the age of 7 to the age of 18 years old. When we were growing up in housing we played soccer almost every day. It’s like a ritual, like a religion.

But as a kid I grew up identifying with the African American culture: so the music, the dancing, the clothing, the lingo, everything I identify with that in a sense, not really with my culture or some other culture because that wasn’t really – though it was emphasized within the households, the environment was more about the community was diverse in the sense so it made it hard for us to really hold down to our culture as kids raised in America. Our parents are different because they were raised back home. I just knew that I was African, just didn’t know what my ethnic root was, you know, in a sense. Consciously, I didn’t know. Those people I did grow up with, I call them family. Even if you don’t share blood, we share the same shared experience and same background, same community, and same upbringings, everything. We share everything in the same way, even though it’s not blood. You don’t have to be blood of be family. But that community really and the values that it taught me and how we were raised together has really made myself, my whole identity as a whole. So when I moved there, that’s the whole community that’s full of people that came from the same refugee camp or same city in Kenya.

When you go to Kenya, the first thing, like, the airplane rides is – I mean the airplane is very long, 13 hours, 14 hours. When you first arrive in Kenya, it’s warm. The weather automatically changes, it’s warm. It’s very hot. You know, you’re wearing a jacket first because it’s winter, you’re going during winter season. Then you come to the Kenya airport and the airport is very, very, very hot. You know, it’s like wow.

From Nairobi to Dadaab refugee complex, so it’s a complex, you take a bus. You can take the Zafanana, which one of the buses, you can take the Eagle, it’s one of the buses. The bus ride is usually 10 hours, you know. I can tell you, and I’m going to be upfront: The bus ride is not very comfortable, but it’s like, it’s doable. It’s hot. And then when you go from Nairobi to Dadaab, the road changes.

So within where I go, there’s a lot of people that have been there for a long time that have had organizations that have people abroad sending money to like develop their housing. They live in good housing now, in a sense, in their context. You know, the food is – food is food, if you can afford it. But the food, like, those people make it work. Within the refugee camp they make things work for them, you know. It’s not like all we’re hungry, in a sense. But no, it’s like they make things work for them. So they have to live through that heat as well. And then water borrows, so people, say a brother or elder brother or elder sister, goes to fetch water early in the morning, and it’s a line. It’s not only one household, everybody’s household, majority in that block. They go to that one borehole, they go to another majority one borehole, water borehole.

And they sit there for hours and they have these seven buckets and they have to fill those buckets up. You know, you have to wait in the long line. It takes probably like an hour, two hours, you know, maybe something like 30 minutes. But they have to bring it on a wheelbarrow, and they drag it home to bring it home. That’s how they get water in the refugee camp. It’s not like you go in a restaurant and you turn the sink on. No, within the households, you can’t go in the house and turn the sink on. There’s no such thing as a sink.

And then the bathrooms are different as well too. There’s not really you go in the bathroom, you flush the toilet, no. And then again, it’s amazing. I love the refugee camp more than I do love the city because it’s community. There’s more community within the refugee camp than it is within the city because everybody lives near each other. Everybody, anybody, child, somebody else’s child, the village takes care of that kid, you know? Somebody’s kid, even though it’s your kid, a village elder, or a village cousin, or a village neighbor will take care of that kid for you as well too. And it really does take a village to raise a child, and that’s what you have in the refugee camp. It’s a community, you know. If your neighbor is hungry, they will give them food. If your neighbor is without water, they will give them – if your neighbor is giving birth, they will go visit them. And there’s like a funeral, the whole community comes together. If there’s a wedding, the community comes, they come and they bring money together to like have somebody get married or have somebody help with their funeral. And that’s the thing: You get the kind of sense of community within the refugee camp and you don’t get in Nairobi.

So it’s more of sense of community and that’s why I think when we came to America we didn’t lose that because that’s how like growing up –  my family, they’re so tight and like you see within the refugee camp, they have community within the refugee camp so no one really ever goes hungry in the refugee camp. They say they’re hungry, but no one really ever goes hungry in the refugee camp. You always have your neighbor to rely on, and your neighbor will always there for you.

I like helping people. I always wanted to help people and that’s why the Sadaqa Foundation  came about. Charity is a big thing within Islam. So that’s my way of paying it forward as well too. And there’s some passion for me to help those who are less fortunate than me. So I got to be grateful for everything I have, and then when you go back to the refugee, when you go back to Kenya and you come back to America, you say I’m grateful for everything I have because those people that are there that have less than you that are more happy than you. You go there and they’re more happy than you. How can you be less fortunate and, in a sense, be less fortunate and still smile every day and be excited to wake up every day, you know? You wake up every day excited, you’re energetic. And I’m grateful for that. I come back and like I got to do the same thing. Even though some days you want to quit and sit back and you can’t, you got to keep moving forward because there’s people there out there that need your help.

Within that time, I think we as a family – my father, my brother was present, I think all my brothers were present. So we came in with discussing business ideas, and for me, personally, I’m purpose driven. So I’m like if we’re going to start a business it has to be a foundation, a charitable foundation that we can help people and have leave lasting impact, not a business that’s profit driven. Because I’m not really a profit-driven person. I’ll do this without the money. With or without money, I would do it, which we are to this day. So that’s when we came in and we all came together like yeah, we should start a foundation because we all have, in a sense, we align, had the same values as siblings. You know, it’s more this started with my brothers, not anybody else, with my brothers. So we all have the same vision and we all have the same mission.

So we started forming this foundation because we all have the same passion of giving back and helping people. We fundraise, and when we fundraise we have a business account that it goes to. So we open the business account and the money goes to the business account and we created a website as well. So you can donate through our website as well too, Sadaqa Foundation, and we do a lot of advertisement to our Instagram account too. Word of mouth works the most, but I guess social media is there for us to like help us out in this day and age.

So when you donate to there, it goes to the business bank account. And then from the business account we send to the community, and his name’s Abdul Rashid. We are grateful to him because we don’t live within the community, so we don’t know who’s in need and who needs support within that moment, within that time. So he goes out with a couple of volunteers and looks around within that camp and finds the families that are in need. And then we send that money to him and he, with the couple of volunteers, goes to the market and buys the staples that’s needed to serve those families. So the vision we have is to create a self-sustaining economy within the refugee camp. Aid is good, but that creates dependency. We don’t want to create dependency. And so that those people can rely more on themselves rather than rely on an organization abroad that don’t know what they need within that certain time – or anything can happen within that time, and they have the means to care to take care of themselves.

So I can help those who help me in a sense too. So we’re interconnected. So help them, they help me and I help them, they help me, in a sense, kind of growing as a person and they’re growing within as a community and we’re growing as a community. We’re interconnected, you know. That connection will always be there.

Desai: Coming to Cuse is a production of students at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. This episode was reported by Kira Desai, Aiden Tseng and Maya Aguirre, and produced by Kira Desai.
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The first day of the Lunar New Year coincided with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. SU senior and Somalian refugee Abdirahman Abdi will spend the next month praying and fasting during the day. But his busy life will not slow during Ramadan: Tomorrow at 3 a.m., Abdi will clock in for his morning shift at Dunkin’. By the end of his shift, Abdi will have already begun his first fast of the holy month. 

Lu and Abdi have developed a skill they say they share with many other U.S. immigrants: operating on two different calendars, and even two different ways of life, often neglected by the “melting pot” mentality of U.S. culture. In higher education in the U.S., international students and immigrants who have often traveled long distances to earn their degrees said they have to alter how they practice their traditions to fit their new environments. 

Religious observances on campus

Daily life in the U.S. has not historically accounted for the holidays of the Lunar Calendar. In 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation declaring Lunar New Year a public school holiday in New York state. But Syracuse University does not officially observe the holiday and classes took place as usual. The university’s religious observance policy underscores the importance of accommodating the practices of all community members. But Lu is in the most notoriously challenging year of law school and knows that missing a full day’s worth of lectures would put her at risk for falling behind her peers. 

After Catholicism, Islam has the highest number of adherents in Onondaga County. Muslim places of prayer make up 5% of all congregations. For Abdi, early-morning shifts at Dunkin’ during Ramadan can be advantageous: While 2 a.m. wake-up calls are typically an energy drain before a full day of classes, during the holy month Abdi has more hours awake before the sun rises, allowing him to fuel up before the school day. However, this is not the case for everyone who observes Ramadan.


Reyad Abedin is a graduate student from Bangladesh studying at SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. He’s also a teaching assistant for two courses: Introduction to Analog Photography and Film and Media Theory.  

As a TA, Abedin has not filed religious observance forms like undergraduate students typically do. To celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, with his friends in Syracuse, Abedin planned his absence from his Friday section of Analog Photography in advance. He was able to find another graduate student in his cohort to teach. 

“I have to make sure that I have good friendships with my cohort and other students. But 30 days, it’s a long period of time,” Abedin said. “And you will eventually feel bad … because you are giving excuses. And other people will suffer for it.”  

According to the university’s policy, if a student does not file the religious observance paperwork by the deadline set in the academic calendar, it is up to the discretion of their professor to decide what accommodations they’re willing to grant that student. 

Dara Harper has worked as the communications director at Hendricks Chapel for four years, over which she’s gotten to know the many religious communities that make up SU’s population.  

Harper said that freshmen who are new at school might not think about the religious observance policy and end up forfeiting their excused absence. While class syllabi have the religious observance policy printed, the process might not be on the forefront of students’ minds at the start of the semester when there are countless other items on their to-do lists. 

“Suddenly you can’t travel home because you forgot to turn in the paperwork, so now you have a test on one of your faith tradition’s biggest holidays,” Harper said.  

Over the past few years, Harper has realized the importance of educating more professors at the university on religious observances and how to help the students who make up the multicultural, diverse religious community at SU. 

Harper remembers the moment a faculty member at the law school approached her during Harper’s first year in her role at Hendricks. The law school operates in 80-minute blocks, and on Fridays, the school’s schedule formerly had a mandatory block for class. For Muslim law students, this conflicted with jumu’ah prayer, the Islamic Friday congregational prayer. 

Working alongside law school Associate Dean Suzette Meléndez and her team, Imam Amir Durić worked to change the law school’s calendar to eliminate Friday classes from the schedule.  While this demonstrated major progress at the law school, many of the other colleges within SU still have conflicting schedules with the Friday prayer, Durić said. 

Lunar New Year at SU

Twelve hours after Xinyu Lu’s early morning FaceTime with her family, the sun has set in Syracuse. In a lecture hall inside SU’s College of Law, Lu sits next to her classmate, Bokang Jia, who is also a first-year Chinese international student. 

Tonight, the first-year law students aren’t here for a class: They’re here with SU’s Asian-Pacific American Law Student Association to usher in the Year of the Fire Horse. In front of Lu and Jia are paper plates piled high with Chinese food. The lecture hall is filled with the comforting chatter of their law school classmates. It’s not quite like home, Lu and Jia said, but it still feels special – just in a different way. 

At home, Lu and Jia developed an expectation that customs would be carried out without fail each year: Dumplings would be prepared. Red envelopes containing money would be distributed. But in the U.S., far from family, the weight of maintaining tradition falls on the shoulders of the AAPI students and staff who organize events like the law student association’s Lunar New Year celebration. 

“My role changed once I came here. In the past, I was just a part of the people who enjoyed the celebration, but now I’m kind of becoming a cultural ambassador who is in charge of sharing the things – sharing the culture, of representing my own background,” Jia said. 

Moving from China to the U.S. means that Jia and Lu, who are both Chinese, have also become a part of a broader Asian diaspora community. At the front of the room, K-Pop music plays over a small speaker. Next to the table filled with platters of catered Chinese food is another table with Japanese paper origami for students to craft. 

“Back home, we only celebrate with people who share our culture. But now I’ve been talking to people from all kinds of backgrounds, like Chinese-Chinese, American-Chinese. We have a few Korean friends here. I also know a few Iranian Americans,” Jia said. “Everybody is representing their own culture, which is quite unique.” 

A few seats down from Lu and Jia sits May Lee, a 2003 graduate of SU’s College of Law who recently moved back to Syracuse. Lee had been invited by Mary Szto, a teaching professor at SU’s law school. Back when Lee was at SU, the AAPI community was much smaller. There weren’t events like this Lunar New Year celebration, she said. 

“I feel like there’s been a lot of growth.” Lee said. “And then also just having Professor Szto – I mean, she invited students that are not part of the law school in different areas to study in Syracuse University. So it’s great that she’s able to connect different people from different schools and different levels.” 

Found communities

On a mid-march Friday morning, just over a month after the first night of Ramadan and the first day of the Lunar New Year, SU’s campus bustled with school tours and students rushing to their discussion sections. Inside Hendricks Chapel, Muslim students and community members celebrated Eid al-Fitr. The imam leading the prayer reminded his jama’at that while they are bidding farewell to the holy month, they can take the lessons they’ve learned from the past month forward. 

As the congregation prayed, SU’s dining staff set up a feast in the entrance area of the chapel.  The scent of hot coffee, sandwiches and pastries traveled through the building. 

Abdi, the SU senior, said he’s grateful for Ramadan, despite how busy his schedule gets. Even while running on little sleep and finding time for his many responsibilities, he said Ramadan energizes him and allows him to reconnect with his community and core values. 

“It’s a month of building your character and a month of seeking forgiveness. That’s what Ramadan is about,” Abdi said. 

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