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Oral history interview with Rahel Nardos

 Collection
Identifier: SR12286

Scope and Contents

This oral history interview with Rahel Nardos was conducted by Sankar Raman and Maleya Luis on March 28, 2018. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In this interview, Nardos discusses her early life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, including life under communism, access to health care, and her education. She talks about her experience attending the International Community School in Addis Ababa as a scholarship student. She also talks about the famine in Ethiopia during the 1980s. She then talks about applying for college in the United States and attending Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; about the barriers to her plans to attend medical school in the United States as an immigrant; and adjusting to life in the U.S. She also shares an anecdote about her first encounter with the U.S. customs agency. She discusses the U.S. political climate at the time of the interview in 2018, including her experiences with racism. She talks about attending Yale School of Medicine, including financing her education; her reasons for specializing in obstetrics and gynecology; and settling in Oregon. She speaks about a 2018 op-ed she wrote for the Oregonian newspaper, titled “My patients don't care I'm from a ‘shithole’ country,” and talks about the increase in racism since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. She discusses balancing family life with her career as a doctor; her work in women’s health in Ethiopia with Footsteps to Healing; and her other volunteer work. She closes the interview by discussing her cultural and ethnic identity.

Dates

  • 2018 March 28

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/.

Biographical note

Rahel Nardos was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1974. She attended the International Community School in Addis Ababa, and in 1993, she came to the United States to continue her studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1997, she spent two years working as a research assistant at Cornell University. She earned a doctor of medicine degree from Yale University in 2003 and completed her residency at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, with a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology. In 2010, she founded Footsteps to Healing, which provides health care to women in Ethiopia. As of 2018, she was an adjunct professor at Oregon Health & Science University and a urogynecologist at Kaiser Permanente NW, and served on the board for the Worldwide Fistula Fund.

Extent

77.5 Megabytes (1 online resource (1 audio file (1 hr., 23 min., 45 sec.))) : MPEG-4

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Oral history interview with Rahel Nardos conducted by Sankar Raman and Maleya Luis on March 28, 2018, for The Immigrant Story. Nardos immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia in the 1990s to pursue a career in medicine. In 2010, she founded Footsteps in Healing, which provides health care to women in Ethiopia.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of The Immigrant Story, July 2020 (Lib. Acc. RL2020-018).

Publication note

An article about Rahel Nardos, "I Had to Earn my Way" by Maleya Luis, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at https://theimmigrantstory.org/earn/.

Creator

Title
Guide to oral history interview with Rahel Nardos
Status
Completed
Author
Sarah Stroman
Date
2020
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
Finding aid is written in English.

Repository Details

Part of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library Repository

Contact:
1200 SW Park Ave.
Portland OR 97205 United States
5033065204
5033065240