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Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Feb 19/01) - Sam Nasief has seen many places in his time, but the charm of Northerners kept him in Iqaluit for nearly a decade.
The popular D.J. Specialties manager, originally from Sudan, has moved on to the United States to complete a master's degree in business administration.
News/North: What's the most interesting thing about you?
Sam Nasief: I think I love people so much that a lot of times I have conversations with 10 people at the same time. Being social I guess ... I like to keep myself engaged with other people in their presence and I like to joke a lot.
NN: When did you come North and why?
SN: October 1992. I grew up in Sudan and then ended up going to England and got my high school there. Then I went back to Sudan. But the political climate wasn't very good so I had to get out. Then I went to Egypt, got my marine engineering degree and decided Egypt wasn't the place for me. I wanted to go somewhere else. So, I ended up in Canada and a couple years later and got a call from someone up here who had a business who wanted people to work. I came up here, worked for him, moved on to other companies.
NN: What expectations did you have before getting to Iqaluit?
SN: I have travelled quite extensively throughout my life. When I worked on board a ship, I saw a lot of countries as a shift engineer in Egypt. When I came up here, of course, I wasn't prepared. The sight of the airport, I was thinking, 'OK where is the rest of the airport?' And the way the town looked from the plane? It's a shock, but you are already landing so it's not like you can knock on the captain's door and say, 'take me back.' So you give it a try and...
The first couple of months I was scared, I was afraid. It was in October and it was starting to get really cold and I was thinking I probably wasn't going to last very long. I was making preparations to leave but after four or five months of working and gradually interacting with people it started to dawn on me that it was a really nice place. My first thing was trying to understand who I'm dealing with, the culture. Certain things shock you if you are from a totally different culture, a totally different continent. But last October I was here nine years.
NN: What final impressions do you have about the place now that you are leaving?
SN: Like I said before I love being with people and my job requires me to interact with people. Through my job and a lot of other things that I've actually learned in the North like community service -- being a part of the Rotary Club and knowing a lot of members there, going out and knowing people through that venue -- I found out it is the greatest thing that you do. It is so easy to make friends but you have to willing to make friends.
When I go out of the North, it will be with how many friends I've made and the good times we have had.
NN: What will you miss the most?
SN: I'll miss the town because it is nice and quiet, it is a slower tempo than down south. I will miss my friends. But, I will miss everything that pertains to this town from the way we go shop from the way we complain about prices and the weather all the time. When we sit together, I think we talk about a lot more stuff that's happening in the world than people down south do. We have a vision. We like to be part of the community and I'm going to miss being part of the community, not just a visitor.
NN: Where are you going and what are you going to do?
SN: I'm heading south to university. I want to do my master's in business administration since I have acquired a lot of experience. I've already enroled in an Internet master's program.
NN: Does one experience or memory out of the near nine years you have been stick out?
SN: The first time I went with the Rotary Club to participate in the elders' dinner. I have never in my life felt that happy. I appreciated everything: the Rotary, the people who were there, what it meant to honour your elders.
NN: What was it like working in Egypt and why wasn't it for you?
SN: I started working for this commercial shipping line and it was very interesting because in different parts of the world things are done differently. Funny things happen sometimes -- dangerous things happen -- and it becomes very intriguing to talk about them later on to friends. Being on a boat was almost like being on this island, isolated. There are rules and regulations and the captain is the prime minister, he's the boss. It was very eye-opening.
NN: Can you elaborate a little more?
SN: It is incidents that can only occur if you work in different parts of the world where some rules and some regulations are just not observed. You are looking at the bottom line so some companies would break some rules just to make more money. They got caught, everyone gets caught on board the ship and then you go through this process of looking around you and going, 'what just happened? I just work on the ship. I didn't know there were explosives on the ship and we shouldn't be docking beside an Israeli passenger ship in Italy. I mean, I didn't know, I'm just a poor engineer, please don't do anything to me.' And then you get stuck somewhere in a foreign country for three or four weeks, running out of food, running out of money and you have no idea what's going on. You have the army around you and the coast guard preventing the ship from leaving. Let's just say right now I can laugh about it but at the time it wasn't funny at all.
NN: Anything you want to add?
b Umm? One thing, because I love this town I thought I would say something. The one thing I wish the next time I visit, be it soon or be it later, that a lot of the things that we cry foul on -- abuse, drinking and drugs -- a lot of these issues become a priority and that the kids are the most important asset. I hope I see and hear an improvement of what it is right now.
