When anyone asks Merrimack Valley High School senior Diego Lizotte where he is from, he answers \u201cmultiple places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since childhood Lizotte, 18, has divided his time between New Hampshire and Honduras, due to a parental custody agreement that has him spending half the summer and every other winter holiday season with his mom\u2019s side of the family in Honduras, and the rest of the time in Loudon with his dad. While it\u2019s allowed him a rich opportunity to experience both cultures, it\u2019s also been a challenge to navigate high school at the intersection of many disparate identities: Honduran and American, Catholic and gay, and a Hispanic student at a school where few others speak his first language.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing it all together, it\u2019s a struggle trying to figure out who you identify as — that\u2019s taken me the better part of my high school career to figure out,\u201d Lizotte said. \u201cHow do I bring all these things together to be my authentic self? It\u2019s hard, but by the end it\u2019s kind of like very interesting Jackson Pollock painting.\u201d<\/p>\n
While in New Hampshire, Lizotte has found a passion for legal studies in the criminal justice program at the Concord Regional Technical Center. In Honduras, he has been learning his family\u2019s business \u2013 a petroleum business and a wine business \u2013 knowing he will be carrying it on someday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be the one who continues it because it\u2019s their dream, their successes,\u201d Lizotte explained. \u201cLearning about that business helps me learn, not just of my family, but also what does it mean to run a successful business in a developing country? And what does that mean for the people who are working for you, and how you\u2019re changing lives, impacting people and impacting the community?\u201d<\/p>\n
Merrimack Valley senior Souleymane Sangare also knows a lot about moving between cultures. When Sangare, 19, came to the United States from Guinea in February 2021, he spoke French, but no English. At the time, his father was dying and his mother sent him to live with relatives in Penacook to distance him from the emotional distress. Sangare had enough credits from his old high school to be placed in eleventh grade, but found himself plunged into total language immersion, at school and at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest success was to learn English so fast because it\u2019s not easy,\u201d Sangare said. \u201cI know some people, they\u2019ve been here for a long time, but they don\u2019t speak English at all. But I mean, nobody can speak French here. You don\u2019t have a choice. You have to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next year and a half, Sangare learned English, made friends through his ESL classes and the varsity soccer team.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Sangare was one of 177 students to graduate from Merrimack Valley High School in an outdoor ceremony on the school athletic fields. Friends and family members sat in bleachers and under white tents on either side of the field, while the graduates sat in rows of folding chairs in the center.<\/p>\n