When Ameya Desai started elementary school, she would pester her dad every morning on their drive to class. So her dad, Nikhil, came up with a series of tales, sequels, then prequels, that he shared with Ameya one chapter at a time.
The father-daughter duo sits next to each other at the dining table at their home in San Jose, Calif. They constantly exchange eye contact and loving giggles throughout dinner.
So it's no surprise that Ameya wanted to tell some of her own. In her award-winning entry, Ameya interviews her grandfather, Kishor Desai, whose family migrated from India to Uganda, where Kishor was born and raised.
His father worked at a sugarcane factory outside of Uganda's capital, Kampala. But Kishor's life was completely turned around when he was in college. In the summer of , Uganda's leader, Idi Amin, ordered the mass expulsion of Asians.
Kishor suddenly had 90 days to leave the country. We were never a single family unit again. Kishor was stateless for years while he finished his studies. He then migrated to the United States, where he had to start all over again. That journey across three continents became the subject of his granddaughter's podcast.
