T-R PHOTOS BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshalltown residents Nan Tha Zin Win Davidstars, pictured with her husband Solomon, and Sisi Grace-Man, pictured with her daughter Rain Ellison, recently became naturalized U.S. citizens during a ceremony held at an Iowa Cubs game in Des Moines on July 1.

Two long journeys full of trials, tribulations and struggles most Americans couldn’t even begin to fathom culminated at Principal Park on July 1 as Nan Tha Zin Win Davidstars and Sisi Grace-Man, both of Marshalltown, became naturalized American citizens along with 27 other Iowans.

“I was so nervous. That’s a lot of people, and I was so nervous,” Grace-Man said. “(But) I’m proud of myself… I try to tell myself that I was from nowhere. I don’t have a homeland or anything, so now that I get into the United States, we have opportunities and freedom. So we cannot take this for granted.”

Both Davidstars, who hails from the Mon State in Burma, and Grace-Man, who spent her childhood in a refugee camp in Thailand as the daughter of parents who belonged to the Karen ethnic group and also came from Burma, faced hardships on their journeys out of a war-torn country now run by a military government, but above all other feelings, they are just happy to officially be Americans.

Davidstars’ husband Solomon, who translated her remarks, first came to Moline, Ill., from a Thai refugee camp in 2010, but his wife did not ultimately join him until eight years later. Eventually, he settled in Marshalltown when a friend moved here to take a job at JBS.

“We fled because we don’t have the freedom to speak, freedom to religion, and we don’t have human rights in Burma. That’s why we flee to Thailand,” Solomon said.

Solomon had to take care of one important piece of business before his wife could get a visa: because they had been married at a refugee camp, it was not internationally recognized. Thus, he had to return to Burma in 2015 and say his vows all over again.

After going through the application process, learning the history of this country and passing all of the requisite tests, both Solomon and Nan are now full-fledged American citizens. She works at JBS, and he recently completed his commercial driver’s license (CDL) with hopes to start a new career in trucking soon.

“I’m proud to be a United States citizen because this passport has power. Everywhere you want to go around the world you can go with a United States passport,” Nan said. “I’m very happy and excited. Everybody congratulated me (on the baseball field).”

Compared to Burma, where unemployment is rampant and good jobs are few and far between, they are thrilled about the opportunities presented to them in the U.S. Still, their homeland will always be a part of them, and even during a recent interview, Solomon wore a t-shirt with a message in support of the country’s currently incarcerated former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was overthrown in a 2021 military coup and sentenced to five years in prison on corruption charges most international observers have called politically motivated.

Grace-Man’s parents, who lived in a bamboo house in a remote jungle village, also fled the ongoing Burmese Civil War, which dates back to the country’s independence from the British Empire in 1948, and she grew up and went to school inside of a refugee camp she wasn’t allowed to leave.

When Grace-Man turned 18, she was ready for a new life in a new country and landed at an airport in Chicago and then Des Moines in 2016. Marshalltown is the only place she has lived since, and her parents are now with her on the northeast side of town.

“I had no idea about America. I don’t know any places, what the names are,” she said. “But my cousin was here, so I came to the address and lived here… We might be scared to go to other states because we don’t know anyone.”

Grace-Man worked at JBS for a while, but she’s now in the process of returning to school and studying nursing. Her dream is to someday be a nurse with one of the branches of the U.S. military, and she hopes she can get in before she’s too old to enlist.

Despite the ongoing political debates and divisions within the U.S., both the Davidstars, Grace-Man and her young daughter Rain Ellison are happy to live in a country where they don’t routinely face the threat of arrest, detainment or worse.

“We can go wherever we want. We don’t have to be afraid of being arrested by the police as long as we listen to the law and live under the law,” Grace-Man said.

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Contact Robert Maharry 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.