Kiziah Saraki

Name: Kiziah “Kizi” Saraki

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: Senior

School: Cochise High School

Hobbies and Interests: Linguistics, languages, mathematics, charity, human rights

Appearance: Kiziah at 5’8” is fairly tall, with her legs being particularly long. Her height is complemented by her posture: she stands tall, back straight, with open and welcoming body language. She weighs one hundred and thirty-six pounds, the weight distributed fairly evenly across her body into a lean build, the only exceptions being her curved hips and broad thighs. She has black skin.

Kiziah has a heart-shaped face, with delicate and welcoming features, a smile almost always on her small mouth. Her hair is jet-black in colour and slightly wispy in texture, neatly combed down and tidily pulled into a short ponytail at the back, with a thin but noticeably long widow’s peak. Her ears are quite small and barely stick out, but due to her hairstyle, they remain visible. Her relatively small nose has a slightly turned-up shape at the tip and a narrow bridge. She has wide deep-set brown eyes that often carry a surprised or startled look, even when in her resting neutral expression.

In terms of clothing, Kiziah tends not to place too much thought into what she wears, generally going for anything comfortable, practical, and socially appropriate. Her wardrobe does contain a large amount of denim and leather, two fashion preferences she does try and accommodate. She aims for subtlety and understatedness with makeup, typically using only eyeliner, mascara, and foundation. Sometimes, she will add some rouge and red lipstick, but rarely more than that. The only jewellery she wears is a modest cross necklace, a gift from her mother.

Biography: Kiziah was born on the 9th of December, in 1996, to a middle class Yoruba family. She was born in the city of Ilorin, and has one older sister, Lisha, born in 1995, and a younger brother, Olabode, born in 1998. Her parents also had a first child in 1993, a boy named Osaze, who was born two months prematurely and died after three days from infant respiratory distress syndrome, a tragedy that inspired strong protective streaks in both parents. Her father Abidemi was an economist for the local authority, her mother Simisola a tax assessor. Neither job was exactly flashy or opulent, but they were not insignificant postings, giving them considerable influence in one of the larger local government offices. Both were largely self-made in enjoying the comforts they did, with Simisola in particular coming from a background of poverty and instability. Both viewed their comfortable lifestyles, when so many of their peers remained at the bottom of the ladder, as down to luck more than anything, and sought to ensure their offspring had more secure livelihoods. They were both in their late twenties when their children were born, with Abidemi being 29 and Simisola being 27 on the day Kiziah was born.

The Sarakis tried giving their children every concrete advantage they could in life, with much of their disposable income, even to this day, going on items such as educational toys and the like. Even their daughters’ names, not traditional Yoruba names, were inspired by the spouses of successful administrators, acquaintances they wanted to please, from larger and wealthier regions such as Lagos - a trend Simisola was able to abandon upon arriving in America, with Olabode being a traditional Yoruba name. Largely as a result of fears from Osaze's death and an acute awareness of the horror stories that could befall young children, they were very safety-conscious parents, particularly Simisola. They consciously tried not to be smothering or overprotective, but erred sometimes excessively on the side of caution. Due to the hardships they faced, Simisola’s overprotective streak only increased with time. Kiziah was almost never allowed to play on the street or play in the dirt without strict supervision and was not allowed to even walk to the shops until she was about fifteen. Kiziah would sometimes disobey her mother in this regard, her play stepping beyond the approved bounds, but she never flagrantly stepped over these boundaries, accepting most of them as sensible.

The Saraki family started during a tumultuous time in Nigeria. On the one hand, the relatively young Abacha regime saw increased economic prosperity for families like the Sarakis. On the other hand, said regime was cruel and draconian, and the shadow of oppression and tales of greater atrocities were abundant. As a largely apolitical couple who was rarely directly confronted with the brutality of the regime, they were able to maintain distance. However, their jobs often saw them confronted with the gross corruption that also defined the Abacha government. The Sarakis were not corrupt, but they were not indispensable either, and knew to keep their heads down. They were bureaucrats in a minor administrative office, miles away from the epicentre of any turmoil within Nigeria. Just as they were rarely confronted by the worst horrors of the time or put on the spot by any serious moral dilemmas, they were not greeted with any major opportunities to either partake in or expose corruption.

Things were, at first glance, seemingly looking up for Nigeria in 1996, with hints of a democratic transition. The Sarakis were perhaps too optimistic about these developments, taking them at face value, and let their guards down slightly. Nigeria remained oppressive, and ultimately most moves towards democratisation were token displays. It was Simisola who accidentally crossed an invisible line first, in August 1997. In her duties assessing tax liabilities, what she thought was a standard case investigating a local businessman spiralled out of control when the businessman called on powerful political allies within the state and local governments. Soon internal investigations were mounting against both Saraki parents, accusing them of various acts of corruption and negligence in their duties. Several family friends were arrested, and within three days of the campaign against them commencing, they fled their home.

They were split up, Simisola with the daughters, Abidemi travelling with his brother Bamidele. Both parties were headed towards the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Representative in Cotonou, in neighbouring Benin. Simisola arrived first, and spent several weeks moving from shelter to shelter, waiting for her husband. Abidemi never arrived. To this day, Simisola has no idea what happened to either her husband or her brother-in-law.

The refugee application process was drawn-out, and fearful. Once again, the family heard of many horror stories that gave them reason to be concerned. Eventually, they mounted a successful application based on the politically-motivated persecution from the government. Initially, the plan was to resettle in Benin. This was the favoured option of the UNHCR administrators, would have given Simisola and her family a good position in life, and would have allowed easy return to Nigeria and, they hoped, easy reunification with Abidemi. Simisola began making plans to settle and get back on her own two feet.

That plan was not to last, however. The stress of the past few weeks and the loss of her beloved husband had coincided with a period of what was at first thought to be a minor illness for Simisola, leaving Simisola bedbound, and requiring constant care. Doctors quickly discovered that she was three months pregnant. The possibility of going through a potentially dangerous pregnancy without the support of Abidemi only served to stress Simisola out even more. Soon, the Saraki family were admitted as Priority One refugees into America for resettlement, another difficult and drawn-out bureaucratic process fraught with tension and uncertainty. But, eventually, Simisola was accepted. She met several of the criteria for resettlement as defined by the UNHCR: a woman-at-risk, recently a victim of persecution, in need of urgent medical care, for whom remaining in Benin was quickly losing any feasibility.

They were settled in Kingman, Arizona, with the help of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of the refugee resettlement agencies working with the federal government. They were placed in the area because a distant cousin of Simisola’s, Tolulope Bankole, already lived in the local area. Despite having not seen each other since early childhood, Tolulope willingly agreed to provide her cousin and her children with support and help in adjusting to American life.

Olabode was born in the first week of 1998, two months prematurely. For a pregnancy that coincided with relatively long periods of sleepless nights, inadequate nutrition, and great stress, Simisola was relieved to see no major long-term complications that were apparent at first. There was considerable distress when it emerged Olabode suffered from moderate loss of hearing in one ear, but he was otherwise a healthy boy, and Simisola herself recovered from the difficult pregnancy quickly.

Simisola couldn’t rest though, and had to get a job to support her family. Tolulope was able to help with the initial round of rent payments and some childcare costs, but didn’t have the wealth needed to sustain them by herself. Within a week after Olabode’s birth, Simisola was on the job hunt. She had poor English abilities and very few marketable skills, her previous experience with Nigerian tax law being next-to-useless. She had to carry three part-time jobs initially, working as a dishwasher at a restaurant; a night shift worker at a local motel; and a cleaner at the local Amtrak station. She often brought her children with her to work to save on childcare costs and be there for at least some of their childhoods, but her children spent much of their time at Tolulope’s house. It was only when Kiziah was around 5 that Simisola was able to get enough security to get one full-time job, working at a local hardware store, where she has remained employed ever since, rising up to the ranks to her current position as one of the shift managers.

A year after admission, the family applied for, and received, Lawful Permanent Resident status. Only Olabode was a natural-born citizen, and Kiziah was 7 when Simisola, with help from Tolulope with regards to handling the paperwork and tests, finally became a citizen, her daughters becoming naturalised citizens too as a result. Kiziah has no memories of Nigeria, having never been to the country since leaving. Unlike her mother and her sister, for whom Yoruba was their first language and Nigeria their home, Kiziah speaks both English and Yoruba as first languages, and never experienced any real culture shock. Her mother experienced some, but was lucky to have an established and settled relative to help out.

Similarly, Kiziah cannot remember her father. At least at first, Simisola embellished his memory, describing him as a long-time outspoken political activist who had willingly given up his life so his family could escape. Over the years, starting when Kiziah was about 11, Simisola has slowly begun to admit the truth to her children, not wanting them to believe in an exaggerated vision of their father, feeling Abidemi was a great enough man to be remembered fondly without sharing mistruths. Simisola revealed facts such as how they posed little opposition to the Abacha regime until its final days, and how she still has no idea what fate befell her husband and brother-in-law, until her children had a more grounded vision of their father. While the truth is not quite as grandiose and Abidemi’s legacy is not as massive as Kiziah originally believed, she still holds nothing but respect and admiration for both her parents.

As Kiziah grew up, she fell into a traditional middle child role. Her sister Lisha was entrusted with responsibilities such as getting a part-time job, helping her mother with DIY projects, and disciplining her younger siblings. Even though Kiziah is more reliable and obedient than the bullheaded and boisterous Lisha, Lisha received such responsibilities due to a mixture of her age and her more practical personality. Meanwhile, Olabode was not only the baby of the family, but required substantial focus due to his hearing difficulties.

Kiziah has settled into this stereotypical status as middle child happily, with no resentment, no feeling of being ignored, or the like, and has no qualms about being left with the boring chores or not receiving the most attention. If anything, she enjoys the relative lack of pressure and interference - her mother is still there for her when she needs her, and she never comes close to being neglectful, but she was never quite as mollycoddled and overprotected as either of her siblings, something she is quite happy with.

She enjoys good relationships with both of her siblings. While neither of her siblings attract much drama or cause many arguments and both have generally nice and accommodating personalities, Kiziah is very much the heart of the three Saraki children. Both her siblings would admit she is the kindest and most helpful out of the family, and while she is better-behaved than her boisterous and mischievous siblings, she is always up for a laugh even if she is rarely the instigator.

The greatest personality difference regards humour. Kiziah has a very sweet and harmless sense of humour, and her siblings have slightly crueler, darker, and edgier comedic sensibilities, with irreverence and surrealism Kiziah couldn’t come close to matching. Her siblings frequently share private jokes about sensitive topics such as Olabode’s partial deafness, Christianity and Nigeria, as well as more general dark comedy material, jokes Kiziah herself would never dream of making. Kiziah’s character traits, such as gullibility and poor common sense, are frequently exploited by her siblings. They rarely go too far with their jokes or cross Kiziah’s own boundaries - she takes jokes at her own expense in her stride and is generally tolerant of jokes she herself wouldn’t make. She has a similar attitude to profanity. She rarely curses, but doesn’t mind being around those who do.

Kiziah is obedient and well-behaved, and has a good relationship with her mother. Simisola gets on well with all her children, but she views Kiziah as the most reliable and the one that can be trusted the most with independence, in part because of how well Kiziah has adapted to being a middle child. When she was 10, her mother started dating again, having been open to the idea of moving on and starting new relationships again for some time. When Kiziah was 13, Simisola entered into a relationship with a Greek-American mathematics teacher by the name of George Kritikos, and they have been together ever since. Whereas Lisha was initially resentful of George and Olabode was initially shy and retiring around him, Kiziah was always friendly towards him and supportive of her mother, and Simisola was grateful to her for that. George has since become part of the family, Lisha and Olabode having come around, and several months ago the couple announced their engagement.

Kiziah has been raised as a devout Christian by her mother, and to this day still sticks to that belief system. She uses her faith as a source of support and comfort during hardship, as an assisting hand in addressing difficult moral questions, and as a way of getting better involved in the community. While the Sarakis were Anglican in Nigeria and were all baptised in an Anglican church (with the obvious exception of Olabode), Simisola made the decision to convert to Lutheranism, largely out of gratitude for the assistance the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service provided her family.

To this day, the Sarakis remain part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Kiziah herself places particular importance in her faith. She goes to church every Sunday, tries to volunteer at local faith-based organisations whenever possible, and has several friends at her local church. Kiziah associates with the more socially liberal wings of the ELCA, and is happy she belongs to a church that allows both female and openly LGBT pastors. Her own faith is strong and unwavering, but she rejects those who use their faith as an excuse for intolerance or zealous dogmatism. Using faith as an excuse for intolerance, or stereotyping all religious people as intolerant, is one of the few ways to make her visibly angry.

Kiziah is generally well-liked by others, and does little to inspire negativity towards her. She is kind and friendly, tolerant of differences, and always supportive and caring to her friends, and never antagonises others or makes cruel or nasty comments. She has a generally positive and cheerful approach to life, and a forgiving and optimistic attitude to human nature. Even if she does dislike someone, she will not disregard them, and generally blames the conflicts that do arise around her on circumstance as opposed to being the fault of the individuals involved. It is very difficult to provoke Kiziah into visible anger, and she can normally keep such emotions in check.

Perhaps the personality trait Kiziah is best known for is her complete gullibility, and also her minimal common sense. She historically has had a habit of believing nearly every far-out story, illogical rumour and factual inaccuracy she’s told. Her siblings credit themselves with this discovery. When Kiziah was about five, and having several arguments with her older sister, throwaway comments made Kiziah temporarily believe she was both adopted and responsible for her brother’s hearing troubles.

Upon realising just how seriously Kiziah took these comments, Lisha immediately backtracked and apologised, and Kiziah’s family as a whole were always careful with both white lies and more extreme insults, even in the heat of an argument. Less cruel jokes are still common between them, with neither Lisha nor Olabode having any reservations about exploiting Kiziah’s gullibility for a cheap laugh. Their proudest moment was successfully convincing Kiziah “Semprini” is the worst profanity in English for a total of three years starting from when Kiziah was 13, one of the few times they’ve convinced Simisola to go along with their lies.

She is well aware of the over-trusting aspect of her personality, and has given up on trying to change it; her few conscious attempts in the past have resulted in either little change or her temporarily not believing anything, just as useless a filter. That is not to say she has remained as gullible as ever. As she has grown older and learnt to manage this character trait, the more extreme aspects of her original gullibility have largely faded. For example, she can no longer be easily convinced something she knows to be true, or a value or opinion she holds dear, is wrong and should be discarded, as happened in her preteens and early teens, when her political and religious views were changing almost every week and every new hoax and conspiracy theory hooked her in. As her intellectual confidence and assertiveness on her own opinions have solidified, the limits on her gullibility increased. She can no longer be hoodwinked with the most ridiculous statements.

However, she still remains gullible, albeit largely on small or unimportant stuff, a naivety that is mostly just fodder for jokes. On issues of importance, she is sceptical of surprising or unintuitive statements that she would have once believed, and now goes out of her way to check facts that she finds suspicious. She refuses to share what she considers interesting facts where even an inkling of doubt exists unless they are meticulously double- and triple-checked, and does not engage in gossip out of fear of spreading a malicious lie or being deceived in a harmful way.

Kiziah also struggles to string together even the most basic or innocuous of lies. She struggles to keep her false stories straight, or suppress her tells. This honesty does not translate into brutal honesty, however. While she struggles to give false praise or cover negative opinions to her friends, she is able to deliver criticism in a kind and constructive way. Her honesty is never brutal or cruel. Sometimes she can be accidentally insensitive or blunt, as a result of her poor common sense clouding her social judgement, but never excessively so, and she is always apologetic.

While less gullible than she once was and her impressionability is largely exaggerated for comic effect, she is still frequently the butt of jokes. She accepts this, and it is a fact she mostly accepts and plays along with, often laughing at all but the cruelest jokes at the expense of her gullible streak. Her gullibility is accompanied by below-average common sense, and occasional gaps in what is seen as “common knowledge”, her intellect being more one of esoteric depth than width. These too are often exaggerated, and they too are all both acknowledged and considered fair game for humour by Kizi. In keeping with the rest of her personality, people constantly expect her to be clumsy as well, to make her an all-round klutz, but as she points out, this is indeed not the case.

However, many make the mistake of confusing Kiziah’s gullibility with stupidity, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Kiziah is incredibly smart and knowledgeable when it comes to the subjects she’s passionate about, and routinely is one of the best students in the school when it comes to subjects like linguistics or maths. On most subjects, she is an above-average student, with promising but not amazing grades, but with languages and mathematics she really comes into her own.

Kiziah has always been bilingual, speaking both English and Yoruba from an early age. While she shares this with the rest of her family, she also has a natural knack for picking up languages, understanding new grammatical rules, and memorising vocabulary with comparatively little effort. She would not describe herself as a polyglot, and gaining proficiency in a language still requires considerable effort, but languages are definitely her strong suit. She noticed this relative ease from an early age, as did her teachers, and has been actively trying to maintain that skill.

Her Yoruba is rusty and derived entirely from her mother, and Kiziah has never had the chance to try it out with a native Yoruba speaker outside of her family. Due to having studied both languages in school, supplemented by extracurricular learning, she can proficiently speak both French and Spanish. She has very basic knowledge of several other languages, being able to fulfil basic travelling needs or understand elementary phrases, and this is largely without any conscious or active effort on her part. After graduation, she wants to expand on her skills with all of these languages.

Her interest goes beyond just the languages themselves, and into the underlying mechanics of linguistics, in which she self-admittedly enters nerdy territory. She is interested in virtually all of the branches of linguistics as a discipline - language is how ideas are conveyed, how culture is developed, how humanity progresses, and Kiziah finds it such a fascinating field for those reasons. Her particular area of interest is the descriptive area of linguistics, the objective analysis of how language is actually used. In particular, she enjoys etymology and historical linguistics, being incredibly interested in how words and dialects have evolved over time. She also enjoys phonetics, with its real-world applications and how it explains such fundamental questions such as how we speak in the first place.

Being largely involved in the descriptive linguistic tradition, Kiziah tries not to let her subjective opinions on language get in the way, as a matter of principle. She refuses to answer questions such as what her favourite language is, for example. When there are academic debates within linguistics that grab her attention, she tends to avoid taking a side, preferring to be open-minded, viewing herself as currently lacking the detailed knowledge necessary to come down on one side or the other.

There are a couple of exceptions. She views attempts to regulate language almost always negatively, a view inspired both by her view language should be left to evolve naturally and by reading George Orwell’s 1984, that gave her an acute awareness of how restrictive a regulated language could be. As such, unless meaning is obscured, she has a very relaxed attitude to grammatical errors. Secondly, while she thinks nothing can be done about it now, she hates the idea of grammatical gender, rejecting it as pointless and arbitrary, with the exception of personal pronouns. While she has not yet started on such a project, she has somewhat lofty ambitions of one day creating a constructed language, and hopes to study both Esperanto, as the archetypal conlang, and languages that use an animate-inanimate noun distribution in place of grammatical gender.

Her interest in mathematics is not as deep as her love for languages. She has no intention of studying it in university or beyond, she lacks the natural skill and curiosity in it, and it was largely an interest that started in the classroom. However, over the past few years she has come to view mathematics in a similar vein as she does languages - it helps explain everything else that follows. As such, she has developed an appreciation for the field, especially the paradoxes, puzzles, and mysteries. She has read several books detailing interesting aspects of mathematics in an accessible manner, including a few that explore maths within popular culture. A shared interest in maths was, in fact, one of the first things where she bonded with her mother’s new boyfriend, George, when he first started dating her mother.

While she is incredibly nerdy and keen about both of these subjects, and she is willing to indulge any willing listener with lengthy explanations or trivia at any moment, she is well aware that not everyone else is as fascinated by these fields as she is. She rarely talks about them in social settings, unless prompted. She does not use them as crutches for conversation, and can happily listen to people talk about their interests, even if she herself has little to say. For example, she is little more than a casual TV watcher and her music tastes are very superficial and fleeting, but she will contentedly listen to someone extol the virtues of their favourite bands or shows at length.

Party politics does not interest Kiziah one iota, and she does not concern herself with the intricacies of most economic and legal debates. She views civil participation as important, but will concede, perhaps too modestly, that she is far from being an informed voter. She does not define herself as an activist, or associated with any particular political ideology. Generally she finds most modern political discourse as far too divisive and cynical for her tastes. She knows very little about economic issues, but her general social liberalism means she tends to be more sympathetic towards Democrats when she does take a stance.

However, she maintains an interest in human rights. She has little to say on its philosophical underpinnings, which she has spent barely any time on, being completely uninterested in the history of the concept or the ethical debates around it. Instead, she is interested in the real-world implications. In part inspired by her family’s history but also by proactively following the news when it comes to various violations committed throughout the world, she views human rights activism as a very noble cause. She follows human rights news, is a card-carrying member of Amnesty International, has donated to and joined the mailing lists of groups such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America, and is particularly concerned about refugee issues. The current situation in Nigeria, especially involving Boko Haram, is especially important to her.

Charity and human rights activism remain two important things for Kiziah. She frequently donates to charity, sometimes on an impulse, and wants to do some volunteering in the local area after graduation. Her long-time career plan is to study linguistics at undergraduate level at the very least, and then get a job as a translator for a charity - perhaps the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. She largely keeps these aspirations and interests to herself, out of a desire not to appear pretentious, boastful, or preachy.

Advantages: Kiziah’s friendly and well-liked by her peers, and has never acquired an enemy or anyone who would have particularly strong reason to dislike her. She is well-aware of her flaws, especially her gullibility. She is difficult to anger.

Disadvantages: Kiziah’s personality is the exact opposite of what SOTF would require: she’s kind, and caring, book-smart but lacking in common sense, sees the best in people, and struggles to spot a lie or a trick, being next-to-unable of concocting her own lies. Her personality makes her friends at school, and has not made her any enemies, but would leave her very vulnerable in an environment such as SOTF.

Designated Number: Female student No. 020

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Designated Weapon: Ithaca 37

Conclusion: That shotgun should be more than enough protection to keep you alive. Make sure to acknowledge what you need to do in order to make it out- know that you have the strength to do what's necessary. - Boris Petrikov

'The above biography is as written by General Goose. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

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Collected Weapons: Ithaca 37 (assigned weapon)

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