Article Samples

A long time coming: Timothy's new life

Timothy Cham, 61, glows as he exits a taxicab. His good humor, notwithstanding the 95 degree temperature and 87 percent humidity, is contagious. He joins his family outside their apartment complex in Baltimore, Md., unbothered by the East Coast heat. “It doesn’t compare to 120 degrees in Sudan,” he says with a smile.

Timothy, his wife, Abang Otong, and their two sons, Emmanuel and Akwai, came to Baltimore in October 2016 as refugees. Their story begins over 25 years ago, when Timothy first applied for resettlement with the United Nations. He escaped civil strife in the area that is now South Sudan, where conflict has only increased over the decades. 

“There was destruction, violence,” he recalls. “Soldiers were killing everyone indiscriminately. There was no other option but to flee.”

He made his way to Ethiopia, where he was able to live in refugee camps for a few years before a hostile regime took control of the country in 1991. Again, Timothy was forced to flee with no clear direction for his future. The prospect of returning to his home meant certain death. 

While traveling in search of opportunity and safety, he met Abang, also a South Sudanese refugee, in the camps of southern Kenya. The couple moved from one refugee camp to the next before finding a more permanent placement on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. There, Timothy and Abang welcomed their first son, and soon another.

DEADMAU5 THROWS DOWN AT SNOWMAGGEDDON SHOW AT X-GAMES

The Winter X-Games in Aspen, Colorado marks an adrenaline-packed four days of halfpipe bangers, big-air nonsense, snowmobile flips, and of course, electrifying music. Headliners this year included DJ Snake, Kygo, Nas, Run the Jewels, Twenty-One Pilots, and our favorite rodent-headed DJ, deadmau5. The Winter X-Games have been going down in Aspen since 2002, and have only exponentially grown in popularity since then. The music element only just started gaining notoriety within the past two years when big name artists started being introduced to the scene- including Tiesto and Phoenix in 2014, and Snoop Dogg, Skrillex and Chromeo dropping heaters at last year’s games.

"The goal of introducing concert elements to the sport event is to create a more festival-like atmosphere around the games," said X-Games Vice President Tim Reed. "I think it's also really exciting to be able to pop over and take in some great live music during the breaks. It creates a really good vibe on the mountain."

If the goal for the direction as to which the X-Games wanted to grow in was festival status, then it was a major success. The diversity of big name live performances are increasingly turning the X-Games into as big of a music scene than a sports event, drawing in larger crowds year after year. The four-day constant exhilaration, between watching the world’s most extreme professional athletes compete against one another and experience live music performances, is what really encompasses the X-Games experience.

No performance was more X-treme this past weekend, however, than deadmau5’s Saturday night show, who threw down the house at Buttermilk mountain in the midst of a full-blown winter blizzard.