Memuna's parents have always been frank with her about her history; it was from them that she first learned about it. "I'd say I didn’t know what happened to me until I got adopted," she states. "I didn’t even know I had a family until I was six." Kevin and Kelly struck up close relationships with Memuna's three biological brothers, whom the McShanes have visited in Sierra Leone.

They also established that Memuna could call them by their first names, rather than "Mom" and "Dad." Her siblings don't have the same privilege: "They get in trouble if they do that," she explains, because Kevin and Kelly are the only parents that Michael and Molly have — "but also I have [other] parents, a mom and dad, [and] they're dead, [so] I just can't call [Kelly and Kevin] 'Mom' and 'Dad.'"

While Memuna's now-tattooed "little arm" is far from her only defining feature, to her frustration, it's still the most immediately noticeable. Other students haven't asked her about it, but college staff do, often. "I just want to go outside wearing a tank top or whatever without people looking at me, asking all these questions," Memuna says. "That’s why I keep wearing sweaters to dinner and stuff like that. I was gonna try to break that habit in college, but seems like it might take longer."