Welcome to Prairie Fire.

I'm your host, Sarah Edwards.

This is a show about storytelling.

So on the show, we're going to tell all kinds of different stories mostly about the people and the places and the creatives of downstate Illinois.

And we're going to do it in a lot of really interesting kinds of ways.

Most of the stories you'll see on Prairie Fire will be documentary and format.

So telling the stories of people's pasts and their lives and why they do what they do.

But as I mentioned, we're also going to get creative.

So we'll tell stories that might be fictional, or using animation or unconventional storytellers that really the possibilities are endless.

One thing we'll definitely have on Prairie Fire is music.

So we'll have performances here on this set and interviews.

Or we might use this entire studio to do something really special.

I think that after we're all long gone, a good story is what we leave behind.

So we look forward to telling your stories.

And the stories of this part of the American Midwest.

Well, this is Prairie Fire she grew up beneath the starry dome Told and scolded she would never make it on her own fighting fear and doubt almost every day.

She broke through the smoke and clouds and found her way you could say she's like a prairie fire (music) We begin with a story of a woman in Champaign, Illinois who has been making a lot of international news lately.

She's done the best with what life has thrown at her and she's thriving in a way that's really record breaking.

was January 17 of 1997.

My mom, my eldest brother and Jesse and I were planning to go to Cordyline, Idaho.

And we need to do some car maintenance and we were going to see a movie.

It used to be a windy kind of mountain road to get to this quarter lane.

And that day we slipped on black ice into oncoming traffic on a curve.

And there happened to be a pretty big utility truck on that lane that had them.

I was five and I was in the backseat behind my mom driving.

And I had taken off the shoulder strap and just had the belt strap on because it was rubbing on my neck.

And what happened is I hit I like just went forward so quickly that I snapped my spinal cord.

I remember being in the car right after it happened and thinking I was getting really tired.

And I remember telling myself like don't fall asleep because you may never wake up again.

I was born in Burns, Oregon, and then I moved to Tacoma, Washington when I was two and lived there the rest of my life.

Chico is a very small farming community.

It's 800 people, and it's surrounded by wheat and lentil fields.

So they're rolling hills, very agricultural, but just about five miles.

east of us is the Idaho border and that's Idaho Panhandle.

So it's northern Idaho, which is very mountainous.

You'll basically see nature Wherever you look, whether that's wheat fields, or you see mountains in the distance.

I was a kid who loved being outside and my mom always has had dogs and so we're the kind of family that takes our dogs on long walks every night, but we would always go bike riding on the trails, swimming in lakes and rivers were a big part of growing up.

The best thing my small town community could have ever done for me was treat me exactly the same.

I was already learning law As a kindergartener using a wheelchair, but the bar wasn't set lower for me, I was still expected to perform my homework, I was still expected to go to recess when everyone else said, and my classmates still asked me to play the same games.

So I remember rolling down the hill at recess.

And so that meant I had to learn how to get back in my wheelchair on my own.

I still have been very physical.

We climbed the monkey bars, I did everything that they were doing.

And I just, I think, because of that, learned how to creatively do it.

And third grade, I was excited to play basketball with my classmates.

But that was where I realized I had a wheelchair.

And I realized that there were some downsides to being wheelchair.

And that's kind of the first time I was the slowest on the court.

So everyone had to wait for me to get there.

And then it became a rolling need to pass me the ball once before we tried to mask it.

And I felt very patronized, and I just really hated the experience.

So I was like, I'm never doing that again.

But that's why the next year when we learn about a wheelchair basketball team, my mom insisted I go, and I was really hesitant.

But that day, I was around kids about in wheelchairs, playing basketball, and was everything I wanted the year before.

I just fell in love with it.

It was so freeing that I was finally doing a sport on an even playing field.

That that spring when track practice started, they asked if I could come so I started doing wheelchair racing that year as well.

Fourth grade.

I recruited Susanna when she was in high school.

But unfortunately she she said no.

And she went to a school in Montana instead for her first two years, take him on.

But I didn't give up I kept on her and was able to persuade her to transfer to U of I, when she was a junior at University of Illinois, has been a leader for people with disabilities for decades, and it is only getting better and better.

The more we understand accessibility and the wide needs for accessibility that there are.

I remember getting here and I got a email or text from Adam saying, hey, Soos we're doing a half marathon tomorrow morning.

And I was I was my first night at my dorm.

And I was with my mom.

And I was like, Oh my gosh, I've never done half marathon before.

And I was like, I don't think I can say no.

So I remember getting here doing my first half marathon.

Afterwards, we went to get breakfast together as a group and everyone just got and got to know me from there.

I have been here six days a week.

When I first got here, I didn't really my goal was not to have a career in wheelchair racing.

I just loved the training part.

And I still mostly just love the training part.

Now I see it as a career jeroni has gone out in front Sandusky already will come through.

It's gonna be very time for treats karate and bonobos.

Vegas coronial rock, Ron's for the American suzanis garota.

Let's say that long distance shows me I have an mindset, I guess that matches, you know, this fitness capacity and nutrition capacity where I like to just keep going my highest performing athletes, I have to tell them to take a day off I have to force them to step back from training they don't want to just don't want to that's not the way that Bill and she shares she has that characteristic.

That's a common point of discussion between us is that I always have to put pump the brakes on on her a little bit just so that she can rest, recover and regenerate and improve and take advantage of all the hard training.

I feel like I've got a whole toolbox and things start to get hard that I can pull out tools to try and make it easier.

And I think that is what endurance athletes have just ways of making what starts to feel hard a little bit more doable.

You really as has a breakthrough in her performance since 2020 2021.

Coming out of COVID 5.1 race it was at the Tokyo Paralympic Games 12 and a half laps around the track.

Susanna Scaroni is all alone on the screen right now.

This is absolutely spectacular.

Susanna security is the champion of 5000 and a new Paralympic record, really one of the most more convincing wins at the Paralympic games on the track and wheelchair track that I've seen for a long time.

And they really put a stamp on that she was so on.

After Tokyo.

Two weeks later, I was training and I was heading east on Windsor Road, which is four lanes.

And I got hit from behind.

And I sustained a burst fracture.

Three vertebrae in my back.

I did not know what was gonna happen.

I was like what is my life gonna be like with this back injury?

Because when you're a wheelchair user, I think you just ever you're very sensitive to anything in your body becoming wounded.

But when it was my back I was so just like fearful that I may have to adjust my way of living.

I had been arguing my best I've ever been at, and had some marathons coming up that I really wanted to compete at.

So very disappointed.

But then immediately after that was so much thankfulness that I was alive.

In January of 2022, I was given the okay to get him back my racing chair.

So I started pushing on January 3.

And from there, my racing highlights have been pretty consistent.

The New York City Marathon was a big highlight, because I love that course.

And that course is hard this year at around mile 23 was very challenging.

That day, I remember doing amazing grace, the song Amazing Grace and singing that over and over again, to get me up to that hard part.

I just wanted to meet it and do everything I could.

And I just did not expect we had a really good feel that day.

And I didn't expect to be able to go alone under the course record.

That 31 year old American in total control, and she wins her first Boston Marathon.

I have very effective training right now, because I have had so many experiences.

And I think that has helped, you know, make me be really fast this year, because I can, I can actually visualize a time where I'm gonna need a skill.

And then I can practice that skill, a training, she's taking that success, and really has become the number one female in the world.

I still think that the hardest challenge I've gone through is not the marathon, but is grad school.

And I think it's because it forced me to learn a lot of times as I was struggling through grad school, because it was something so different than anything I've ever done.

I would draw upon wheelchair racing for assistance.

I was like, Why do I love training, and I just hate trying to write this literature review.

And I would remind myself that when you train every single morning, you're actually doing exercises to get better and better and better.

And now it feels easy.

And you like that I needed to read more academic papers, I needed to perform more statistics and need to do things that regularly, like accumulate it and made it feel better and easier.

And it took me a while to like realize that there are many times, especially in the winter, when you know, it's snowing, and I would like to not push through snow.

I love being outside.

I always want to be a forester, I would love to be able to hike through the woods or when I'm in Eugene visiting my family to actually hike up the sand dunes like I carried.

There are many times that I feel that way.

And I just wish that I could walk.

Those are also the times where I realized that I have been given a different perspective.

And I am very thankful for that.

And I also not denies that if I have the thought that if I could be given like the chance to walk tomorrow.

I would probably take it.

But if it meant that I couldn't have what I had had to this point.

I don't think I would, because it's one thing to want to go hiking.

But we're all of the many things that I've learned along the way I would never trade for anything else.

And I know that's true.

Did you know that one of the country's only Zambian restaurants is in Champaign, Illinois, actually move on to chonda Who owns and operates the restaurant says it's the only one in North America.

And it turns out Moo Bongo story is as wonderful as her food.

If you drive a couple blocks north of the hotspots in downtown Champaign, you'll find what may be the only Zambian restaurant in North America.

Keep your eyes open.

It's easy to miss.

Inside, you'll find Lubanga Chanda getting ready for the evening rush.

I'm the cook.

This chef man, the boss.

I'm the cashier.

I'm the dishwasher.

I'm the server and pretty much everything.

Chanda is as surprised as anyone that she's ended up as the head chef of her own restaurant so far.

From her hometown of Lusaka, Zambia.

If my mum was alive today, she'll be very surprised.

My cousins, my sisters back home, they're like, really?

You're cooking.

i You, I do not ever remember you cooking anything when you were here.

That's what they tell me.

I was much more of a tomboy.

I would be out playing with the boys for the most part, I will be I was playing soccer.

But for whatever reason.

I think I had it in me I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of people don't know about Zambia, because it's a conservative country, very quiet.

We are a lot landlocked country.

And we are surrounded by these other countries that were colonized by different Western countries.

Or we have the Dutch on the other side, the Portuguese, the Germans, the French.

That's why you would find things like plantains.

We have some muscles from the Indians, we have returns we call them freedoms, which is the same as been yours, which is also the French.

That's why our menu we've kind of like tried to put everything that we have, because that's representing Zambia, a staple of Zambian cuisine is a simple dish called and Shima.

It was the first food Chandar learn to cook.

I lived with my grandmother, for the most part of my life that I can remember.

So there was just the two of us actually in the house.

And shimmer is just water and cornmeal.

My grandmother never used to eat tissue.

So I was eating Shimon, she would cook for me most of the times, then this one day, she just like I'm not doing it.

I'm not gonna cook for you.

I've cooked it so many times for you should know how to do it.

Really?

Yeah.

So I got it.

I got my stew.

And I think I was I must have been maybe 10 years old.

So I got my smoke pot, dumped on the stove and cooked it the first time I cooked it.

It was perfect.

Because you can miss it.

Yeah, I was so excited.

The next day, I couldn't do it.

It came out all wrong.

Like what am I missing?

So the third day, and from there on, I had it.

After high school, Chanda worked as a printer.

But she was frustrated with the lack of opportunities in Zambia.

I'm at the point where I'm trying to like establish my my life.

And it's Africa, there are no jobs, you know, you really have to struggle.

So that is the best thing you want to do is to leave and go to, you know, a developed country trying to move to Champaign Urbana in 2000 and worked as a software technician.

After work.

She picked up extra money as an Uber driver.

One Saturday, three separate customers inspired her to change her life.

So that time I picked up like three people who were asking about the restaurant African restaurant, like when, you know, I picked them up from the airport, and they're like, is there an African restaurant around here?

Unlike No.

And one Saturday, three people asked me about an African machine and there was nothing.

So I picked up the phone I called my friend I said, You know what?

Let's go ahead and do it.

She didn't even hesitate.

She's like, you know what?

Let's do it.

Stango cuisine opened as a restaurant in Urbana in 2019.

And moved to its current location in 2022.

Stangl accident means America, United States.

That is just a slang name for America.

Really, when we just opened so many people that have been to Africa, Malawi, Zambia, so many people and they were like, Oh, we missed this I wasted Mishima.

Oh, I missed this.

I'm glad you guys are here.

My main ingredients are ginger garlic tumeric.

Certain things that I've just invented here, for example, the sweet potatoes, that's not Zambian way of cooking sweet potatoes, that is Stangl.

I do the cooking over here because I want to see the food come out the way I want it.

Because that's my food.

That's what that I'm gonna eat that food at some point.

So really, when I'm cooking, I cook it like I'm cooking at home.

When I start something, I don't want to fail.

I want to go for it.

And I don't want to end there.

For whatever reason.

I feel like I am still pushing to get this one major like thing where I'm going to be like Okay, I think this is it.

This is what I was, you know, looking for.

I'm not there.

I hope I can get there.

Because honestly being in America, this is the best Fortunately, one can have.

For now, Chanda is happy to be a culinary trailblazer for Central Illinois, and the United States.

Food brings everybody together, it doesn't matter where it's from good food especially, it doesn't matter.

You cannot say, Oh, this food looks good, but it's from Africa, I don't eat African food, you can say that.

It's good food.

As long as it's good, you're gonna test it and you enjoy it and you love it.

That's good food.

Finally, we want you to meet Leah Marlene, she is one of the biggest talents to come out of normal Illinois and quite a few years.

And in fact, the people in Bloomington Normal are just nuts about her.

And for good reason.

As a kid, you have the dream of like, I want to be a firefighter, I want to be an astronaut, or I want to be a superstar, whatever.

Like, I always knew that I wanted to be a musician.

And I just never really outgrew the childhood dream of it.

I was born in Toronto, Canada, I lived there until I was three years old.

And then I moved to normal Illinois and lived in the same house for the rest of my life up until college.

Growing up, I would absolutely love going on bike rides, like out in the cornfields and just seeing the great big blue sky and being able to see for miles and just let the warm air hit you.

And just like smell all the farmland, it was just the most beautiful thing.

Bloomington Normal is such an amazing community.

It's a substantial amount of people, but it's not overwhelming.

I grew up in a household of music, there was absolutely no way that I was not just gonna be like slapped in the face with the idea of doing music as a career.

And I looked back at early childhood pictures and like, almost all of them I'm touching an instrument or I'm watching my dad play an instrument or I'm just surrounded by instruments I've been singing forever, the way my tone has gotten to where it's at, is by me literally like mimicking other singers.

So I would kind of like be obsessed with the singer and kind of learn how they did what they did.

And then I'd get obsessed with another singer and learn how they did what they did.

And then like, after so many years, it just became a huge melting pot of all these people that I admired and tried to like pick up certain things and leave other things.

Eventually, it just became something that felt just like me and like, not like any of them.

But yet they all are a part of what my voice is now.

In junior high, I was obsessed with hockey, it was my life.

And then I hit my head too many times.

So I just stopped playing contact sports I really like started to lean on music just in that time to console me because my whole identity had just been like, ripped away from me.

And I was going into high school and I was like, I'm not the hockey girl anymore.

Like who am I that's kind of where I started taking it more seriously, I just signed up for every musical opportunity I could and it quickly, like swallowed me whole my whole high school career, I was just obsessed with the idea of going to Belmont University in Nashville.

So after I graduated, I went to Belmont.

And it was like a dream come true to go there.

It was amazing.

But very quickly, like within the first week of going there, I like to just lost myself, I just wanted to do everything under the sun.

And I'm only one human and I could not keep up.

I really ended up crashing very early on.

And it was a very, very miserable two years of my life.

After four semesters there, I dropped out.

And I came back home to Illinois.

And then very shortly after I I really came back to myself for the first time in two years.

I just had this idea of I want to go travel the world and go find myself and just just go be free and reevaluate everything you can close to it.

Shortly after that American Idol actually reached out which was the last thing I ever thought I would do at that time.

But I just had this weird gut feeling that was like telling me that I should just give it a shot.

Just have fun.

See what happens.

So I'm here to play the game and roll the dice.

I'm tossing in my coins, just name your varieties.

Use my two cents.

The entire American Idol process was honestly just the most fun I had in my entire life.

People's lives are changed by the show.

I don't think that's good.

Don't be me.

But I've watched the show forever.

And it's just really cool that I'm even getting to be a part of it at all.

The last two weeks of the show, were when you really felt like a taste of this is what it is to be a superstar.

Like, you're flying on private jets, you're meeting all of your idols, you're singing with your idols.

You're just in your own world when when you're filming for idle, you don't realize that everything is changing outside of this bubble.

And then the last two weeks, you you exit the bubble and you actually see what's going on.

You're going through with your hands I would never believe you if he told me I made it to the finale on Idol.

That was the last thing I ever expected, the finale happens and a day later you fly home on commercial.

And you're just like, Alright, why do I do that?

You know, you really have like the the rocket ship to the stratosphere, you just came off like the highest, quickest, most accelerated climb you could ever imagine in the industry.

And you have to figure out what to do with all that momentum.

And there's really no bridge from the show to help you figure out what the next steps are.

You can view American Idol as my Launchpad and in a lot of ways it was but it was the Midwest coming together around me during idle that really was the launch pad.

It was central Illinois, coming around me during that time.

That really made a huge difference.

And so I think this place will always always be my home.

I love it here.

I love coming home, but also just the people here.

The fans here are just like they're just like the day one people that have been watching me since I was eight years old performing around Powell so Illinois and central Illinois will always have a special place in my heart get to I don't want to be remembered for any certain thing.

I think I just want to be remembered for the way that I make people feel.

That's kind of the central like guiding principle of my life.

When we were creating the show, we thought that Liam Arlene's unique voice and her pride for her hometown really represented the creative fire and the spark of the people of Illinois.

So we asked her to perform the song that will open every episode of prairie fire.

We leave you with a behind the scenes look of Lea Marlene performing our theme song Prairie Fire (music) you could say she's like a Prairie Fire (music)