Today on the train ride home from work I spoke with 3 women that are custodians at a healthcare building. Turns out, they are from Nepal. I’ve noticed them periodically on the train and sometimes we end up sitting near one another. Having wondered if they were once
refugee’s, I struck up a conversation today. Turns out that that 2 of them were, arriving in the US 4 and 7 years ago respectively. They didn’t know any English when the arrived. Now they speak reasonably well – enough that we could communicate, though with some measure of repeating words to understand. It’s exciting to think that we might be able to help people out in a similar way through volunteering with the refugee program. We need to get our applications turned in – my goal is by Thanksgiving. Then, hopefully in the years that follow, the people we help will become settled and become productive members of society.
In a related experience, sometime last summer we visited an housing complex with many former refugees. Our friend Lynn is quite involved and has many contacts among the residents. One family we visited has a telling story. I do not recall what country they were from. Mom and Dad work at the recycling center – basically sorting trash. A dirty, manual job that requires minimal skills. Their English proficency was minimal, although they’d lived her for 10-15 years as I recall. However, some of their kids were also there. One daughter was a junior or senior in high school. She spoke English perfectly well. In speaking with her, she has excellent grades and is preparing to go to college to study a medical field. Her older sister had already left for college, moving to another state. It’s impressive to see a family like this, even kids who likely had terrible experiences as young children while their parents fled their home country. Or, they may have been born and raised in a camp. In any case, it’s a great example, of the change in life that a single generation can have.