Will there ever be Peace?
“MY
twins, who were 15, were kidnapped but thanks to
God, the kidnapper released them when he spotted a
police checkpoint on their way. A week later, my
husband was kidnapped and we fled for my children’s
safety. My husband has yet to be found..,” recalls
Asif, a mother of five children and once a
pharmacist in Iraq. An interpreter translates for
her.
“In 2004, we began receiving letters
threatening us with death and physical harm if we
didn’t leave. Then my gold store was destroyed and
it was impossible to work or feel safe. I gathered
whatever was left from my store and fled to Syria.
There, none of the Iraqis were allowed to work.
There was no job. We were dying a slow death,” says
Taleb, an Iraqi Christian, also via a translator.
“My mother gave birth to my little
brother under a tree, with the sound of bombs and
machine guns blasting, and through it all my
brothers and sisters who were small children were
crying for her attention,” shudders Wheaton resident
Bisharo Amir, 17. Originally from Somalia, she
arrived here from Kenya three years ago.
These are the stories of our
neighbours in Chicago and the suburbs of Aurora,
Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, Carol Stream and more recently
Glendale Heights. They maybe from different parts of
the war-torn world — Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Burundi,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq and Myanmar — but they all
have one thing in common.
They are all refugees, and have
escaped war and imminent violent death. While Syria
and Jordan accepted 1.5 million and 750,000 Iraqis
respectively, the US accepted a few hundred from
2003-2007. In 2008, the limit on Iraqi refugees was
increased to 12,000, making them amongst the most
recent arrivals to the US. Resettlement agencies
continue to advocate raising that number.
“There are 5.1 million displaced
Iraqis inside and outside Iraq, not to mention all
those who were murdered,” says Noah Miller who works
with US-based Middle East Cultural and Charitable
Society, as director of the project’s Direct Aid
Initiative (www.directaidiraq.org), and with its
news and analysis website Electronic Iraq (http://www.electroniciraq.net/).
“To put it in perspective, twice the entire
population of Chicago, or one in five Iraqis, have
been displaced,” he says. “The war makes it to the
newspapers, but like poverty, displacement is
noticed only by those who experience it.”
Instances where refugee resettlement
has been most successful, he elaborates, is where
there has been involvement from the local community,
churches, mosques and individual volunteers. “All
the resettlement agencies have ways in which the
local community can be involved. One person can’t
solve the whole crisis but you can impact the
situation of one family at least,” says Noah.
Volunteers, though, should be prepared to be patient
and involved for a long time if they want to make a
difference.
Suzanne Elger, of Glen Ellyn, would
agree. Parents and school staff at Lincoln
Elementary spearheaded the creation of a programme
called Community Outreach four years ago, to meet
the needs of its refugee and needy children. A list
of volunteers provide everything from breakfast
snacks to school supplies, backpacks, socks and
underwear on an as-needed basis.
Within a year, the initiative had
been rolled out to the other three elementary
schools in that district, each school rotating their
role as “brother’s-keepers” for two months of the
academic year. Elger, this year, chairs Community
Outreach at Lincoln Elementary. “My son Joey even
brags about it. He takes pride in the fact that we
help out,” laughs Elger.
In their early days here, African
refugees settled in Glen Ellyn would walk to school
at dawn in the biting cold, wearing slippers, their
mothers clad in thin, traditional, cotton clothing.
Helping them assimilate and adjust meant that social
workers at Lincoln Elementary visited their homes
and even drew pictures of clocks to show the
children when it was time to come to school.
In contrast, the Iraqi refugees are
primarily well-educated with Masters and PhDs and
have urban, middle class backgrounds. Until they
master English, and have their credentials
evaluated, they are restricted to jobs that the
resettlement agencies are primarily aware of — jobs
for unskilled workers, often paying minimum wage.
Local parents here are known to
carpool the refugee children to park district
programming and school events and really get to know
them. “When Joey was in third grade he had an
African refugee child, AbdiKhadir, who was his
friend and came home on play dates. Joey was really,
really upset when AbdiKhadir moved out-of-state,”
she says.
Marilyn Duszynski, is also of Glen
Ellyn, and volunteers nine hours a day, on average,
with either the refugee children or their parents.
“They looked at a man on stilts, ate cotton candy
and were so excited to have their own plate of
food,” says Marilyn Duszynski, 56, of a summer
outing she took the refugee children on.
“I listen to their wishes, dreams,
fears, what’s going on in their lives and I know I
have the best time of all.” But, she says, she also
insists on personal responsibility. “In the
beginning it’s all about feeling these are poor
souls and you want to help them. I came to see they
were relying on people too much and that wasn’t good
for them.”
Her years of volunteering with the
refugees, have put her in a position to advise the
resettlement agencies on a thing or two. “I’d prefer
if the organisations that bring them to these
communities, prepare the communities before time.
Not just suddenly drop them off,” says Duszynski.
Faith groups, too, have risen to the
call. Over the past two years, Faith Lutheran Church
in Glen Ellyn has became the venue for an
inter-faith ESL programme, with both Muslim and
Christian tutors for their Muslim and Christian
refugee students. Helping Hands Inc of Love
Christian Clearing House in Wheaton created English
Conversation groups in the refugee women’s homes.
The Islamic Foundation Mosque in
Villa Park created a group called Refugee Assistance
Programmes while this past September, in the Islamic
holy month of Ramadhan, 50 Muslim girls between the
ages of eight and 12 who are members of the ‘Girls
Club’ and their mothers at the Islamic Centre of
Naperville, took on a project to bring 50 laundry
baskets of food and personal care products to
Myanmarese and Iraqi families.
“I think for our children in
particular, who are growing up with so much comfort,
this was intriguing at the very least....seeing very
basic items being put together in the form of
gifts,” says one of the organisers who asked not to
be named. “Even though we realise there are people
in need in our communities, personal contact with
them brings their reality, and all its contrasts
with our lives, into focus.”
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA
Relief) helped them distribute the baskets as far as
Chicago. “After the first two or three homes, it was
hard to fight tears as we realised that we needed to
do so much more,” she says. This Thanksgiving St
Petronille’s Church in Glen Ellyn will be giving
Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets to ten refugee
families. Like area mosques, St Petronille Church
and St Paul Lutheran in Wheaton have also helped
with rent assistance, driving lessons and car
donations.
Several Chicago schools with
ethnically diverse populations enlist the help of
Changing Worlds (www.changingworlds.org), a Chicago
non-profit, that reaches 10,000 children each year.
“Students have the opportunity to hear their
stories, to write and create art that narrates their
histories, their experiences coming to America and
living here. For some refugees it’s very painful to
talk about their lives and we don’t force them. For
others it’s very helpful. They want to tell their
stories and they have an opportunity,” says Kay
Berkson, Changing Worlds’ Founder.
“One of our exhibits is a collection
of stories and photos of people who are immigrants
now living in Chicago and many of these are
refugees. For refugees, it’s an opportunity to see
stories like their own. For others, it helps provide
a better understanding of who a refugee is and
conveys that all our voices are important,” adds
Berkson.
