Mentoring a refugee family is going to mean as many firsts for Blaise and I as for our family. Already, this adventure has been so much fun and filled with so much joy! I cannot wipe the smile off of my face the entire time we are at their home…and last night the father even asked, “You happy when you visit here?” My answer was, “May, may. Happy. Yes.”
Last week, we journeyed back up to their apartment for the first time since they arrived just to hang out, teach them some English, and answer their questions. We sat on their floor, sharing apples and grapes, laughing at our lack of words, and trying our best to piece together a loose conversation. I derived from that evening that both parents (names omitted to respect their privacy) fled from Burma 12 years ago and spent the last 11 years in Karenni Refugee Camp 2 in Thailand. The mother is from the Karen State in Burma, and she has no family left…at all. The father is from the Karenni State, and his father is still alive, but he is not sure where. Though they smile a lot, laugh easily, and show unbelievable kindness, I am sure that they have experienced great depths of pain…and they are a reminder to me that we take so much for granted here in America.
A lot has already happened in the couple of times we have seen them in the last week, and there is no way that I will be able to tell you everything about mentoring our family, but I will share some of my favorite moments thus far…
- Unintentionally tricking the mother into running to answer her home phone when it was actually me calling from my cell…on the couch…right in front of her. They gave me their phone number so that we can call them before we go over, and to make sure that they said it correctly and that I typed it in correctly, I called…but she didn’t realize it was me. We shared a very hearty laugh over that!
- Them honoring us tremendously by giving us traditional Karen shirts as gifts. The mother made them, and they gave them to us last week…that was a HUGE honor, as they have so little for themselves.
- Labeling their entire apartment with the English words for each thing (sofa, door, freezer, etc.) using Post-It notes that I had in my purse.
- Taking the mother to the grocery store…it was an overwhelming experience for both of us!
- Giving them one of our old TVs and the new TV cabinet that we bought for them. The father and Blaise had a little male bonding time while they assembled the cabinet. The father said to us after it was all set up, “You give us gift…so beautiful.” I nearly cried over a TV and stand.
- Trying in earnest to learn Karen. It is a very difficult tonal language that makes learning Nuer look like a piece of cake!
I am really excited about some of the activities that we have planned for our family over the next couple of months. Winter is typically a blustery (i.e. miserable) time to be outside in Indiana, but we are going to definitely take advantage of the Christmas festivities to get to know them better and introduce them to America. We will be cooking an American meal with them this week, going to Christmas at the Zoo in a couple of weeks, taking them through the Winter Wonderland lights here in Danville, going to the Children’s Museum, and hopefully even taking them to a family gathering around Christmastime. We were told that introducing them to our family and friends is a great way to help them understand our culture and to expose them to English, so that is what we will do!
Here are a few pictures that I took of the shirts, cans of coconut juice (definitely not my favorite), and Blaise and the father working on the TV cabinet…
