I met them at the beginning of my journey working with refugees. I was new and impressionable. I had only seen a dozen or so refugees, but had yet to interact with them personally. I was timid. I knew there would be a massive language barrier, but did not know how that would make them react. Angry? Sad? I did not know. On my second day of refugee resettlement training, I was whisked away to help with an unknown task. I soon learned that like most understaffed nonprofits, one person does the work of twenty. So I followed along the journey that occurred that hot, summer day.
It just so happened that my job for the day would be helping to move in the basic nece ssities into a house for a family that would be arriving in America from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It felt surreal to think that actual refugees would be using the pots and pans that I put away, and I was haunted by the fact that even after we were done setting up, the house still had so little possessions in it.
The whole morning was frantic, and we were way behind schedule. There had been problems trying to find a house big enough for eight people within a certain proximity to the agency, which was both safe and affordable. I had wrongly assumed that I would be gone long before the family arrived, but when I came downstairs, there was a preschool-aged black boy just staring up at me. I did the most logical thing in the moment, and stared back, trying to process that this adorable human was actually going to sleep in one of the beds that I had just made. He was one of the refugees who was going to live in this house.
I saw the other seven shuffle in shyly, and a round of welcomes ensued. The other caseworkers and I just looked around awkwardly after the exchange because the interpreter was nowhere to be found. Beyond “welcome” the parents knew no English, and our Swahili was limited to “Jambo!” Regardless, I crouched down to the youngest daughter and asked her what her name was. I didn’t expect her to answer, but was surprised when she proudly exclaimed that her name was *Jasmeen. I could see the sparkle of excitement in her and the children’s eyes, but it was in sharp contrast to the concern and stress that I saw in their parents. All of the kids appeared to be well fed from what I could tell, and joked and giggled with each other. But the parents, especially the dad, looked ghastly, with hollow cheeks and what looked like years of sorrow written on his face. There was no light that flickered in his eyes, though he smiled nonetheless, but over the past two months that I have worked with him, I have seen more and more life return to his features.
Many people assume that the hardest part of my job is the language difference, but for me, it is actually that I will never be able to even remotely understand what one of my refugees has gone through, and that I feel like I cannot help them enough. Even if their father, *Chandu, was a native speaker of English and could tell me all of the horrors that he had faced, I doubt I would be able to comprehend how it would feel to be in his situation, so instead, I see the torture through the lines of worry on his forehead and the sadness in his eyes. I cannot take away all of the agony that him and his family has gone through, but I can try to make their future as painless as possible.
It is surprisingly easy to build relationships with people that you cannot speak to. It has made me more observant of human behavior in order to understand how a person is feeling. For example, I have noticed it is very common for the Congolese to raise their eyebrows when they are confused or don’t understand what someone is saying. They also expect people that they know to embrace them with a half-handshake half-hug combo when they see them. As someone who has struggled with physical contact, especially from strangers, this took a little while to become comfortable with, but now I don’t give it a second thought, especially if it comes from one of the members of my special Congolese family.
The moment that my relationship with Chandu’s family metamorphosed from professional to more familiar was on a day that their interpreter decided to leave early, and once again stranded me with a group of people that I don’t share a common language with. I decided to mess around with Google Translate to tell the mom that I liked her dress. While it probably didn’t translate properly, and my attempt at Swahili pronunciation was definitely appalling, the message was conveyed. She was so delighted that I had reached out and tried to meet her on her own level, in her own language, that she grabbed my phone and made every family member read it, and then tried to suffocate me in a hug. I’ve been part of their familia ever since. Chandu only knew about five or so English words his first week in the country, and one of them was my name. To me, it is astonishing that although his world was flipped upside down and all of his surroundings are foreign and overwhelming, he still has managed to remember my name, the way that I am identified as an individual. In my mind, I am just another irrelevant, unpaid intern, so it is crazy to think that to someone else I could be much more.
I don’t know if the reason that I have such a close bond with my Congo family is because they were the first group of refugees that I interacted with on a personal level, or whether it’s because I have consistently helped them through each step of the resettlement process thus far. Either way, I know that they have made an impression on me that will last a lifetime. The bond I share with them is indescribable, but I hope my words have at least scraped the surface of what I’m trying to convey. You don’t need to be the same color, from the same country, or even speak the same language to form a meaningful relationship with someone. These people will never know how much that they have done for me, and I know that I will cherish my memories with them for the rest of my life.
