I didn’t feel free. Since I’d seen that commercial on TV about depression, I’d been attentive wherever I went. I looked behind and all around, wondering if everyone knew everything about me. Now I wasn’t sure about crossing the street. This news about the law struck me as odd. How could I learn all the laws?
Another thing puzzled me. If everything was governed by the law, why did we pay bribes? Each month IRC gave us money to pay rent for our apartment. In Kenya the word “rent” meant a bribe. You paid money to someone to get something. So it shocked me that we had to pay money in America to live in our home. In our village, our parents built our hut. In the refugee camp, we built our hut, we lived there, and it was ours. The idea of paying rent was crazy for us. I assumed this was a temporary situation, which was why we paid the bribe until they found us our own place. All of it surprised me. We thought bribery only happened in Africa.
Benson came from the bedroom. I asked, “Why do we have to pay money for our house?”
Benson said, “It’s because you have to prove you are a genuine person. You must prove you have a good character. They are testing us to see if we are sincere people, truthful and in good conduct.”
I reluctantly agreed with my brother, but it felt very strange to pay. Now we had to learn more laws about crossing the streets here. “Judy takes us places to show us her country, but it is more important that she teach us about the laws.”
“We will ask her,” Benson said.
“She is nice,” I told Benson. I wanted to see what he thought.
“Yes.”
We both agreed that Judy was nice. But my previous experiences had taught me to be always on guard. I questioned people’s motives and intentions. Just because something appeared good did not necessarily mean it was good all the time.
Benson warned me, “Do not speak anything negative toward Judy nor any other human being in this country. Can’t you see they are testing our characters? You must behave yourself.”
I understood what Benson was saying, but uncertainty and questions swamped my mind. Why was Judy helping us? What did she want? I needed to find school, work, a car, and a wife. Would she keep helping us? Was her direction the right and good thing?
Benson advised me. “Relax. She will show us where to go and what to do.”
Lino said, “Some people here don’t have manners. Someone bumped into me the other day. Then after, he said, ‘Excuse me.’ Why is that? Do you have an answer for me?”
“I am just like you,” I said. “We are here to learn.”
We often advised each other. “Do not react when people do strange things.” Our favorite line was, “Be careful of how you behave, you are in a strange land.”
FISHING LESSONS
Judy
When I arrived for the mentoring introduction, a dozen or so people were already seated around the conference table in the IRC classroom. I took the only empty chair. Except for one woman who was thirty at most, the other eight volunteers looked to be college age. I felt like a parent sitting in on a class.
We introduced ourselves in turn. Undergraduates. Law school students. Graduate students. Many worked as well. Young women and men. Interesting. Where I lived and volunteered it was almost all women. This was good to see.
My contemporaries often whined that this generation of young Americans was materialistic, spoiled, and self-centered. Yet here, altruistic eagerness surrounded me and no one was even near my age. We had more time and resources than college kids to help others. Many of our parents were first-generation immigrants. So much for the idealistic love generation and our communes and kibbutzim. What had taken me so long to do something like this?
When the introductions were done, Sharon, who was closer to my age, thanked everyone for attending and shared a little of her background in the Peace Corps. Then she said, “Now I’d like you to close your eyes, please.” She read a first-person account by a refugee forced to flee their home due to war. The danger, the terror, and the unknown future were made more poignant by listening in darkness.
When she was done, I opened my eyes and avoided glancing at other glistening eyes.
“The refugee application process is rigorous,” Sharon said. “It typically takes several years. The refugees who get to be resettled in other countries have been in camps the longest, some of them for generations. The average is seventeen years. Those who come here are in the most dire or dangerous situations with no hope of returning home. By the end of 2000, there were nearly forty million refugees in the world. The US takes in about forty thousand a year. That’s more than all the other countries combined. So you can see, refugees who get to come here are very lucky.”
Lucky, I’d say so. One in a thousand chance.
“IRC provides basics like housing, English, job training, etc. We want the mentors to focus on socialization and acculturation.”
We’d tried new food together, that was acculturation. I needed to think up more opportunities along those lines.
“Ease into activities,” Sharon said. “Do the small things first.”
Oh my. I guessed that meant don’t drag them through the library, beach, park, and museums all in one day, like I might have done with my visiting relatives. Definitely not to the world’s longest baseball game and attempt to force-feed them mysterious meats. Egad, I did need work on my mentoring skills.
Sharon passed around a handout: “Triangle of Self-Actualization” by Abraham Maslow. The levels of human motivation. It resembled the nutrition triangle put out by the FDA, with five horizontal levels of multiple colors. I vaguely remembered it from my one college psychology course in the 1970s.
“Very applicable with refugees,” Sharon said. “Maslow theorized that one could not move to a higher level until the prior level was satisfied. The first level, the triangle base, is physiological needs. Like food and water. Until a person has enough to eat and drink, that’s all one would be concerned with.”
I’d never experienced not being able to satisfy my thirst or hunger, but it sounded logical that that would be my only concern in such a situation. For the Lost Boys, just getting enough food and water had been a daily struggle. I wondered what kind of impact being stuck at the bottom level for the last fourteen years would have on a person, especially as a child and teen.
“The second level is safety and security. Home. A sanctuary. A safe place.”
Like not being shot at or having lions attack you. They hadn’t had much of level two, either. Even Kakuma hadn’t been safe. A refugee camp couldn’t feel like home.
“The third level is social. A sense of belonging.”
Since they’d been together, they must have felt like they belonged, but perhaps not on a larger scale, having been displaced from home and living in someone else’s country.
“Once a person has food, shelter, family and friends, they can advance to the fourth level, which is ego. Self-esteem.”
I’d never thought of those things occurring sequentially, but rather simultaneously, as they did in my life. If I understood correctly, working on their self-esteem had not been a large concern to them, if one at all. That was bound to affect them eventually. In what way remained to be seen. They’d been so preoccupied with survival that issues of self-worth might overwhelm them at first. A sure risk for insecurity and depression.
The information was fascinating and insightful, although worrisome in terms of Benson, Lino, and Alepho. It also made me wonder about us middle- and upper-class Americans. We seldom worried about food, except eating too much, and that was not what Maslow had been referring to. Most of us had homes and safety and friends and family. That could mean we were entirely focused on that fourth level: ego. Our efforts to make ourselves seem strong, smart, rich, beautiful, or young were our own kind of survival skill. Perhaps advancing directly to the fourth level, when the mind was originally engineered f
or the challenges of basic survival, was why Prozac and Zoloft, both antidepressants, were two of the biggest-selling drugs in America.
“The pinnacle of the triangle,” Sharon said, “is the fifth level. Self-actualization. A strong and deeply felt belief that as a person one has value in the world. Contentment with who one is rather than what one has. Secure in one’s beliefs. Not needing ego boosts from external factors. Having that sense of well-being that does not depend on the approval of others is commonly called happiness.”
Happiness, hard to define, yet obvious when present. Most of us struggled our entire lives to achieve it, perhaps what had brought some of us to a mentoring class that night.
That happiness pinnacle was only one level up for most of us. For a refugee starting at the bottom, a much longer climb.
“Let’s move on,” Sharon said. “I’d like to leave you with an African proverb.” She wrote on the chalkboard, Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.
I’d heard that proverb years earlier, but now it took on more meaning. That saying would be my guide.
I waited until everyone had left and went to Sharon. “Thank you for encouraging me to come tonight,” I told her.
She laughed. “I forced you.”
“You did, and now I know why. You gave me a much better idea of what the refugees face and what my role will be. I’ll be honest, it’s more involved than I thought, but I’m even more determined to help them succeed. Can’t imagine not helping them now.”
“You are welcome to call me anytime.”
• • •
On the way home, I thought about their metaphorical fishing lessons. The start had to be a job. And soon. What job though?
Some of the Sudanese refugees who had arrived earlier worked in factories, making circuit boards for a few dollars over minimum wage. They remained temporary employees, however, and were frequently laid off and rehired as the high-tech sector struggled. The workplaces were far away, out of reach of the bus, and the employers didn’t provide benefits. Medical insurance would soon become an important issue. Alepho and Lino would have Medi-Cal for another year or so, until they were twenty-one, but Benson would lose his coverage in eight months. They didn’t have family to fall back on if one of them got sick. Even Americans didn’t have that kind of money.
Hotels would have been the ideal job, something they were immediately capable of doing. Daniel and James managed that work. Yet the occupancy rate had been so low this summer they hadn’t provided enough hours to their existing employees. Tourist season was just about over. That situation was bound to worsen.
We didn’t have much manufacturing in San Diego, mostly high-tech. Taxi drivers needed driver’s licenses and they wouldn’t have those for a while. Fast food should be a possibility, but their English wasn’t clear enough yet to take orders over a counter, much less an intercom. Their English was fairly good—their vocabulary as extensive as many Americans’—they just weren’t used to our accents. Nor us theirs.
I ticked off cook, waiter, construction, gardening … The boys were bright, strong, and eager to work. Surely someone would hire them.
GOOD SAMARITAN
Alepho
Daniel was standing at the stove when I entered our kitchen. I picked up a clear package that was lying on the counter. “What is this?” I asked. The IRC put food in our kitchen but we didn’t understand most of it. “It says spaghetti. Looks like worms but they are so straight and long.”
Daniel already knew how to use the stove and he was making asida from flour and water like we had in the camp. We liked to eat sukumawiki, big green leaves that were our favorite vegetable in Kenya, with asida, but the IRC people didn’t seem to understand us when we asked for that.
“They grow them on huge farms,” Daniel said.
“They farm worms?” I’d eaten worms on my journey, but they were white or some were dark, almost black. None of them were so straight. We had to find them in the dirt, or the short curved ones were inside trees. I wasn’t on my journey anymore. Why would I eat worms?
Daniel handed me a cup. “These are small and not straight, like our worms.” The cup was white and felt empty. On the side it said cup noodles in red letters.
“Open it,” Daniel said.
I pulled back the top. “You are right. These are small like our worms. Americans are just like Chinese. They eat everything.”
American food came in boxes and cans. In Kakuma camp we got olive oil in cans, and when the oil was gone we cut the cans and flattened them to make shingles for our roofs. Here, we already had a fancy roof. What would we do with all the empty cans? Coke cans were already filling our kitchen.
I didn’t have an appetite for American food yet. I didn’t know what was good or how to prepare it.
Hunger was with me most of the time, but it wasn’t a problem. I was familiar with hunger from our journey. In the camp, there had never been enough food. The first day a person goes without food brings headaches. If still no food is found on the second and third days, the headaches become intense. After that, the headaches fade away and the body aches. It recognizes it’s going into starvation mode and readjusts itself. By day four, I would feel numb. When I did get food after so many days, my body shook, sweat covered my skin, and my blood began to flow again. We’d warm water to put on ourselves to calm the shakes. After eating, we’d become tired and fall asleep.
Being a refugee is something that many people cannot understand. Refugee life isn’t so pleasant. We lived five of us together. The little ration we received we collected together and cooked as a meal once a day. Though we had appetite, there wasn’t enough to eat for young, growing boys with tender bones and body. Nutritional diseases were rampant in the camp. Children died from marasmus, kwashiorkor, anemia, and beriberi. Rickets was the worst with young boys—almost every boy was bowlegged. It was a hardship for all boys to go to school with an empty stomach. Remember, an empty stomach cannot carry the healthy mind. Many times I felt as though I was being devoured by wild animals.
In order to survive, people had to subdue their pain and desires and live on faith. We could not stretch out our ration for fifteen days, and black days came every two weeks when there was nothing left to eat in the three days’ time before receiving rations again. All we could do was keep busy by reading or gathering around and sharing stories to forget the hunger.
The longest I went without food was on the journey right after I found my brother Benson. We’d been separated by war for five years. I did not even think he was still alive. There was a brief time of peace in our lives, and we were happy to be together at last. But not long after our joyous reunion, we heard bombs coming from the nearby town. Survivors straggled in. They said we had to flee. Food was distributed for the journey, three cups of corn and two cups of beans to each person. We were about to receive ours when a shrill whistling broke the peace.
“Lie down, lie down,” a man shouted. “This is the way to survive.”
I threw myself down. A bomb exploded. The ground shook. Dust filled the air like a storm cloud. I couldn’t see a thing; only screams and moans reached my ears.
When the cloud cleared, dead people lay all around. People who still lived got up and ran in all directions. They didn’t know where to go.
I jumped to my feet and ran with the screaming crowd. We fled toward the Lotuko hills for shelter. Bombs exploded behind us. We’d almost reached the hills when a tut-tut-tut came from the bushes. Bullets! People scattered in all directions. A man went down in front of me. Tut-tut-tut whistled all around. An ambush. More people fell. I stopped. Shaking overtook me. Lie down. Lie down. I’d heard that so many times. That is the way to survive. I fell to the ground and crawled into some long grass where women were crouched. I hid with them as explosions and guns thundered around us.
&
nbsp; The shooting stopped. The women who were still alive fled in a crouching run. Something told me to remain hidden in that grass, even though I was surrounded by dead bodies.
Soldiers moved in. They went from body to body, checking to see who was still alive. Each time they found a live person a shot rang out. I hid my blanket under my body. I trembled inside but kept my eyes closed in a relaxed way and let my mouth fall open. I made myself like a dead person and waited.
Footsteps approached. A boot poked my side. I didn’t breathe. A toe went under my belly and flipped me. I let my arms fall crooked and my legs twist like a dead person. He’d kill me if he thought I was alive, but he wouldn’t waste a bullet on a boy that was already dead.
The soldier grunted and went on to the next person, ignoring my blanket wrapped in the dirty old cloth. I lay perfectly still. When I could no longer hear the soldiers, I opened my eyes to be sure they were gone.
I picked up my blanket and ran back to where we’d come from, looking for Benson or anyone else. Where was he? Was he alive, or was my brother’s body back there in the grass? How would I find him again?
I found a few survivors huddled in a circle. I couldn’t see anyone I knew. I hung to the side of them. Women cried; children cried. In the middle of all that pain and sorrow, a blind child stumbled on a land mine and died in a thousand pieces. Fear built inside me like an earthquake. My body shook. I’d never seen so much dying.
An elder took charge of the group. “We must move on. Control yourselves. No talking. No crying. No whining that I am hungry, I am thirsty. No noise whatsoever.”
We settled our fear. We had to. I followed like a sleepwalker in total confusion. Why was our government hunting and killing families—women and children who had done nothing but live? Why were they shooting at me? I’d had many desperate days, but this was the most unforgettable. That morning our family had all been together. Now I was completely alone again, just like the first days after I’d fled my village.
Disturbed in Their Nests Page 11