New York: A Crazy Refugee Story |
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July 9th, 2007 - 02:01PM |
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Photo: Shepard Hall, City College Photo: Seeding-Chaos / http://flickr.com/photos/seedingchaos/ Melissa Frakman mentors refugees through the City College of New York's Service Learning Program and the IRC's New York refugee resettlement office. She helps resettled refugees like Mamadu, from Sierra Leone, adjust to life in their new communities. One day this spring, an ordinary meeting between mentor and mentee turned into a 'crazy,' life-changing coincidence. 'You wouldn't believe what happened,' she told her professors and the IRC: I decided to show Mamadu around City College instead of our regular meetings at the public library. A refugee from Sierra Leone and survivor of the country’s bloody civil war, he was enthusiastic about seeing a college for the first time, and in our prior conversations never believed me that there were so many West African students at the college. Around 4 PM, I met Mamadu at the gates of the school, and for over an hour we walked around the North Academic Center building discussing education and the chilling disparity between life as a student here versus the life he knew in the refugee camps. At one point, the conversation turned to Mamadu’s aspirations, which included perusing an education but also connecting with a community from Sierra Leone, primarily because he missed the many friends and family he had lost in the war. As a last stop on our tour, I decided to show Mamadu the music studios (and more inspiring architecture) of Shepard Hall. As we approached the door, I mentioned to him that we might not be allowed in, because there would be a security guard checking ID cards. We entered the building, walked up the steps, and suddenly Mamadu froze. A few feet away was the security guard, frozen as well. Their eyes were locked, there was a long moment of silence, and they rushed towards each other and embraced. In the eyes of these two tough African young men, who had seen and experienced so much oppression, there were tears. They started speaking loudly in their native language, often stopping to stand back and look the other in the eye. Eventually they filled me in on the amazing reality: Mamadu and the guard have been best friends since childhood, and they spent their entire adolescence across the road from one another. They hadn’t seen one another for 8 years, since a bloody rebel insurgence where over 300 people in their village were killed in one day. They both had thought the other was dead. I left them to talk for an hour, and returned to find them sitting and excitedly talking, arms still in embrace. We took pictures, spoke of the thrilling situation and random cause of events that led to it, and they exchanged information, making plans to meet the next day. Through the Service Learning assignment, the IRC, and a large dose of serendipity, Mamadu has been linked to the comfort, support, and inspiration of a close friend, as well as a network of others in New York sharing his homeland and similar experiences. I spoke to him again yesterday, and he couldn’t help repeating throughout the conversation that because of the visit to City College, his life has been changed forever. Posted By: theirc | Refugees in the U.S. Permalink |
