The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

So there is this Sudanese family with whom I have been working that is in somewhat dire straits. The mom has been desperately looking for a job for the last 10 months but has had no luck on account of her poor English. Meanwhile she is on public assistance which is enough to pay rent and have $60/month left over—which does not cover utilities. I have spent countless hours trying to find utilities assistance, convincing companies to let her pay off past-due bills in installments, etc. There were a few significant developments last week while I worked on this. I have broken them down into “the good, the bad and the ugly”:

The good: This mom had an account with Comcast which, with refugee benefits, was easily paid for. Unfortunately, right as her refugee benefits ended so did the “promotional” price that Comcast had started her with and suddenly this mom was charged $90/month and had no way to pay it. There are no non-profits that will pay for phone bills so she was left facing a collections agency for the balance of the bill. Luckily, one of the case managers in my office had started a refugee-interest group at his church and they had some money left over from a bake sale. They agreed to pay off the phone bill and I helped the mom switch to a phone service that charged only $13/month.

The bad: I was trying to figure out how much this mom owed for water (she cannot read English and so bills sent to her house are frequently lost). I called the apartment manager (who sends out the water bills) and asked for a ballpark figure each month. The apartment manager was surprised to report that it was very high (around $70/mo) and asked me how many people were living there—I explained that the Sudanese mother has 7 children. Turns out that 8 people in a 3 bedroom apartment violates occupancy laws and that this woman’s case manager had told the apartment manager that only 4 people were living there. The apartment manager was not happy and insisted on inspecting the apartment by the end of the month. I may have inadvertently gotten this family evicted—I still don’t know what will happen.

The ugly: Naturally, I wanted to know who lied to the apartment manager (catholic charities has a strict honesty policy—otherwise shit like this happens). Turns out that this Sudanese mother’s case was not handled by catholic charities but by another volunteer agency called Kurdish Human Right’s Watch. They were only a resettlement agency for one year and have since been shut down by the state for improperly resettling refugees (exhibit one: Sudanese mother with 7 children in a 3 bedroom apartment). I managed to track down the now-unemployed case manager from KHRW and asked him about the apartment. He said yes, he did tell the apartment manager that there were only 3 children and told the mother to just keep the other kids out  of sight until she got into section 8 housing (for which, might I add, there is a 3 year waiting list). THAT was his plan? WTF? I was really angry and started venting to a coworker who then told me some of the other, crazier stories involving this case worker. Apparently he is well-known in the Somali community for misusing resettlement funds and not bringing families what they needed. His reputation was so bad that it got back to the Somalis in the refugee camps and, according to my coworker, one Somali family saw him waiting for them as they were walking out of airport security and they turned and started running the other way (where they thought they were going I do not know).

The REALLY ugly: this guy. According to my supervisor he looks like a child and has no fashion sense (dresses in over-sized suits--Which isn’t helping the childish look). My supervisor apparently has a sassy side.

Hopefully the oldest daughter in this family, who speaks english, will be able to get a job soon. I am left praying fervently for them.

What we really did for our AmeriCorps hours.....

My house's submission to the jesuit volunteer publication "Out of Focus":

 

What We Really Did For Our Americorps Hours

By The Gresham Haus

We all know that Americorps is obsessed with numbers and stats. JVC Northwest asks us to record exactly how many people we served and the number of direct and indirect service hours, down to the quarter hour. As we all meticulously struggle to remember, "Did I spend 4.25 or 4.5 hours running stats on that excel sheet?" we all know that we do some other ridiculous work at our placements. Truthfully, some of our supervisors think that just because we are JVs, they can give us the lame jobs (which is true). These are some things that we counted into our Americorps hours, but didn't include in the service report:

·         Returned a Whole Foods shopping cart found on our property (4.25 hours)

·         Consolidated 18 bottles of conditioner into a more easily accessible pump conditioner
 bottle (1.25 hours [training])

·         Refilled 2,304 dog bones into our free dog treat container (.75 hours)

·         Searched dry food cupboards for moth's nests (3 hours)

·         Searched for rogue rats within our office walls because they won’t stop eating our cat and dog food after hours (3.5 hours)

·         Practiced company fire drills (0.5 hours)

·         Searched wildly, and conspicuously, for any company or store that would be willing to donate condoms to our organization (7.75 hours)

·         Made ghost decorations for Halloween (2.5 hours)

·         Played Battleship (aka relationship building) (0.75 hours)

·         Cleaned poop out of bathroom scrub brushes because someone thought it was a good idea to use them as plungers instead of using plungers as plungers (1 hour)

·         Forced awkward youth group middle school students to play stupid ice breakers (6 hours)

·         Volunteered at other organizations (6.25 hours)

·         Made greeting cards with collages of floating cat heads because a professional cat photographer comes to our organization every Tuesday to host an art class (2.75 hours)

·         Got haircuts because students from the beauty school donated their time to our organization, but none of the guests wanted haircuts, so we didn’t want to waste the beauty school student’s volunteered time (.75 hours)

·         Attempted to make a perfectly sized pinback button template, down to the millimeter, by shrinking and expanding an unusable button template with those God-forsaken things called copy machines. (3.75 hours)

·         Chased a client around Portland, when she was, in fact, not in Portland.  (2.25 hours)

·         Copied roughly 1,000 pieces of paper (9.5 hours...and counting)

·         Taped pictures of traffic lights to popsicle sticks (0.5 hours)

·         Took pictures of traffic lights off popsicle sticks only to attach to different popsicle sticks. (0.75 hours)

·         Tried to find breakdancing lessons for a client (1.25 hours) 

·         Tried to fix that cheap-ass office chair that I broke because I leaned back too far (.5 hours)

·         Argued with irate people on the phone about the lack of funding for energy or utility assistance only to be met with cries, swearing, and threats to the organization. Of these phone calls, approximately 18% of the time was spent attempting an explanation as to why our organization cannot give them any assistance, 68% of the time was spent listening to their stories and trying to be present while knowing exactly what our answers are going to be, 4.5% of the time was spent chewing on the end of my pen, 7.5% of the time was spent in awkward silence, 2% of the time was spent trying to figure out how to either transfer or hang-up calls on these complicated phones (60.25 hours)

·         Donated baby clothes to another non-profit, then asked for the donations back because we accidentally donated all of our baby clothes (0.75 hours)

·         Played heads or tails with a kid at the social security office (1.5 hours)

·         Gossiped about coworkers (8.75 hours)

·         Wrote this bulleted list (1.25 hours)

Sarah-in-Dallas

[Once again, I am in another city taking a short break from solidarity with the huddled masses for a med school interview. UT Southwestern if anyone cares. I did not meet the son of a foreign diplomat on my way from the airport but I am seeing some of the family, which rocks]

On tuesday I finally felt like I had gotten back my equilibrium (it was short-lived. I lost it again today while trying to prepare for a few days in Texas but never mind that) in other words, I managed to catch up on all of the random things that I had to do in the office and got all of my kiddos registered for after school programs (including a break dancing club. That's right-I got a refugee kid into a breakdancing class, what did you do today?). I partially credit the fact that I was served three cups of coffee by different refugee clients (two of which were turkish coffee double shots). I was literally bouncing off of my flimsy cubicle walls. I sprinted up the four flights of stairs back to work after lunch and I started blitzing through case notes. I was practically vibrating with energy at my desk (I think I scared my coworkers a little--I may have been talking fast). The first cup of coffee came from a Nepali family who asked me if I wanted tea before we left to get clothes for their kids (we need to work on English food vocabulary). The second two cups came from an Eritrean mother who prepared the coffee in the traditional way on a little stove plugged into the wall (in violation of her rental agreement) and with a burning pile of herbal incense (also in violation of her rental agreement). Neither the Nepali family nor the eritrean mom had enough english for me to politely decline. But on the bright side all of my case notes are up to date (no mean feat).

Speaking of Nepali families--I had to take a family to DHS for one of the other case managers. Unfortunately the car was checked out so I had to borrow a car from a case manager. My coworker handed me his keys and said "the car's name is rufus--ignore the noises." Rufus is a 1987 volvo stationwagon with no AC, a broken speedometer, and nonfunctional locks (but who in their right mind would steal it). So on our way to DHS I am trying to merge onto the freeway with no idea how fast I'm going, I have all of the windows open (it is hotter'n hell), my GPS is trying to give me directions and this Nepali father decides to start asking me all of the questions that have perplexed him concerning christianity. At that moment he asked "so there are two types of christians, right? catholics and protestants--what is the difference?" As I tried not to kill us and mentally cursed out my coworker I abruptly responded "ummm....there is no difference....they are the same" And with that, the Reformation is solved. (to be fair, how would you explain the difference to a hindu? "well, there is this guy with a cool hat and red prada shoes.....")

Heart-tugger of the day/week-- There is this adorable little sudanese 12yr old boy who really wanted to play soccer for the school team. He missed the tryouts but when I called the school they agreed that he could go to make-up tryouts that day--they would let him know. I arranged a ride home for him and made sure he know, but he didn't show up for the tryouts. The next day the activities coordinator asked him why he didn't go and discovered that he was too embarassed by his lack of cleats. (he had also told me earlier that he is embarassed by his name because everyone says it wrong--poor kiddo!). I was so bummed out for this boy and I didn't know what to do for him. But the activities coordinator called me later that day and told me that she spoke to the coach and in the end the school is going to buy the kid a pair of cleats and they are automatically accepting him onto the team (after they cut 20 other boys). Hooray! (Now I just need to arrange rides for him to and from the games and somehow find $30 for his registration fee (details, details)).

Defining the relationship: what exactly am I supposed to do again?

[This stream of consciousness was prompted by an evaluation my area director sent out. It asked "What is your job/what are your duties at work? does it match your expectations for the year? Does the job description match the reality?]

I have a really hard time answering the question "what do you do at Catholic Charities again?" I still am really unsure. I think if I made it my job to officially re-staple all I-94 documents exactly in the upper left-hand corner with a golden ratio of margins then it would take a few months for someone to notice and ask me what the hell I was doing. What I mean to say is that there are so many things that I could be doing that this job is exactly what I make of it week to week. And there is no one tracking what I choose to do. Last week I did parent-teacher conferences, helped kids start their school years, assembled backpacks and filled out after school registration forms (I was a mom-- I would now like to offer a shoutout to all parents out there who had to do this for me and my friends growing up, it is a pain). Next week I am driving refugee families to clothing closets to help them get winter clothes, I am networking with the health department to get carseats and I am filling out 20 student progress questionnares for all of my cases. The week after that I might do an airport pickup or attend a health screening with a nepali family. Right now I am sitting in a library after spending the afternoon helping an iranian girl write a resume. I really felt useful and I think it has been very helpful but it is not something that I probably should be spending my work hours doing (though it is a saturday, so I am technically not working, but I am, so really I just need to get a life outside of the office-or the refugee apartment-or whatever.) I cannot spend an afternoon with every refugee (though I wish I could) that is really more the role of a volunteer. But at the same time I am not a case manager so I have the freedom to do whatever project I wish. The end result is that I just feel a bit confused and I have this constant anxiety that I am not doing what I am supposed to do or that I am not doing enough. But I think that this is par for the course for refugee resettlement--frankly, there is not enough time or money to do the necessities so I figure that anything I may choose to do will help. (okay, maybe not re-stapling the I-94s). What I do know is that I am pretty happy in my work, and pretty damn busy (which are alarmingly synonymous things for me). So I shall continue on in the same haphazard fashion and hopefully do something right for somebody.