The good, the bad, and the baby!

[Side note: thanks for all of the support concerning Emory! The interview weekend was really neat. I didn't get the scholarship but it was great to get another look at the school and I am glad that I went.]

The Good
Remember how I got cursed a few weeks ago? That family managed to make it to Minnesota to see their relatives! The dad's dying wish was fulfilled despite the best efforts and confusion of the medical establishment. Also in the "good" category--last week we took an 11 yr old Afghani boy to outdoors camp. He has only been in the US for a few months but he is super brave and wanted to participate in the outdoors camp (something that every 6th grader gets to do in this district). He didn't have anything on the packing list so we were scrambling to find a sleeping bag, flashlight, etc.. His mom was probably the most nervous--she cried and blessed him with the Koran when we went to pick him up. But he had a fabulous time and even won a "best camper" award!

The Bad
Not all refugees make it in the United States. One of our guys who struggles with mental illness just lost his housing when his benefits ended. I'm really struggling with this one--this guy was the very first refugee who I worked with by myself (remember that frantic post during my first week about the Iranian father and daughter?). I feel like once we decide to resettle a refugee in the United States then we have a certain responsibility towards them. There is something fundamentally wrong about bringing an unwell man to the United States to be homeless. It is hard to feel good about your work when the system completely fails.

The Baby!!!
On the other side of the emotional spectrum, I visited a new baby the other day--the first american citizen in this family! Even more precious than the newborn were the new parents. They were so nervous and careful with this little guy, and every time the baby yawned the Dad would exclaim with delight. It was even more special because these parents were from two different cultures--one was a somali muslim and one was an ethiopian christian (the wife told me that if she wants to tease her husband she brings up Israel). They should be the poster family for world peace.

The good, the bad, and the supernatural

The good: I got a call from Emory School of Medicine's dean of admissions who told me that I am a finalist for a full-tuition scholarship to the school! The school is flying me out to Atlanta next week for another round of interviews. (for perspective: 12 finalists, 4 scholarships) WOOOOOT!!!!!!

The bad: I nicknamed an iraqi family "sketchy mcsketchers" last week when i found out that they are in the process of arranging for a russian bride for their son over the internet. Sketchy....

The supernatural: I was officially cursed by a Somali elder on Friday-or rather, I and the medical establishment were cursed. This was during a palliative care team meeting which I was invited to sit in on while we talked with one of our Somali family's about Dad's end-stage cancer (Dad is 80+). They had only arrived a week earlier and I started out very upset that we brought a man to the US just to die in a foreign land. It turns out that it is not quite a foreign land--he has friends in Minnesota and he wants to see them before he dies so that they can bury his body correctly. When the doctor tried to explain that he wouldn't survive a trip to Minnesota, the wife got very agitated and the translator had to awkwardly explain that we were being cursed for not following the wishes of an elder. I have discovered that I really am a romantic--I am totally on the family's side and believe that there is something sacred about a man's dying wish. I am also pretty sure that they will get him there--it might involve kidnapping him out of hospice and pulling a 'little miss sunshine' in the back of a VW van. But seriously, they will get him there--if an 80 yr old guy could survive a two day trip from the other side of the world with metastatic tumors, they will find a way to get him to Minnesota. (I might slip them a train schedule on the sly to help).

Different Perspectives

Funny story--I got really sick. Like really sick, and I had to miss nearly two weeks of work in favor of lying in bed and resenting the outside world that I could not join. Since I am a part of a Luddite-loving organization, I do not have internet access at home so I was unable to complain about feeling sick in blog form. After some intense western medicine, however, I am significantly improved and have (thank God) returned to work. And thus resume my de-contextualized stories of the refugee-in-Portland world. I have two stories today that I can sort of label "different perspectives"

1) There is this Burmese family that was being cheated in a major way by their ex-landlord who wanted close to $2,000 for "extreme damages" to their old apartment (minus the security deposit that still meant the family owed about $900). This family has 7 kids and only government assistance for an income so when they came to us I was ready to "go to bat" for them in a major way. I researched tenant/landlord laws, spoke to renters rights hotlines, contacted friends in law offices, etc.--I didn't want the family paying anything extra. After we had drafted one letter, the landlord and the case manager spoke and the landlord agreed to knock off $200 in charges. Legal action really wasn't an option for the family so the case manger just sent them the revised bill. I was not thrilled. But the family came in to see us later that day and they were ecstatic. They were so excited, mom kept shaking our hands saying "thank you" and the teenage boy (the only english speaker) asked us to look over the check he wrote to make sure it was correct. They even brought an envelope and a stamp and asked us to write out the landlord's address. They didn't even know what they were paying for--in their eyes they were just asked for a large sum of money, they came to us for help and they saw a concrete result from our advocacy. They were so happy that someone cared enough to help them. Despite my frustrations I decided it was a success story--even though I still think the land lord is a crook--because in the end what matters is that we made someone feel like they mattered enough to be helped.

2) I have made friends with this really sweet Ethiopian lady who is about to have her first baby (thousands of miles away from any relatives--and she is only a year older than me). She has been translating for us (for free) and I stopped by her apartment the other day to say thank you and to give her a baby blanket I made. She and her neighbor were sharing coffee and invited me to join them. It turns out that the two of them watch Jerry Springer together every afternoon (they asked me if the people were real.....I wasn't sure how to answer). This episode had this crazy lady (as per usual) who was in a fight with her boss--both of them happened to be African American. We were chatting about the show and I discovered that the two women thought that all black people in the US must be like this and consequently they were afraid of Portland's African American community. I spent some time trying to explain "stereotypes," "non-representative samples" and the general problems with reality TV but I don't know if I made any difference. So thank you Jerry Springer--you have successfully made Africans afraid of African Americans.    

As promised, a few stories

Again, I apologize for the delay in story updates--we had to go do JVC which means no access to technology for the better part of a week. So allow me to catch you up on a few gems:

The suspicious Nepali family:  I got to do my first airport pickup on my own. I was sent to meet three Nepali siblings and deliver them to their sponsor family (cousins) in the states. The sponsor had my cell number and we agreed to meet outside of security [side note: we don't normally have to go to the airport to meet someone if they have family willing to go for us. The sponsor family was settled by another volunteer agency, however, and my supervisor's competitive streak kicked in--she wanted us "to look good in comparison" so I was sent] I got to security and was looking around for a nepali family but couldn't find anyone who fit the part. I called the cell number and realized I was standing next to the sponsor--he was a punk-looking twenty-something yr. old with a smart phone (someone has been doing some acculturating). The three siblings arrived without incidence and we managed to get them back to the sponsor's apartment--where there was an AK-47 made out of cardboard and tape hanging on the wall above the couch with a pair of handcuffs (no accounting for decorating taste). It only got weirder when the family started hinting they wanted me to leave--before we ate anything! I usually have to beg a Nepali family to stop feeding me and these guys wanted me to go without even a cup of tea....weird. It got even weirder when I picked them up for an appointment two days later and they were eating lunch with spoons and forks (not their hands). This family perplexes me.

The missing I-94: [background info necessary to appreciate this story--the I-94 is a 4"x6" piece of cardstock that serves as a temporary passport that every refugee is given that says "Refugee" and gives them permission to be in the United States. It is their ticket to social services and is what allows them to cross borders] So I picked up the three Nepali siblings to go get social security cards (this is the same day I saw them eating with silverware and was really thrown off). It seemed to be our lucky day because we got a great parking space (right by the door), the office was completely empty when we got there (we still had to wait fifteen minutes, because, you know, it was the social security office) and we had all the correct paperwork so it was no problem to get the cards. We got back in the car and started driving home when one of the brothers said "I lost the little paper." I swerved to the side of the road and we started checking pockets, folders, seats, etc. After a thorough check we didn't find it so I returned to the social security office. There I searched the entire waiting room, combed the parking lot, watched the security guard search behind the counter through all of the papers, and finally dug through the trashcans just in case someone threw it away. The siblings walked 2-3 blocks up and down the street in case the wind blew it away. It was NOWHERE to be found. The Nepali guy was (understandably) freaking out--his sister kept repeating "very bad, very bad." I finally put a stop to the search when they started stripping his clothes off (it was unlikely to be in his pants--and he couldn't afford to get arrested for public indecency since he now did not have ID). I reassured the guy that he was not going to be sent back to Nepal and I finally called the case manager to break the bad news (she then asked me "well did you look in the car or in the waiting room?"). Crazy thing is, it turns out that the only thing he absolutely needed the original I-94 for was applying for a social security card--everything else can be done with copies (which we have). As long as he stays in the state of Oregon for the next year (till he can get a green card) it's okay he literally lost it 2 seconds after it didn't completely matter. We never did find that I-94--it was literally 40 feet from the counter to the car and it completely vanished .

Afghani family-- This one was a tougher story. An Afghani family was just referred to us for school registration and since there were five kids, I got to help. These kids are so stinkin' cute! And they are really polite and have just enough english to completely charm you. I was so happy to get them into school but there were a few heart-breaking moments. First, when we remarked how responsible and self-confident the 11yr old boy was we were told that it was because when they lived in Iran he was the "man of the household" (Dad was killed in the war) and so he was the one who had to earn a living for the family--so he worked in a store for several years (which would make him 7 at the time). I made paper airplanes with him while his mom was filling out paperwork and I decided that I wanted to make a special effort of helping him to remember how to be a kid again. The second sad moment was when the 18 yr. old tried to register for highschool. Amazingly, the local school agreed to take her and she was thrilled to continue her studies. But then the case manager had to break it too her that if she enrolled in school she would automatically drop out of the job-placement program and her family would lose $300/mo in cash assistance. Since they could not afford their bills without that she had to make the really tough decision to not enroll in school and instead pursue a job. Another tale of kids having to grow up too fast....

The really lucky Iranian man: We just resettled an Iranian man who used to be a woman before surgery in Thailand (primary reason he is now a refugee). He is joining his partner in portland--a woman who used to be a man. He is really sweet and polite and every time I see him I think "man, is he LUCKY he got settled in Portland and not Utah or the midwest." That feeling was underscored when one of the case managers reported that she is pretty sure she smelled weed at their apartment (we aren't doing anything about it--we are case managers, not baby sitters). Again, it is hard to think of a better place for this couple to have landed than in Portlandia--they will fit right in.

BONUS STORY: I did my second airport pickup today--a somali mom and son. Time was tight so I had to pick up groceries and a few appliances for their apartment on the way to the airport. I figured that we could squeeze  in their two or three IOM duffel bags into the backseat with the kid. Turns out they had SEVEN bags, six of which were large roller-bags that were 40lb+. I did not see that one coming (and I had to bust out my amazing tetris skills in the honda once again).

An up-beat preview

That last post was kind of heavy.... I have some great stories to balance it but I have to leave for our JVC social justice retreat in ten minutes (because we don't spend enough time focusing on social justice). So I will give you a taste of what is to come:

--The suspicious Nepali family.......
--The case of the missing I-94 and the stripping Nepali man......(might be same family)
--School registration with the Afghanis
--The Iranian man who is REALLY lucky that he was resettled in Portland

Sorry that there is no time for the full tales now--but stay-tuned!!

Hoping for Results....

I often try to just focus on the funny, the positive, or the real learning-moments of my work for this blog. But to be honest, sometimes it is really overwhelming and tough. I will pour my heart and soul into trying to help a family and will get nowhere, things will fall through and forces beyond my control will foil plans. This week has been particularly tough. In the interest of honesty about my experience I would like to share these things with you. I also want to share a quote I have taped to my desk.
--I have spent dozens of hours trying to get this kid into basketball with the hope that participating in sports will help boost his performance in school (which has been dismal due to attitude problems). I got him in, convinced someone to pay for it, and gave him instructions to take the bus to practice. Then, inexplicably, his brothers and mother all signed up for an English class exactly when his practice would be so there is no available bus pass for him to use to get to practice. That same day I also got and email from a teacher saying that he is not paying attention in class and has been repeatedly late.
--I am having a serious disagreement with one of my coworkers about how to best approach a case. My coworker thinks one member of the family is being selfish and should be pressured to translate for/help the other; I think that this is not our place and that we need to back off. Meanwhile this family member burst into tears in front of me in our office, no one in the family is moving even close to self-sufficiency and their benefits end in two months.
--We just got informed that the state of Oregon is experiencing a budget shortfall and so is looking to cut DHS spending by 3.5%. To accomplish that, they want to cut the state refugee budget by 10%. But they counted all of the state refugee budget in that math (including, I think, federal money) even though the cuts would only come from the monthly benefits (TANF) pot. Much complicated math later (courtesy of yours truly) that means that refugee benefits could be cut by 48% (giving families only 4 months instead of 8 months to learn english and get a job--when only 17% of families are managing to do that on the current schedule). The alternative proposal is to cut overall DHS spending by 10% which, as proposed would equal a  97% cut in monthly benefits (i.e., 1 week of support to learn english and get a job). If this happened we would pretty much just have to end the current resettlement program.....

So, yeah, it has been rough. As promised, here is the quote:
(courtesy of Thomas Merton's "Letter to a young activist")
"Do not depend on the hope of results.  When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself.  And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people.  The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything. "

The good, the bad, and the ugly in the last 7 days

The good: I met two Iranian brothers today who had to get an ID from the DMV. It took a while and there were all sorts of classic paperwork snafus-- "you need to fill out the yellow form, not the grey one," "The department of homeland security doesn't have his birthday in the system," "why does his last name have two parts to it?" etc.--but while we were waiting one of the brothers, through much miming, was able to tell me about how he was a photo-journalist and a political cartoonist in Iran (which is why he is now a refugee--not a safe or prosperous profession in those parts). He even showed me some of his political artwork including a pencil drawing of a Persian woman with haunting eyes mutely pleading for help from behind an Iran-shaped crack in a wall. I never thought I would say this about a trip to the DMV, but I had a really great time.

The bad: Speaking of Iranians, this one Iranian girl keeps calling me with these really surreal questions. She called me once last week because she missed a meeting with her job coach and was worried that he would be mad at her and wanted to know if everything would be okay (if only she knew how much of our lives was filled with missed meetings). She then called me last week and said "my job coach found a position for me at 7-eleven but I heard that if I work there I will get shot because people rob 7-eleven stores." I like to think of it as a spiritual exercise when I have to exert every iota of my will to keep a straight face and consider her question seriously. I think it will be excellent practice for being a primary care doc in the future ("yes, it is possible that you have a flesh-eating bacteria but statistically-speaking I am going to guess that it is just a splinter"). The bad part is that she has gotten my cell phone number and has started texting me these ridiculous questions on the weekend--I am going to have a serious talk with her about boundaries.

The ugly: I was chatting with a friend-of a friend-of a friend over the weekend about his new job as a corporate "summit" consultant. He plans conferences for CFOs of fortune-1000 companies. The people with whom he communicates are such big-whigs that he is not allowed to send an email to anyone yet without running it by two coworkers for content and grammar first. I was struck by this and suddenly remembered a form I recently filled out--the end of which consisted of a single question "Do you recomend that this child is safe in his or her home?" and I had to circle "yes" or "no." No one checked over my work on that form. The priorities in this world terrify me--I have not yet gotten over that deeply disturbing comparison.

The ending-on-a-happy-note part: The sudanese mom I have been working with has made it into income-based housing! She now pays $14/mo in rent and will be able to afford toilet paper for her kids again! She ahd to move with very little notice, however, so there was no time to contact the schools in advance. Instead, her kids just walked up to each of their teachers and said "I won't be here tomorrow" and then left. (I had to field a lot of confused phone calls after that)

Cross-cultural education moments

Three learning moments with one somali family:
1) I helped the aunt in the family (who is only 2 yrs older than I am) to open a bank account so that she could pay the rent by check. We went to the same bank where the JVs go since I knew they were free ("the world's greatest bank"--not fact, just a slogan). It didn't seem like it would be hard--she had the right ID, she spoke english, and she had money to put into the account--but we ended up staying 30 minutes past closing for one thing: the security questions for online banking. I have created security questions for literally dozens of online accounts and I never realized how culturally-specific they are. There was a list of 20 questions and she just had to answer 5 of them but we couldn't do it. She grew up in a refugee camp where she had few if any posessions, did not go to high school, and is from a culture with a different naming convention. With that in mind, imagine trying to answer any of these questions: "highschool mascot name?" "most inspiring highschool teacher's name?" "favorite author?" favorite painter?" "favorite musician?" "first instrument you played?" "mother's maiden name? (somali's don't change their names when they marry)" "name of the street you grew up on? (no streets in Kakuma)" "favorite sport's team?" "City where your closest sibling lives? (they all died in the war)." My favorite moment was when the manager kept asking her the name of any pet she had growing up. It took a lot of effort for me not to look at him and say "look, dumbass, no one keeps pets in a camp where children are chronically malnourished." In the end I invented answers for her, wrote them down and told her not to lose the paper. (much like how the US government gives the Somali's birthdays)

2) As a thank you for helping her with the bank account, this woman and her sister taught me how to make sambusas (somalian samosas). I learned how to cook them the somali way (with bare hands on a hot plate--the trick is to keep your hands moving quickly so they don't burn as you make the wrappers--the sister teased me about having soft hands--it's called a functioning nervous system!). see here for description: http://www.mysomalifood.com/appetizers/somali-sambusa/  I learned some real gems of somali wisdom while cooking with them--e.g. if you cry a lot while cutting onions it means that you will be a jealous wife. Also, when somalis make "chips" (aka fries--thank you british imperialism) one of the necessary ingredients is the color yellow. Not even kidding--they added food dye to the potatoes before frying them. I looked at the additive, determined that it was just dye with no flavor, and when I asked why they added it they just said "because they should be yellow." I have no clue what historical/marketing quirk is behind that one but I would love to know. Unfortunately the cooking lesson took 3 hours longer than I anticipated/had checked out the car for (originally I was just going to social security with her husband) so I am now on the permanent shit-list of the secretary at my office. Worth it though, those things are delicious.

3) after the cooking lesson, while we were eating the delicious sambusas, the three of us chatted about men and the appropriate way one should pursue a husband (pretty predictable: get parental approval, make sure he doesn't do drugs, make sure he is respectful to his mother, don't sleep with him before marriage or "he will think you are cheap" is what they advised). But as the sister was advising me on this she started out by saying "when you are seducing a man....." I stopped, asked her to repeat herself, and confirmed that she indeed said "seducing a man." As she is a devout somali woman who wears a hijab and a full abiyat (traditional ankle and wrist-covering dress) I assumed that wasn't what she meant. I explained what that meant/the connotations of that word (really awkwardly, I waved vaguely into space as I said "it means you plan to do something..um...maybe before marriage" like I was a 1960s dad talking to a teenager). When it clicked what I meant she turned red, gasped, and said "oh no! I would never do that!" and after much discussion we decided that the word she was looking for was "courting."

This post has gone on much too long, and it is all about the somali. So, I will just leave you with one or two more gems I have learned about the Nepali/bhutanese:
1) Nepali families love to do things together. So when I went to pick up a family of four to get clothes I ended up taking 11 people to a store where they ultimately sat in a circle on the floor and loudly sorted through a mound of clothes before choosing a wardrobe by committee.
2) Nepali families like to feed guests--which is great--but they also often prefer the guest to eat first....alone....while they all stand in a semi-circle around you and watch--I have never been so uncomfortable with such wonderful food.

New Year!......same weird stories

Sorry about the long interval between posts- it turns out that even for JVs december is really busy. Our house got a christmas tree and celebrated the season of "greshlahem" together one night. We each made gifts for everyone else on a budget of $5 or less TOTAL! It was hard but the gifts were really meaningful. They included pretty poems or quotes written in calligraphy on nice paper, hand-made notebooks, earrings, and "memory jars" which we will fill up through the rest of the year. Sniffle...it was magical.

January 2nd I was back to work and it looks like 2012 is shaping up to be similar to 2011 in that there are lots of quirky refugees and little time to speak of them. My most significant accomplishment this week was learning to drive a 12 passenger van! In rush-hour! I had to pick up two big burmese families to take them to get clothes (at a Deseret Industries store which agreed to partner with us to provide needed clothing for families--2 points to the mormons!). There were 11 people I was supposed to pick up so I had to take the van. I was terrified but I made it to their apartment--where only 3 people got into the car. I could have taken the honda! We went to DI and I told them/mimed that they each had $100 dollars for clothing for their families. Mom from one family was right on target and got shoes, jackets, socks, etc. for her kids but Dad and son from the other family struggled a bit more. In the end they bought some good clothes but also a spiderman costume and rollrblades (clothing necessity? I said yes). I think mom was going to be upset when they got home, this is why maybe Dad shouldn't do the shopping.... The clothing voucher system is working great though and I am stoked to take more families next week, even if it does mean using the passenger van.

Peace in Advent

I’ve decided that the focus for this week of advent is peace. I was meditating on our community’s advent theme on the nature of advent—that it is a season of looking forward but also of being present. It was/is really hard for me to think of peace as anything other than something to look forward to because I cannot really find it in the world right now. Every day I work with refugees whose lives have been irrevocably changed by war. They sit in refugee camps and wait for decades for a peace that hasn’t come. I also keep thinking about the war in Afghanistan. I was 12 years old when we first sent troops into that nation and ten years later we are still at war. Several of my friends and family members are leaving or have left to join that fighting and I have this deep fear that it will never end. So then, peace is definitely something we look forward. We wish for and pray for the coming of Christ so that there will be peace. We don’t have a lot of control over peace in the world right now, at least I don’t. I get frustrated and overwhelmed waiting for peace. Meanwhile, I am picking up the pieces of war every day at my work. Really, we all are—there is a lack of peace at home too. We all deal with victims of violence in some way.

So where is the preparation—what do we do presently? How do we actively pursue peace when our efforts to end war seem so ineffective? I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I am repeatedly drawn to a specific part of mass--which we also do in protestant churches—when we turn to one another and say “God’s Peace” or “Peace be with you.” We aren’t saying “peace be between us” as I normally think of peace, but “peace be with you.” We are praying that our neighbor finds peace within their own heart. I think this is the key to what we are pursuing this advent to prepare for Christ. We have to try to make peace with ourselves. Personally, I know that there is a war going on in my mind—my head tells me , “you aren’t good enough, that screw-up doesn’t deserve forgiveness, you didn’t help that person enough.” I’m not very good at forgiving myself—but I need to in order to make peace.

And so, I challenge you this advent season to pursue peace within yourself. Let’s pursue peace in our hearts as passionately as we pursue peace for our clients and for the world. Ask yourself in the quiet of advent “how am I waging war in my soul, and how can I bring peace.”

“God, grant us peace. Peace for the world, peace for our clients, and peace for us. Guide us so that we can find peace in preparation for your coming. And help us not to lose hope that you are coming—that peace is coming."