What am I getting myself into?

Today I was talking on the phone with my mom, telling her about my first day of training for my AmeriCorps VISTA position as Education and Technology Coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency that assists refugees. She was asking what I had done. What had I done? It really was a blur. A big, confusing, hectic blur. I honestly can't recall anything that my good friend, and the person I'll be replacing, Elizabeth told me! She introduced me to everyone in the office and kept referring back to each of them and I was having such a hard time keeping everyone and everything straight.

Then, I was supposed to have a meeting with my direct supervisor at 11:00am, but by noon, Elizabeth and I gave up waiting so we went to the other office where I will spend the majority of my time. Everyone was out of that office assisting refugee families, so it was just Elizabeth and me. At one point, Elizabeth was taking a call and the phone rang again. She motioned for me to answer it. What?! Me? I answered, praying it would be something easy. Instead, it was a school nurse who said, "One of the refugee children has run away." I thought to myself, 'Oh man, what am I getting myself into?!"

After dealing with that minor catastrophe, Elizabeth got a call from one of the bosses asking her if the two of us could do 'an airport pickup' since they were pretty under-staffed today. This entailed picking up two refugees that would just be arriving in the U.S. for the first time and taking them to their new apartment and taking them to the bank to get them some pocket money for food for the weekend. When I told my mom this later on the phone, she said, "Oh, how fun!" She definitely didn't understand the enormity of the situation. She then asked me if they were here to study abroad. "No Mom! These are refugees! These people are leaving their countries because they have a 'well-founded fear of persecution'!" I feel like I've explained this to her a million times, but it hasn't stuck. She just doesn't get it.

So, at 2:40pm this afternoon Elizabeth and I went to the airport to pick up these two girls; refugees from Bhutan that first fled to Nepal and then were approved to seek refuge here in the U.S. Since they were older children, 20 and 21 years old, they had to apply to be refugees without their families but luckily their two uncles had been placed in Seattle the week before.

After a mix-up with flight numbers, Elizabeth and I finally found the two girls sitting on a bench at baggage claim clutching the only belongins they had in the world; a small bag with their documents and one duffle bag between the two of them. They were tiny and looked no more than 12 or 13 years old. And I have never seen anyone look as utterly terrified as those two girls. It definitely didn't help that Elizabeth and I weren't their when they first arrived. Within seconds of seeing them and the looks on their faces, my eyes welled up with tears and one rolled down my cheek. "Pull yourself together Carrie!" I thought. But I couldn't. These girls were about my age and, really, the only reason our situations were so different was because of the places we were born.

Their English was very limited, but while Elizabeth was pulling the car around, I tried talking to them even though I was completely at a loss for words. What can you say to someone that has been through what these two girls have been through?! They just left their country and everything and everyone they know, flew for 24 hours and are now in this completely foreign place scared out of their minds. One of them told me that she was so nervous that she thought she was going to vomit. Elizabeth was taking a little while, so I grabbed one of those Seattle Tourist brochures at the airport to show them some pictures of Seattle. They were obviously beyond exhausted, but the uncomfortable silence was killing me. I then found a map of Seattle and pointed at the airport to show them where we were. Then I pointed to the general area where they will be living, Tukwila. I then pointed to Fremont/Ballard where I live and one of the girls said, "Wow, you live really close to our house!" Well, not exactly.

Elizabeth finally pulled the car up and we loaded the girls in. Elizabeth told them to put their seat belts on, but she was received with blank stares. We both got out and showed the girls how to use a seat belt. After withdrawing some money for them from the bank, we took them to their two uncles' apartments who had arrived with their families the week before. When we arrived at the apartment, all these beautiful Bhutanese children came running out to hug their cousins. We helped the girls take their things inside and then after making small talk with their uncles for a little bit, announced we had to leave. The two girls got up and gave us each a big hug, thanking us again and again.

The whole experience was so powerful. I have read so much about refugees, but here I was, the first one to greet them when they entered this country from who knows what kind of hardships. And not that the hardships are about to end anytime soon. Not only did they have to learn to fasten their seatbelts, but will soon have to learn to navigate through a culture so vastly different from theres. Everything will be a challenge; buying groceries, figuring out the kitchen appliances, using the bus, not to mention learning English, getting a job, doing bills and learning the little cultural norms that are so engrained in the rest of us that we don't even notice.

But at the end of the day when my mom asked me, "So, what do you think? Are you going to like the job?", I thought about the seemingly insignificant act I had done today and the gratitude I had received and thought about all the opportunities I will have in the coming year to directly help people and make their difficult situations just a little bit easier, and I had nothing else to say but, "I think it will be the most rewarding experience of my life."

(The picture is a sign for the International Rescue Committee (the IRC))

Global Education

The other day I was babysitting for these two girls while their mother was off at a kindergarten tour for her five-year-old. When she came back, we talked for a little bit about the experience for her. She was pretty frustrated over the concerns and comments the other parents had made: they wanted to make sure their children would get a good snack or a nap-time. Instead, she went on the tour to see if this kindergarten would instill in her children the love for education that she had experienced as a child. How lucky are we that we get to CHOOSE which school our children can go to, basing our decision on such trivial things as afternoon snack options and the comfortableness of the nap-time set-up. How ridiculous must we sound to so many others around the world.

This really got me thinking about my own love affair with education. For me, like so many of my friends, this love affair started when I was very young. Instead of watching television, my parents read to me every night. Besides playing in the woods, books were my form of entertainment and I had bookshelves lining all the walls of my bedroom filled with the most beautiful, new, expensive children's books. Then, when I was old enough, I finally began reading on my own and my entire family celebrated this achievement. After this, I formally started school, which for me was a dream. I remember wishing for summer to end so I could go school supplies shopping and see all of my friends again. My family still reminds me about how two weeks before I started fifth grade, I had laid out my outfit for the first day of school-right down to the underwear, socks, necklace and barrette! I loved school-I loved learning, I loved my teachers, I love my classroom, I loved seeing my friends everyday, I loved doing my homework, everything.

Since this time, though, I have had the privilege of going to many countries around the globe and realize that my love affair with education is definitely shared around the world. But these children have never been given the chance to experience it the way I have. They never have had the thrill of running up to the front doors of school the first day the class list is posted to see which friends will be their classmates for the year. They never have had the excitement of picking out new Elmer's glue, Crayola crayons, spiral notebooks and scissors on a hot August day in Target. They never have had the opportunity to choose between home ec, shop, band or choir. For them, education is something they have to fight for every day.

These children will never experience these joys although, according to UNICEF, education is a basic human right. Like all the rest, it is universal and everyone is entitled to it regardless of gender, race, religion, ethnicity or economic status.

In the different countries that I have been to, I have had the opportunity to experience hands-on just how difficult the right to education is abroad and the extremes children go to just to receive a basic education. While I was in Ecuador, I interned at the Center for the Working Boy. This organization provided schooling for Ecuadorian boys that were forced to work during the day by their family and their impossibly difficult living situations. I found that if these boys did not work, poverty in Latin America would increase by 20%. Their families' survival depended on them. These 6, 7, 8 year old boys that I met at the Center for the Working Boy worked for six hours in the morning and then went to school for another six hours, commuting 2 hours each way from the slums they lived in on the far outskirts of Quito. I couldn't believe the extent they went to just to be able to learn.

Last night I finished a heartbreaking book about more boys that were willing to do whatever it took to receive an education; the Lost Boys of Sudan. One passage really hit home for me. This was written by Benjamin who was about 12 and in a refugee camp in Kenya at the time:

"Things got worse when the UN cut back the rations and I soon learned how it goes in a refugee camp. There is food and there is education. The education is fine, but the food is not enough. You have to choose between education and food. If you don't want an education you can make a business for your survival. If you want education you have to take the little bit of food that is given by UNHCR and eat only once a day. It is your choice whether you eat in the morning and sleep in the afternoon or just stay hungry for the whole day and eat later. My cousins and I managed this. We went to school and ate once a day in the evening. But reading was really difficult because when you read there was a certain cloud because of hunger. It's black when you look at the words in the book. The black covers the words and you can't see because of that color in your eyes from the hunger" (They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, page 276).

I was astonished that these children choose education over food, but similar sacrifices are made my children every day. To them, education is something precious and the more I experience around the world and read here at home, the more I am motivated to bring more education to children around the world in my lifetime.

(This picture is of a school for the Lost Boys of Sudan in a refugee camp)