stories

I love hearing people tell stories. Listening to them tell me about how life used to be and how it continues to impact them is something I wish I had more time for. In my line of work it's so easy to become jaded by the stories of my refugee clients. Well...maybe jaded isn't the right word; maybe it's just the fact that I get so busy with daily tasks and trying to stay afloat that their histories get pushed to the back of my mind.But as my time with World Relief is coming to a close, I have begun to reflect more on the last two years of interacting with my clients. Particularly in this past week, the burden of certain people's pain and suffering has consumed my thoughts. How some are able to even get up in the morning blows my mind. But then I know that years of learning to deal with it--whether it be through faith, family connections or through self-medicating--can still leave them in such an unsettled state that I have only begun to understand. I will take their stories, and memories of my interactions with them, "along the side of my life" always.
some of my stories (and pictures that follow):
-talking politics in a doctor's office with a young Iraqi girl who worked with our soldiers in the war
-hearing a North Korean sing a line from a song by his favorite British boy band
-dancing in a Turkish wedding
-listening to one man's account of his time in a Vietnamese prison after the war
-escorting the first refugee family I met (from Afghanistan) to the airport as they were moving to California
-witnessing a grown Sudanese man cry as he was reunited with his wife from Dafur after 8 years
-trying to get "personal information" from a Burmese couple without a translator in a doctor's office
-buying a hot meal from Krystal for new Iraqi arrivals--their first fast food experience!
-translating for a Turkish woman during her gall bladder surgery
-proudly sporting my Karen Burmese skirt at the ESL gradution--handmade by one of my students (see the pic above---she wore a matching one!)
My "New Choices for New Americans" class at GA Perimeter College, spring-summer 2008
my first Meskhetian Turkish friends, 2006
the last World Relief ESL for Jobs graduates of 2008 CNN tour/MARTA training with Bhutanese, Burmese, and Iraqi clients, 2008
my 3 Iraqi sisters reunited with their family in Atlanta