Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [27]
A turkey-processing plant in a small town in Minnesota was first staffed by Vietnamese and is now staffed by Somalis. A friend told me of a refugee in this plant who asked for her help with a placement test. She was trying to ascertain what he knew and wrote down a few simple math problems such as 4 X 2. He took her paper and wrote out a long calculus equation. He'd been an engineer in Africa for years and now was pulling out turkey guts.
Refugees and immigrants are often hidden in plain sight. Most Nebraskans aren't aware how much our population has changed. They drive down a street, see the same trees and buildings and don't realize how different the people are.
Some locals say, "We just want to be left alone." However, with 6 billion people on the planet, many of them in desperate circumstances, nobody gets to be left alone. The Dalai Lama made this point when discussing Tibet. He said, "The history of the last years shows that no place is so remote and small that it is safe from outsiders."
Environmental catastrophes, wars, and political upheavals have displaced people all over the world. According to the official World Refugee Survey 2001 of the United States Committee for Refugees, there were 14.5 million refugees and asylum seekers and more than 20 million internally displaced people at the end of 2000. Anthony Marsella in Amidst Peril and Pain wrote, "From a humanitarian perspective, the current international refugee problem is unparalleled in size, scope, and consequence in human history."
Many refugees arrive recently traumatized and with tragic backgrounds. Some have literally just been lifted out of a holocaust. About 40 percent of our refugees have been tortured. Many have witnessed genocide and seen family members killed. Others have been made to participate in acts of torture or murder. Many come from camps in which they were beaten or raped. The word detained is a terrible euphemism for what has happened to them.
People who have been in refugee camps for years have lost any sense of control over their lives. They have had years to learn helplessness, years without useful work, education, or meaningful decisions. Some have internalized a sense that they are nobody, chaff in the wind.
Refugees are sometimes portrayed as helpless victims, but the truly helpless victims don't make it here. Generally, it takes work, intelligence, patience, charm, and luck to be selected as a refugee. Arrival stories are survivor stories. However, after the victory of safe passage, years of hard work follow. And in their own way, the challenges of the United States can be as rough as the challenges of Sudan or Afghanistan.
ARRIVAL STORIES
Most of the refugees who arrive in Lincoln didn't choose to come to our city. They were handed a plane ticket to Lincoln by INS officials when they got off a plane in New York or Los Angeles. They may know nothing about the Midwest and they may have been separated from their closest friends by the assignment process. They may have bodies adapted to tropical climates or skills such as deep-sea fishing that they cannot use in the Midwest. They may be moving into a town where no one speaks their language or even knows where their country is.
Most newcomers arrive broke. In fact, I have never met a rich refugee. All arrive worried about jobs