Nonprofit organizations help settle people
BY DANA DUGAN
Three years ago a quilt exhibit was shown at the Idaho Statehouse depicting scenes of struggle and hardship from the lives of pioneers as they made their way west.
“Most of us know these stories, but what about people from farther away?” Stephen Hatcher, director of folk and traditional arts for the Idaho Commission on the Arts, said. “What we don’t know is about our new neighbors.”
With those words, Hatcher opened Break Bread with Refugees at the Sun Valley Museum of History last Wednesday night. Facilitated by The Community Library in Ketchum, the gathering included a sit-down Afghan dinner, and conversation with a group of refugees who now live in Boise and Twin Falls.
Hosting the evening was Julianne Donnelly-Tzul, executive director of the non-profit International Rescue Committee’s Boise office, and Zeze Rwasama, director of the College of Southern Idaho’s Refugee Center in Twin Falls.
Three Afghan women, who now live in Boise, were in attendance to showcase quilts they and other women created through the non-profit Artisans for Hope, a program supported in part by the Idaho Commission on the Arts. The show is called This Is My Home Now, and features quilts depicting the refugee women’s life before and after they moved to Boise.
Maria Shefa, the mother of six, was a math teacher in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban changed everything for her and the women there.
“I miss it a lot,” she said, but is particularly proud of the education her children have gotten in Idaho.
Her husband, once a teacher, is now an interpreter for the U.S. Army, and has been in Afghanistan for work.
“It is hard for me to have him gone, but he can’t find a good job here,” Shefa said. “It’s important to make money for the kids’ college.”
One of their daughters graduated with two degrees from Boise State University in accounting and business, and another from the University of Idaho, Moscow, with a degree in fashion design and is now getting a degree in computer science.
Shefa has fond memories of Kabul when she was growing up and during college when she met her husband, a fellow student.
“It’s not safe there now,” she said. “There’s bombing every day. I have no wish to go home.”
The Shefas came to Boise through World Relief in 2000.
Shefa’s friend, Storay Feizi, arrived in Boise in 2010 with her husband and three kids, through the United Nations. They first lived in Uzbekistan for 12 years. Her husband, now a translator, works at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
The year before they arrived, a group of professional women saw a need to develop something that would engage the refugee women and build skills. Artisans For Hope was born. It now has 37 active volunteers and 35 active artisans who are paid 75 percent of the sale for their work in textile-related handcraft skills, said Elaine Garis, the group’s executive director. The store and workspace can be found at 723 N. 15th Street in Boise.
Another of the quilters, Saleha Abdul, came from a large and prosperous family in Afghanistan. After the Taliban arrived, everything changed, she said. After living in Turkmenistan for two years, Abdul and her family were able to move to Boise 15 years ago. Her husband, an engineer, now drives a taxi.
“Boise is my home now,” she said. “I feel happy and hopeful.”
These women have been in the U.S. for some time and their presence at the dinner also sounded hopeful to the newly arrived refugees. Because millions of refugees struggle in the shadows, the gathering helped to highlight some of their stories through conversation.
Twin Falls and Boise are the only communities in Idaho that accept refugees, though once they are here they are free to move wherever they want. But it’s not easy. The federal government formerly helped refugees with up to three years of potential assistance. The IRC, founded in 1933 by Albert Einstein, subsists mainly on donations. It now provides just eight months of cash and medical assistance to new arrivals, as well as support for case management services, English classes and employment services. The organizations try to align their clients depending on their skill sets. One man, a surgeon in his home country, eventually was able to “scale up” to registered nurse status.
“As an agency, our job is to get them settled as soon as possible,” Donnelly-Tzul said. “They have to hit the ground running.”
Many of the “newbies,” as they called themselves, have only been in the country for three weeks. Considering the limited time, their English, though stilted, was understandable, though they still had a sense of the unreal.
Jahan Jangi wrote a book. He’s Iranian and, after its publication, he was harassed and eventually imprisoned for two years.
“My belief is very different from Iranians,” Jangi said. “I was very alone.”
After writing a second book, the harassment and beatings began again. Jangi fled Iran, landing in Malaysia for six years before coming to Twin Falls.
“I didn’t believe I’d be here,” he said with a broad smile. “This is the dream. Until they closed the plane doors, I didn’t believe. Then I said, Okay, I need a beer. I’m on a honeymoon. And autumn is so cool.”
Aung Ye Latt, 35, from Mandalay, Myanmar, also spent years in Malaysia, waiting with his wife and two children to come to the U.S. He misses his country but hopes to find work in the computer industry soon. Another refugee, Pascal, 31, came from Goma, Congo, where he worked as a driver for an American company facilitating rescues.
“It was very difficult,” Pascal said.
Pascal lived in a Ugandan refugee camp with his wife and four children, then was sent to Turkey, then Chicago, then Utah, and finally to Twin Falls. His family is still living in a motel room.
“When we have so many coming at the same time, we need to put them in motels,” Rwasama said. “The past three weeks was very rough.”
While the Twin Falls economy, public school system and low jobless rate is very attractive for resettlement, its lack of public transportation is a problem. Volunteers must drive the refugees to all appointments. Otherwise, bikes are the most obvious mode of transport for refugees.
There remains an ongoing need for volunteers, even ones who might be able to do tasks online, Donnelly-Tzul said. The IRC now has offices in more than 40 countries. Fifty-four percent of the refugees are women, and they are almost entirely two-parent households.
The quilt exhibit accompanied by narratives of the refugee artists remains up at the Sun Valley Museum of History and can be viewed from 1-5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, through the end of the year.
The Gold Mine Thrift Shop in Ketchum is accepting bikes and coats to donate to the International Refugee Committee in Boise.