Getting on the Bus

This week, I have not been able to get two young girls out of my mind.  They are 12 and 15 years old, in this country for less than a month.  They don't speak English well.  They used to live in the Darfur region of Sudan, until one night the Janjaweed burst into their village with guns.  Their mother, the 12 year old, and two of their siblings were shot.  Their 18 year old brother will never walk again. They had to flee their home that night and ended up living in a refugee camp. Their story is amazing.

I learned of them when their father showed up at the Center for New Americans Monday (for those of you who don't know me, I have a side gig as a refugee caseworker aid) worried sick about the whereabouts of his daughters.  He learned that they had gotten on a city bus instead of a school bus, not knowing how to say the name of their school or their address or many words that most people in the city would understand.  So his caseworker, another caseworker, and myself started trying to track down these girls. In the end, we discovered that the girls made it safely to school and unharmed, through a chain of events I don't quite grasp the details of as a lot of non-native English speakers were involved.

After the gentleman left, we all let down our masks of calm reassurance and while we let out a collective sigh of relief, expressed how nervous we had been for this father and his daughters.  His caseworker, also a former refugee, told me stories about how her own daughter got lost on the way home from school twice when they first came to the States.  One time, a fellow church member happened upon her and took her home, the second, she flagged down a police officer and he took her home.

These girls are inspiring. Their young lives have been lived between nightmares. Yet they are brave enough to try to get themselves on a strange bus in a strange (and cold and snowy!) city where they can't understand anyone, read anything, or communicate well.  To go to school.  To get a chance a chance at a better life. School is hard enough when you are those ages, let alone in the city, let alone as a refugee from Darfur.  Plus, having been through what they have, it must be hard to even leave sight of their family members. Their courage is no small thing.