Maisie Thompson

MAISIE THOMPSON had been thinking about doing volunteer work for some time when she received an e-mail asking college students to help African refugees in the Atlanta area. The University of Georgia art major saw her chance to combine helping others with a long-held interest in Africa. What she didn’t know was that a 7-year-old boy from Sudan would steal her heart.

The request for volunteers came from Njeri Marekia-Cleaveland, a faculty member at UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government who had developed a project to address resettlement issues related to refugees, especially women and children.

“Few people know that Georgia is home to more than 40,000 refugees and that there are serious policy and program gaps in the resettlement process,” said Marekia-Cleaveland, a lawyer and former citizen of Kenya. “Nationally, Georgia has the fifth highest number of refugees, all of whom are legal immigrants.”

Many have walked hundreds of miles and risked their lives to reach United Nations refugee camps, only to spend as long as 15 years in limbo, waiting for peace or a chance to resettle in another country. They have fled persecution and violence in some of the most war-torn places on the planet: Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Myanmar, Chad, Vietnam, Kosovo.

Once in the U.N. camps, refugees go through interviews, medical screenings and processing. When a placement is found, Somali refugees call the good fortune “bish bish,” the sound of the first rains hitting the earth after the dry season.

“The first wave of African refugees in Georgia came from countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone or Uganda. This group tended to be highly educated and could afford to get out,” she said. “The other group, mainly from U.N. refugee camps, consists of very poor people.”

Fortunately, Georgia has several resettlement organizations — World Relief, Lutheran Ministries, Catholic Relief Services, Jewish Family Services, International Rescue Committee, and Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta — that support a refugee’s first 90 days in the United States. They help refugees learn English, obtain social security numbers, enroll in schools and Medicare programs, find jobs, and more.

But 90 days is hardly enough time to learn a new language and a new culture, especially for some refugees who speak little or no English, have never turned a doorknob, or even walked up and down stairs. Other non-profits like Refugee Family Services (RFS) in Stone Mountain, Ga., take up where primary organizations leave off.

RFS focuses on the educational and economic needs of women and children, who are often excluded from other programs. That focus made RFS a perfect fit for Marekia-Cleaveland and her interest in African women’s issues. She now helps place UGA students there as part of academic service-learning courses or internships.

Maisie Thompson

Mentoring Child Refugees

The scene at RFS was typical of any after-school program — groups of kids doing homework, drawing, playing games and just hanging out, with the occasional reminder from a teacher or volunteer to “calm down” when things got a little wild.

A 7-year-old girl, wearing khaki shorts and a striped sleeveless top with her long braids pulled back in a loose ponytail, joined a group of children laughing, holding hands, and plastering each others’ arms and legs with sticky Scotch tape sneaked off the roll on a teacher’s desk. Older kids tapped on computer keyboards or talked intently with each other.

On the outside, they looked like any other children, but a few had been child soldiers in Sudan or Liberia; others had seen their parents killed. Some got separated from their families and don’t know where they are.

Behind the smiling faces are unspoken stories about escaping violence, long treks on foot to reach the relative safety of a refugee camp, and years waiting to have stability in their young lives. Many were born in the camps and others had had little access to education before arriving in Georgia.

In fall 2006, Maisie Thompson and 25 other UGA students started showing up once a week to help these refugee children make the transition to life in America.

“I helped the kids with their homework and once they were done, we were allowed to goof around with them,” Thompson said. “Gradually I started working with a little boy named Younan. I am head over heels for him. He’s seven.”

Playing football, Frisbee, jump rope and even Tetris on cell phones helped the UGA students initiate relationships with the kids, many of whom were shy or self-conscious about speaking English.

“You can’t just bust open a book and expect them to talk to you,” said speech communication major Blade Thompson (no relation to Maisie).

Typically, the volunteers either help in groups or mentor one-on-one.

“Alex Wright, a student who had been on a study abroad in Tanzania and spoke Swahili, worked on public health issues,” Marekia-Cleaveland said. “It was helpful having her translate for families, organize doctors’ visits, and accompany families to appointments.”

Most UGA student volunteers are speech communication majors enrolled in an intercultural communication class. At first the two instructors, Marekia-Cleaveland and Don Rubin, professor emeritus of speech communication and language and literacy education, weren’t sure students would be willing to drive one hour each way, spend 45 hours working on-site, complete four-to-six directed readings on the refugee experience in America, keep a journal, and write four or five reflection papers that connected the readings to their volunteer work for three hours of course credit.

They were wrong.

Four students signed up the first semester and 16 or 17 enrolled every semester thereafter. Nearly 50 students have completed the course since it started.

“At the beginning of the semester we show a video about immigration issues, families coming to the U.S. and what the experience would be,” Marekia-Cleaveland said. “It shows the stages refugees go through: culture shock, frustration with jobs and language and culture, and what role American society can play to make resettlement easier for these people. We also talk about how to communicate with the refugees.”

RFS volunteer coordinator Julie Goldberg asks the UGA volunteers not to pry into the children’s lives.

“Some of the kids have never talked to anybody about their lives in the camps,” said Goldberg, a recent UGA graduate in political science and women’s studies. “We want the after-school program to be a time for the kids to be enriched, learn, feel safe, and express themselves.”

At the end of the semester, UGA students talk about their experiences in a debriefing, discussing any issues and how the program can be strengthened.

The Student Experience

“My first day at RFS, out of nowhere this kid came up to me, started sniffing me and said, ‘You smell like Africa,’” said Michael Caputa, a recent speech communication graduate. “I thought, ‘Here’s someone who misses his home.’ I knew then that I wasn’t just going to come here and write papers and do a class. I was going to build relationships and have an effect.”

Since service is often divorced from the academic component of student lives, this experience was powerful because it combined the two, Rubin said.

“The students recognized that they could use the intellectual tools they had acquired as speech communication students to help them understand this very wrenching emotional experience the refugee kids were going through,” he said.

Many refugee kids are struggling in school and subject to the lure of gangs in their low-income neighborhoods. The trauma and stress they have suffered often is translated into emotional outbursts, violent acting out and fighting.

“Sometimes for no obvious reason the refugee children would want our students to hold them, to comfort them. The students didn’t always understand why the refugee children were upset but recognized their burden of stress and anxiety,” Rubin said.

By the end of the 15-week course, the students realize that they have made a contribution to at least one child’s life, he said. They understand the source of behavior issues, figure out how to deal with them and become more patient and satisfied with small victories.

They developed an empathy for the refugee situation and especially the refugee kids, became more familiar with world affairs, came to understand the important role of social service agencies, and appreciated more fully what a multicultural society is.

The UGA students also learned about the economic fragility of the kids’ lives. Some kids wore the same clothes day after day and got teased about that. Other kids would take their shoes off to play sports because they just had one pair and didn’t want to wear them out.

“The experience changed me at a core level,” Caputa said. “Now when I see the news about Darfur, I think about the people being displaced and where they’re going to go. And if they come here, who is going to be there for them?”

As for Maisie Thompson — when Younan’s schedule changed and he couldn’t come to RFS on the day she volunteered, she started visiting him on the weekends, going to his Saturday basketball games and continuing to help him with his homework.

When gas prices rose to $3.50 a gallon and she couldn’t afford to drive to Atlanta twice a week, she had to decide whether to volunteer with RFS or continue to see Younan and his three sisters.

“I couldn’t not see Younan,” she said.

Even though Younan’s family moved to Nebraska in February 2007, Maisie calls him weekly to help him with homework and maintain the connection.

In January 2008, she will finally experience Africa for herself. She’ll volunteer once again; this time at the Junior Art Club in Accra, Ghana.

Kathleen Cason

Tags: Africa, Atlanta, Carl Vinson Institute of Government, children, Social Services, Sudan, Winter 2008