No refugee stories

Far from home, I have sort of come to like my little refugee town.
While I languish, waiting to go home, I continue to write about my friends, strangers, and refugees who are getting used to the landscape still just like me and my frustrations and my hopes.
In my my two years in Utica, I have met many refugees, all very unique people who all have a story to tell. Often, I have sat with them for hours while they talked about their hopes of returning to their countries.
Assimilation takes time and often doesn't happen. Sometimes the refugees want to hold on to the past, at times, the host community is not willing to acccomodate them and their past. There are too many hurdles on the way to integration.
A Burmese refugee told me when I was at her house how her brother was kicked in his stomach when he was returning home. Most of the refugees walk to the English as a Second Language classes at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. This incident, quite shocking to me, is not an uncommon occurrence.
Seems like within the schools, many refugee children are subject to violence. A girl, who is from Myanmar, recounted to me how she was kicked once. When you can't talk back because you can't speak their language, you are an easy target, she said.
For years, she would try not to walk home alone or not walk within the campus without friends. It had been difficult making friends in the begining because mostly everyone made fun of you, she said.
So you just had to stick with other refugee children in the schools because like you, they too were going through the same experiences.
To me, it is such a task to live in a strange country, a place you were just assigned to and make fresh beginings. Refugees are citizens of nowhere. Having fled their countries, a new life with all its challenges is thrust one them.
And they can't return like I can. Imagine having to deal with that.
Race is a reality in our world and those who deny it are probably too blind to see how color is such a determinant in so many things.
With refugees, it is the same.
We have heard enough about how welcoming Utica community is and how it loves its refugees. Far from it.
When Bosnians came in, they came in large numbers. They were Europeans and white and wore western clothes. But when Somali Bantus started coming in or even Burmese refugees, it was different.
I hardly ever see a Somali Bantu hanging out with an American friend. These are tightly-knit communities and stick together.
But such is the way society here is and they would all perhaps deny it. Because they want to bask in the glory of being the liberated, caring and democratic Americans who welcome these starving, oppressed and hopeless people.
Who cares if they have problems? Isn't it great enough they are here?
But to me, their stories have so much potential. Because those are the stories of human struggle, the resilience of the spirit and the challenges it faces at every step. I just find it fascinating.
And to me, they are inspirational. Every time I am on the verge of giving it all up, I think of them. Against all odds, they are continuing to wage their battles, trying to integrate, but culture is hard to give up.