BEYOND FACEBOOK Reality Refugee 3

A part of me dreaded visiting my refugee family this last visit because I’d left them inadvertently in the conditional past of regular verbs without having explained the simple past. True troopers, they took it relatively well. The past is never easy I tried to explain. We’ve concluded that a simple “ed” at the end of the verb is enough for the moment. Apparently they might not be interested in learning to read Shakespeare in its original text. That is most definitely something I must remember for the next family.

The landlord of the buildings has done very little if anything to handle the absolute treachery of sheer ice on the driveways and walkways of these buildings. I wonder if I should get their name and start raising hell but I remind myself that I am not here to solve everything. I think about this mother 9 months pregnant walking on that ice. I'm hoping that it was just an off-chance day and that it will be fixed next visit. The mother is riotously plump with her due date. I figure it should have been yesterday by the looks of it but there are a few more days to go. She is, and the children are, giggly and yet reverent with the imminent arrival of the family’s first Canadian child. It really is fun to anticipate this new child in the world. My family is under strict orders to call me and say “baby” and I’ll be there. That is all they have to remember in the flurry of activity it will no doubt bring.

It is a different thing to sit at a table with a family, particularly the parents, who are so keen on learning. It is written in their eyes, in their manners, in their effort. I wish I could wave a magic wand and it would be instantaneously understood but I can’t. In his effort to learn English because French proved utterly impossible for him, the father had registered with an on-line English program. I don’t know what it is but I know it is likely more than they could afford but that is what desperation can do. It is reality, not wishful thinking. Not ‘political will’ but reality.

Many of the refugee’s wives do not know how to read or write in their own language I am told. So learning to read and write is a real issue on different fronts. I’ve not run into that here. The father, who is a born teacher, spent five minutes explaining what a distributor in a car was and by gum, I think this Syrian refugee from far across the ocean explained something I never did understand. The translation program on the computer is a little dicey; reading fire sticks for spark plugs. He also wrote a word. It made me laugh. Their language is infinitely precise with tiny little nuances in how a character is formed. To me it seems it is both pictorial and written. It is beyond my feeble or even less than feeble efforts to understand. It just makes me laugh. I also am having a difficult time pronouncing their names. But that will eventually arrive. Repetition. It is all repetition.

Driving home I think about where I live. In this privileged community there is great generosity and it is this generosity that is making the difference in many lives. There is, also, unfortunately a poignant if not disturbing reality that not more than 10 minutes, possibly less down the highway is a very different world. I am asked why I volunteer here instead of the good charitable and/or non-profit organizations in my fair community and I thought long and hard about it. I decided I needed to go most definitely where I am needed, utterly needed if not desperately needed. This is not a group of people who chose to live in a foreign country without language skills. This is not something they did or didn’t do for whatever reason. It was politics and war. They were ripped from their lives and dumped here. They are bewildered and contending not just with language, but bureaucracy and technology. And winter. It is a world of Kafka. They are also not a group who are necessarily familiar with poverty and familial isolation and societal prejudice. I imagine they are learning quickly.

I am far from an educated woman on this matter but I believe we need to accept differences in a healthy way. If we can stop the fear and prejudice here at this point, with this family, with these children with this new child, we can possibly find peace side by side. Yes. This family is culturally different in many ways but they are also intelligent, extremely hardworking, patient, considerate and polite. We cannot necessarily expect such a strong culture to suddenly assimilate to our values. And what are those values anyway? Respect of differences is critical now.

I remarked to myself that I was making headway with the parents but the children are still watching French television. I think about whether I even remotely want to teach them English. What have we got to offer these children culturally? Justin Bieber? Video games? It is a pipedream to suggest they will not gravitate to whatever their peers are into. Is our current cultural reality any kind of shining example? I don’t know. It could be me being darkly judgmental and probably seriously ignorant on the matter however I feel a small pang of regret that a certain innocence will be lost.

 A few have told me that I am naïve. That this group will soon take over the country just through population growth alone. Okay. So what if they do? I am not at all concerned about it. It is after all, why they are here partly. If we have shown tolerance and acceptance it can work both ways. I believe it is possible that they have more to teach us than we have to teach them. But I avoid politics for I am not here for that. What we have to strive for is that respect of differences. Beyond everything. To each his own. It is what Canada is about. Isn’t it? If that is naïve I’m sure I’m in good company.

As I lock the car and wander into my cozy home overlooking the river I think about the hard times I’ve had in life and I think, at least I did not have this nightmare of war and displacement and cultural divides. Knock on wood. We must be grateful always for not just what we have but what we don’t have.