Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives - Refugee Life Stories

CHAPTER 2

Refugees and Their Stories: Who Participated and Why

THE IDEA TO WRITE this book grew out of numerous conversations with refugees during my resettlement agency days. Refugees often shared their stories with me about events that had happened in their lives, and at first, I did not ask them why they were doing it. I simply thought they had stories to tell and wanted to share them with me, maybe to establish a better connection with me as an agency worker.

With time, I noticed that the refugees had their own agendas and used the stories as “tools of persuasion.” Some wanted to make sure that I saw the urgency of their requests while others wanted me to believe that their cases were the most compelling and needed special attention. I remember one refugee woman who confided her hopes of finding a long-lost relative and told me her sad story about a relative who got lost during their family’s flight. I had known her for several years, but she shared this story only when she needed me to help find the lost relative.

After hearing some of the stories several times, I realized that they belonged to a “refugee repertoire” they each had created and recreated on multiple occasions when storytelling had to serve a specific goal: at the UNHCR interviews, Overseas Processing Entity (OPE) interviews, or in conversations with IOM employees. In the US, these stories could be the ones that were shared in college or high school classrooms or with new friends, volunteers, and coworkers. So, why not with an agency worker like me?

Here, I do not question the veracity of these stories or claim that they were “fabrications” or “false” – no, far from that. They were as true as any story could be, since we all remember events in our lives in our own ways, repeat them from memory, and gradually add or omit things as needed. In these stories, refugees had structured their past events for themselves and for those they took into their confidence. They were persuasive tools successfully used in refugee resettlement interviews. After all, the storytellers were in the United States now, which meant their stories had been persuasive enough to qualify for resettlement.

Refugee stories brought me into this fascinating realm of storytelling I decided to explore in more detail. I gave up my job in the agency and embarked on a new project: a refugee storybook. As resettlement agency staff, we thought that we knew quite well what life in a refugee camp was like and how the resettlement process worked; that’s where our training and experience came in. But why didn’t we ask refugees themselves about their lives before and after resettlement? We just relied on our agency knowledge, but was this knowledge sufficient?

Now, in the new role of a writer (and not an agency worker anymore), I expected that everyone I contacted would be very excited about a chance to participate. After all, so many already had shared their stories with me quite happily while I was the IRC staff member. To my surprise, I got diverse responses when I called refugees: not everybody wanted to share their stories anymore. But they had done it quite comfortably and voluntarily just a few months ago! I began to realize that refugee storytelling had a pragmatic goal at the agency, while sharing the same story for a book was very different. Also, stories shared at the office would be kept confidential. For the storybook, their stories would become public, and this fact brought on new concerns.

I invited about fifty people, carefully selecting the potential storytellers based on their ethnic group, age and gender, with a goal to equally represent each one of them. I gave preference to those whose life stories could serve as “the most typical” representations of the respective group, thus contributing to the cultural variety presented in the book. About a half of them embraced the invitation, saying it was “a great project” and offered to participate right away. About a dozen others were a little more cautious and said that they would do it “to help me out” because I had “helped them a lot” as an agency worker or we had developed a friendship since we met.

Storytellers had no other incentive for participating since I did not pay them nor offer any other rewards. We held most of the storytelling sessions in my office, which I rented for this specific purpose, although I always offered to visit them in their homes or meet in some other public space. Most of them chose to come to my office as it would provide a quiet, comfortable space to sit and talk. When we met, I usually offered the tellers a choice to be recorded or not, and if they chose not to be recorded, I took extensive notes. Mostly, people were okay with recording, although some did not feel comfortable with it. Also, I explained that they could decide whether to appear with their original names or use a pseudonym. Here, I had about a fifty-fifty split; some said that it was fine to use their names as they were, but others wanted their names changed.

After I wrote down the stories from my notes or transcribed the recording, I invited all participants to review the resulting text for accuracy and to offer feedback. Several asked me to take out some facts that would lead to identifying their family members in their home countries. Also, some stories had to be “shelved” because of concerns about the well-being of friends and relatives still living in the country of origin.

What motivated them to share their stories? First, many enjoyed the thought that their story would be read, not just by those in the community of Abilene, but throughout the US. Refugees from the younger generation (early twenties to midthirties) embraced the idea most willingly, even though they were the busiest, with daily schedules that often involved full-time college studies and part-time or full-time jobs. I believe they found time to share because they were more open about their lives and experiences and were more used to the idea of “going public” with their stories, as I am sure they had done in high school or college. Telling personal experience stories gave them a chance to reflect on their lives, how they wanted to construct their pasts, and what they wanted from their futures. From their point of view, they were in America and “nothing was impossible”; the future was in their own hands. I think of them as the “Facebook generation,” actively communicating with daily postings, photos, shares, comments, and all kinds of interactions. Being used to sharing their experiences on social networks may have been part of the reason the young refugees were so willing to share their stories with me for the book.

When younger refugees reviewed the stories I had written down from my notes or transcribed recordings, several of them commented, “Yes, that’s me.” It seemed they were looking at their story as if it were a “selfie.” When asked what made them share their stories, several answered that they did it “to inspire other refugee kids” who were still in high school “to do the right thing,” “to go to college,” or “to stay away from bad things, like drugs and drinking.”

Another group willing to share their stories was in their late thirties to fifties, and the majority of them remembered their lives in their countries of origin quite well. They were considerably more uncertain about their future in the US, and some of them mentioned that “it may be a little late to start a new career” here or expect new success. These storytellers often remarked that they “had to focus on their children”, or that they “came to the US so that their children would have better future.” Many noted that they had been treated unjustly in their “old countries” and they had lost everything there. These storytellers were willing to share their stories “for the sake of a greater good” so other people would have “a better understanding of the refugee plight in the world.” They also wanted the injustice in the old country to be exposed, made public. They seemed equally interested to have their stories affect the “old country,” hoping for policy changes there. Their focus was on the suffering and hardship that needed to be made public so others here would understand.

For this more mature group, another reason for participating was to help US readers better understand refugees as their “fellow citizens” and “neighbors.” This role was new but especially important since many of the refugee arrivals had lived for decades in asylum countries where citizenship remained a distant dream. They hoped their stories about their lives and aspirations in the new land would enlighten their new American coworkers and neighbors. These were stories told specifically for “the new neighbor” to hear – not so much about refugee past suffering, but about their cultures, dreams, and current life. The stories would contribute to a mutual understanding among the cultural groups right here in the United States, making readers understand that refugees are human and complex personalities like everyone else.

For many of the storytellers, the country of belonging often was more imagined than real. Stories came from Liberians who were either born in Ivory Coast or spent all their young years there, some younger Congolese raised in Kenya, Bhutanese born in Nepal in refugee camps – the list could...