Group of volunteers worry for newcomers
By CHELSEA CONABOY
Monday, June 25, 2007
He arrived at the Concord Street home of Faduma Mohamed, a Somali Bantu refugee, just as she finished giving birth to her seventh child on the porch. Wolfe cleaned up and watched over Mohamed's other children while baby and mother went to the hospital.
Wolfe, a 57-year-old plumber, loves his volunteer work. But after eight years, he's tired.
"We're exhausted," he said. "A lot of us are getting older. We can't do any more with what we have."
Wolfe isn't alone in his feeling. Many of the Concord residents who have committed to helping the city's newcomers say they're feeling pushed to their limits. And they're worried that their weariness comes just as the number of refugees is increasing. As many as 80 Burundian refugees have begun arriving in Concord and are expected through the summer.
Ellen Kenny, a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages at Rumford School, whose involvement often crosses from classroom to living room and back, expects another hectic school year. Volunteer Schuyler Merritz said she's had to promise herself not to use any more of her sick days to drive the refugees to doctor appointments. And Sue and Jewett O'Connor, who have spent about two decades working with refugees, said they've resigned themselves to the idea that they can only help so many people at a time.
But with more refugees coming, Sue O'Connor said, "we're really concerned about who's going to take up the slack."
The refugees, people chosen for entry to the United States because they face persecution in their home country, are resettled in Concord by Lutheran Social Services, a federal contractor. Those volunteers who help them once they get here are longtime members of the Concord Multicultural Project, an independent group. The group held a women's event two weeks ago to invite more to join.
For those like Kim Harris, who first got involved about a year and a half ago and now collects donations in her Hopkinton boutique, the work is tiring but sustaining.
"I finally found my passion, my purpose," she said.
Wolfe had no interest in helping refugees when his wife came home from church one day and told him that a refugee family was hosting an open house in their apartment. But the apartment was just across the hall from where the Wolfes lived when they moved to Concord in 1976, and Wolfe wanted to see how the building had changed.
One refugee started telling his story of fleeing a rebel Army in Sierra Leon. He stopped to help a 10-year-old boy whose leg had been cut off and who was left for dead. The man told Wolfe he carried him across the border to a camp. Then he went to fetch a photo of the boy.
"He said, 'Twenty-four days later, he died,' " Wolfe said. "That was it for me. I was thunderstruck."
Wolfe tears up at some points telling the maze of his refugee stories - at the success of one troubled man who struggled through school and now holds a steady job, at the pain of another who was a friend and left Concord on bad terms.
"I lost one," he said of one boy whose behavior worsened after Wolfe tried but couldn't get him into the spring baseball league.
Wolfe has paid for much of the kids' sports equipment out of his own pocket. He's asked friends and clients to help with scholarships for summer camps. He's pushed others to cart the kids to practices and games. He said he can't keep going to the same people.
This year, he has 20 kids to enroll in fall sports, and he can't take any more.
"I've got no riders," he said. "If I find one a year, I'm lucky."
Among three of the newest refugee families in town, the Burundians who began arriving in the last two months, there are eight teenage boys. They were scheduled to gather yesterday for their first soccer practice. Wolfe was going to drive them there.
Other volunteers have called Wolfe a "one-man show," a "confidante" to kids who leave a troubled world to arrive in one that is unknown to them.
"Bob's like a father to some of them," Sue O'Connor said.
Some refugees from Manchester inquired this weekend how they could get a Mr. Bob for their own city.
"I can't get everywhere," he said.
Kenny may feel like that some days at school. The students she's had at Rumford are hard workers who line up for homework, she said. But their needs extend far beyond the classroom. Two years ago, Rumford School and Concord High School had help from a grant-funded refugee liaison, who assisted with those outside needs. She set up parent-teacher conferences with a translator, scheduled vaccinations and dental appointments and raised money for summer camp.
"Having that position was wonderful," Kenny said.
Last year, the grant expired just before the start of school.
"As a teacher for these kids, I feel like I just can't walk away from that whole realm that impacts them as students," she said. "So we did those things ourselves. And that just makes you tired."
The liaison won't be back next year either.
Easing up
When they lived in Mississippi, Sue and Jewett O'Connor worked with Vietnamese refugees. Since moving to Concord 13 years ago, they have opened a spare bedroom to people from Hong Kong, Russia, Japan and Sudan. They recently met a Russian woman in the parking lot of the Cornerview Restaurant who asked for help. They've taken a liking to another couple, originally from Nigeria and Iran. And they just returned from a visit to California to see a refugee family from Afghanistan who moved there from Concord a year ago and with whom they keep in touch.
The couple seem to attract people who are new to the city and need a hand.
"You better not give out our address," Jewett O'Connor joked.
Working with the Somali Bantus two years ago was perhaps the most intensive volunteering they've done. They would spend several nights a week at one family's home, tutoring, advising and cleaning.
"They wore us down to a nub," Sue O'Connor said.
She said she had to take a break when that family moved away. "I was getting squirrelly," she said.
Now, they said, they make it "easy on ourselves," committing to just a couple families at a time.
They spend time with a Sudanese couple and their 5-month-old daughter and they're now helping them buy prescriptions and collecting money to pay for dental work that the parents have no insurance to cover. They talk often with the Ayubi family, originally from Afghanistan and now in California. They've offered them a loan to help start a business.
Like the O'Connors, Merritz thought she would take a step back from her volunteer work this spring. Working with a Somali Bantu family on an almost daily basis had worn her out, she said.
"It gets overwhelming," she said. "It really does."
Instead, she closed on a condominium just across the street from a house that is home to two refugee families, including one couple from Burundi who just arrived in Concord two weeks ago. The news of the coming Burundians was "a shock," Merritz said. The volunteers were already working hard to care for those who were here.
Last week Merritz spent time with the couple filling out paperwork and walking them around their apartment pointing to household items and sounding out their English names.
"I thought I would run," she said. "Now I can't wait."
(For more information about the Concord Multicultural Project, log on to Concordmulticulturalproject.org or call Kim Harris at 746-6378.)
Source: Concord Monitor, June 25, 2007