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Amira Abakr, 25, had to flee Sudan after the conflict in Darfur erupted in 2003. She lived three years in a refugee camp. She and her husband and their toddler arrived in Richmond in June 2014. She has been taking English language classes at Commonwealth Catholic Charities in Henrico County. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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Amira Abakr (center), her husband Adam Abdalla and their daughter. (Photo courtesy of Adam Abdalla)
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“When I walk to the road, I saw all the people and I have this idea in my head that they say, ‘She is a Muslim and she wears a hijab,’ and I am very scared. But when I talk with American people, they didn’t say anything like that. They tried to help the people and they were very friendly, and I am relaxed now," says Amira Abakr. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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Amira Abakr, 25, dyes her fingers and toes with henna, a custom among married Sudanese woman. “It says, ‘This woman is nice,’” she says. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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Abakr's hennaed toes. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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Refugees from Nepal, Sudan, Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan learn the names of parts of the body in a beginning English language class at Commonwealth Catholic Charities in Henrico County. Last year, Commonwealth resettled 145 refugees in the Richmond region. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Refugee students in a beginning English language class at Commonwealth Catholic Charities in Henrico County learning about different parts of the body. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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Photo by Tina Griego
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Art Heifetz is a retired insurance agent who has been a volunteer English teacher for four years at the CCC’s Glen Allen office. He comes in four days a week, from 9 a.m. to noon, to teach refugees. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Amira Abakr awakens as she does every morning, at 8 o’clock, slipping out of bed, trying not to disturb her husband, Adam Abdalla. He worked his usual shift at the chicken plant and got home at about 3 in the morning. He’s on the deboning line at Tyson Foods’ Glen Allen plant. He’s grateful for the job and the $10 an hour or so that it pays, but about this work — slicing breast and cutlets from bone, again and again, in the frigid air of the processing floor — he says, “In my life, I have never worked so hard. If you ask me what the hardest work in the United States is, I certainly might say I am doing it.”
Abdalla is a college-educated man and used to be a translator and interpreter in Egypt. But that was their old life, after war in the Darfur region of Sudan drove them from their homes, after the years in the Kassab refugee camp.
Abakr spent three years in the camp before joining him in Egypt and then it was another three years before they were cleared to come to the United States, to Richmond, where Abakr’s brother-in-law already lived. They arrived In June 2014.
“June 11, 2014,” Abdalla corrects. He is precise, as most refugees are, about the date of arrival, because it is more than a date of arrival. It is a date of beginning, a marker of the next leg of their journey. And though they did not choose this exile from their homeland, though 25-year-old Abakr cannot mention her mother, still in a faraway camp, without weeping, and though Abdalla, 36, comes home with the aching back that is the price he pays to keep their $730-a-month, one bedroom apartment in Henrico County, they count themselves among the fortunate. Look at refugees pouring into Europe now. So many like them, hundreds of thousands displaced by war and desperate. Abakr needs no reminders of their fortune.
She lifts their 3-year-old daughter, Razan, from her bed. The child will spend the morning in day care, her mind gobbling up English phrases, which she sprinkles among her Arabic words, moving back and forth with a dexterity Abakr longs to possess.
On this day, Abakr covers up in a vibrant azure hijab and matching long-sleeve blouse under a khaki vest, with matching pants. When she leaves the house, she will slip on heeled sandals that glitter with rhinestones. The sparkle draws the eye to her bare toes, which, like her fingertips, she has dyed with henna. It draws curious looks here, but when the dye fades, she reapplies it. It signifies that she is a married woman. “It says, ‘This woman is nice,’ ” she says.
Abakr's hennaed toes. (Photo by Tina Griego)
Her ride will show up at 8:40. They will stop at the day care center to drop off the baby and then head to Commonwealth Catholic Charities for an English language class. The driver is like her, a refugee from Sudan, and they will talk about living in America, and what is hard, what is good and what is necessary to build a life.
“When I come here first, everything is new for me, the culture, the language, the people, and I was very scared because I am different with these people,” Abakr says. “When I walk to the road, I saw all the people and I have this idea in my head that they say, ‘She is a Muslim and she wears a hijab,’ and I am very scared. But when I talk with American people, they didn’t say anything like that. They tried to help the people and they were very friendly, and I am relaxed now. I am very happy for America. People here, they have freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”
Roughly, 2,000 refugees are resettled every year in Virginia. They come from many countries, including Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nepal, Myanmar, Iraq, and Ethiopia. The 2,000 figure includes those granted asylum, and Iraqis and Afghans who worked with the U.S. government and military during the wars. Many will end up in Northern Virginia, because there is more work there.
The Richmond region can be a hard place to resettle for reasons you might guess. The city offers public transportation, but lacks jobs and safe, affordable housing and landlords everywhere are reluctant to rent to people who have no credit history and are not yet working. The counties offer more housing choices and jobs, but no public transportation.
Commonwealth Catholic Charities (CCC), one of two resettlement agencies in the area, is constantly seeking employers, landlords, people willing to donate cars or bikes, anything that will help refugees find their feet, because the clock is ticking from the moment they arrive. Through the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, Richmond region refugees have three months and $925 each to find work and start paying their way. (The social services safety net is available for families with minor children.)
Last year, CCC resettled 664 refugees across its three Virginia offices, about 145 of them in the Richmond region.
“We can’t do this on our own,” says Anita Wallen, CCC’s chief operating officer. “I mean, there is no way. It is crucial for us to have people who can help us find housing, people who can help connect our refugees with employment that is meaningful and sustainable. Those are the two major things that, in Richmond, we keep finding ourselves working on.”
Abakr arrives for her English class at the CCC’s Glen Allen office just before 9 a.m. She loves her English class. She’s taking the intermediate level course and has proven to be an adept student — “super sharp,” says her teacher, Art Heifetz. He’s a retired insurance agent who has been a volunteer teacher for four years, coming in four days a week, from 9 a.m. to noon, to teach refugees. He enjoys the work, and it shows. One day, he is teaching them about deposit slips and credit and interest, the next he is giving them a crash course in doctor and pharmacy visits.
Refugees from Nepal, Sudan, Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan learn the names of parts of the body in a beginning English language class at Commonwealth Catholic Charities in Henrico County. Last year, Commonwealth resettled 145 refugees in the Richmond region.
“I slept wrong and I hurt my neck,” he tells the class. “What did I do?”
“You hurt your neck,” they say.
“How did I hurt my neck?” he asks.
“You got wronged sleep,” comes a reply.
“I should pay them for letting me teach them,” Heifetz says. “They are so interested in learning. They are so appreciative. The number one reason they came here is to be safe. Some of them have spent unbelievable amounts of time in refugee camps. Richmond is a nice place, but not necessarily a nice place to get a job, and I’ll be damned if I know what some of them will do.”
Art Heifetz is a retired insurance agent who has been a volunteer English teacher for four years at the CCC’s Glen Allen office. He comes in four days a week, from 9 a.m. to noon, to teach refugees. (Photo by Jay Paul)
It is a matter of educating the public to accept refugees, says Emila Stambol, an education specialist with CCC. She fled Bosnia in 1994 and was a refugee for 10 years. “They are people who may look different, dress different, who may smell different and talk funny. We need to educate people to look past that and accept them for who they are.”
Abakr’s class ended last week. Heifetz took the group to the James River to celebrate. The next round of classes will begin in a week. Abakr says she is going to try to see if she can sign up again. She also will go to the Henrico County Adult Education Center and take its English classes. She practices all she learns as a volunteer at ReEstablish Richmond, a nonprofit that helps refugees establish themselves here. Abakr has plans. She says she wants to become a dentist. Her husband, Abdalla, is trying now to figure out how to pay for college so he can study law or nonprofit studies.
“This journey,” her husband says, “it will be a long journey, but this is our life.”
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