We did not know this family. They were from Africa. They spoke very little English. They had attended our church, but they were always silent and shy in the back corner of the church. Language barriers had kept us from knowing them and their story. An awkward welcome on sabbath mornings, a few halting words in English and French were exchanged, but we did not know how to advance conversations with them.
I confess a million critical questions instantly went through my mind that night. They started with, "I wonder what they did wrong? Whose fault is it? Who brought them to Boise? Is there a way I can avoid getting involved?" I searched my calendars and excuse boxes, but they were strangely empty. "Darn!" It was 5 degrees out with snow and ice on the ground. "What kind of a family chooses to be evicted in this weather?"
Although I confess to having all of those questions in the first seconds, it was soon followed by the thud of a holy 2x4 to the back of my head. It was clear there was a family in trouble, and winter survival was the only thing that mattered that night.
Our church community gathered in the snow outside of the young mother's apartment and pondered the task. How do you clean out an apartment when there is no place to take the items? Everything needed to be thrown out or stored elsewhere. There was no plan. The family was only allowed a bag of clothes each in the homeless shelter. The few items worth keeping were dispersed to the homes of friends and family members.
Why didn't they just move into a family member's home? There are rules against that. When you are in housing programs or when you sign many leases, you are only allowed a specific number of people in a home. When your entire community is other refugees, your options are very limited.
A security guard was sent to ensure we did not throw inappropriate things into the large garbage bins at the apartment complex. By inappropriate, they meant everything we were trying to throw away. That was a real problem. How do you clean out an apartment stuffed with old worn out furniture, on a dark snowy night in the middle of winter with a vigilant security guard watching. Where do you take it all? The answer - you break down the furniture, and use all the different garbage bins around the complex while avoiding the watchful security guard.
I learned much that night. I learned that generous people and organizations are eager to donate old furniture and clothes to refugees. There were literally mountains of donated clothes and worn out furniture piled in that apartment.
In most of our homes, we have storage in the form of shelves, closets, dressers, storage containers, garages, attics, spare rooms, boxes, etc. If we have too much of something, we just throw it in the back of our cars and SUVs and take it away. However, if you are a refugee just getting off a plane from the tropics of Africa with only a small suitcase, no car, no job, no English, and only a tiny apartment, and 18 boxes of used clothes are delivered to your apartment by strangers along with worn-out couches and a broken set of disassembled glass dining room furniture, you have an immediate problem. What do you do with it? How do you sort through all of those gifts, acquire tools to assemble the furniture, and remove the things you don't need? The answer is you don't. The gifts just pile up as you have no way of removing them, and they are too heavy to carry on the bus.
There is a difference between donating items, and caring for a family. Caring for a family means you learn their needs, their sizes, ages and the sexes of their children. You learn their favorite colors, and you give them the dignity of choice. The children don't need seven winter coats of varying sizes each, they need one in their size and favorite color.
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| City Light, Boise |
Coming to America as a refugee is incredibly complex. There are mountains of required paperwork, appointments to keep, papers to sign, offices all around town they must find and visit, classes they must attend and a language they must learn in eight months, all while herding children along. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the complexities and to fall through the cracks of the process.
Can you imagine the level of bravery that is required for a young single mom with three small children to move to the other side of the world with nothing to start a new life? A life completely dependent on learning a new language, culture and environment?
They didn't understand why a crowd of white people were marching in and out of their home carrying off their belongings and disassembling their beds that night. They cried and sobbed as they were driven to the homeless shelter and checked in. They were stopped and searched for drugs and weapons before being escorted into a large room full of sleeping mothers and children. They were given a bed and four small storage boxes in which to place all their remaining personal possessions.
Can you imagine the intensity of the fear in that mother's heart as she lay on the bed, holding her three small children close and staring at the ceiling through tear filled eyes, listening to the coughing and groans of those sleeping around her? Not having a home, or knowing what the morning would bring, and how she was to care for and provide food for her children in this bitterly cold foreign land.
We witnessed that story. It was our experience. God called us that day. We didn't have to raise money for a mission trip to Africa. God brought Africa to us. That family is now our family.
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Kevin Benedict
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What a beautiful wake-up call, thank you for sharing!
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