Four Afghan Refugees get a Warm Welcome in West Hartford.

Story & Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

When Sarah Martz talks about “the guys,” she’s referring to four Afghan soldiers who left their country after the fall of Kabul last summer. They now share a two-bedroom apartment in West Hartford and Martz is one of several volunteers who is helping them start new lives in the United States. She visits them three times a week to help them learn the ways of life in this country.

“I always have a list,” Martz said during a visit in early March. “We do money on Wednesday—using ATMs, paying bills. Today I had to get them to sign forms for paperwork to get their families here.”

Martz got involved with their resettlement after answering a call last summer in the Facebook page of her neighborhood, Hartford’s West End. With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan imminent, Carrie Berman, who had helped resettle Syrian refugees during the civil war there, anticipated an even greater need. “She knew that this was going to be bigger than what had happened with the Syrians and that what would be most beneficial would be to get as many co-sponsorship groups as possible together,” Martz said. About 40 people signed up to create West End Welcome and contacted IRIS for guidance on how to get started.

The group formed teams for specific tasks and began raising money and hunting for apartments and furniture. By last November they had $20,000 in hand and had identified two possible apartments. About 80 people are now involved, Martz said, but about 10 are the most active.

Martz saw herself as an overseer and hadn’t planned on the personal role she’s assumed. “I was a stay-at-home mom, coming out of two years of virtual school due to the pandemic,” she recalled. With her two children back at school she was looking for another activity. Then she saw the Facebook post. “I felt like I had time and I’m extremely organized. I love the delegation. I love the chaos. That works well for me.”

For the first three months, Martz and co-chair Jane Carroll took care of email and Facebook posts, serving as co-chair and delegator for West End Welcome as the group waited to welcome its first refugees.

In December, IRIS held a Zoom meeting with its co-sponsorship groups and Martz learned of an urgent need—IRIS had already received 300 people in two months, and more were on the way. Of particular concern was a group of three men, hard to place because they were not the typical nuclear family unit.“That was a Monday night,” Martz said. “We said we’ll take the three men, the men arrived Wednesday, we put them in an Airbnb, and then we signed the leases for two apartments on Friday.” (The second apartment is for a family of three that arrived in April.)

When it came time to pick up the men in New Haven, no one was available, so Martz volunteered. “That changed everything,” she said.

She took them to the Airbnb and went to visit the next day. “We decided then that somebody should be there every day. So, I saw them every day for two weeks. We thought that would build some confidence and some trust. I started bringing my kids.” The household, however, didn’t work out. Two of the men had a falling out with the third, who now lives in an efficiency apartment nearby. After he left, the two were joined by two friends who had shared their odyssey from Kabul to the United States and had resettled in New Jersey where they were not able to get the help they needed from a local resettlement agency that was likely overwhelmed with new arrivals.

The soldiers’ journey to Connecticut started last August after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. They were based in Khost, near their hometowns on the border with Pakistan, but as the Taliban advanced, their units were called to defend Kabul. The Taliban attacked their convoys, and they reached the capital only after disguising themselves as civilians. “The Taliban were controlling roads with blockades and checkpoints, stopping and asking questions. What are you doing? Where are you going?” said N., a 30-year-old commander. (For the safety of the soldiers and their families in Afghanistan, only initials are used). When Kabul fell, U.S. military advisors took them into the airport and helped them leave the country. “The Taliban was outside at the gates of the airport,” said N. They traveled first to Tajikistan, then Germany, then a military base near Washington, DC, before continuing to bases in Texas and New Mexico.

They left Afghanistan with no more than the clothes on their backs and without being able to say goodbye to their families, but they now have a furnished apartment, new clothes including winter coats and boots, and all four work the evening shift at a bulk mail processing facility a mile away. That leaves their days free for taking care of the tasks of settling in, like English classes and required medical visits. They live within walking distance of a Walmart and a CVS but need rides to New Britain for Friday afternoon prayers at the nearest mosque. West End Welcome has provided them with Uber gift cards, and showing them how to use the cards has been another learning experience. Another lesson is to encourage them to do chores like grocery shopping and laundry separately, to build independence.

“Martz’s visits have become more than an opportunity to take care of business. Martz talks about “the guys” like they’re family. Her 8-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, who often come along, see the soldiers as uncles. During a visit in December to hang curtains, Martz realized she’d need to make a run to Home Depot. “My daughter said, ‘I want to stay, I want to stay, I’ll teach them English.’” Her children have another reason to enjoy their visits—volunteers often ply the soldiers with donations of food that isn’t halal. “They would send all of this junk home with my kids, the cookies, the donuts, the sweets they don’t eat,” Martz said.

 

When Martz asked the men if they felt any discomfort at being driven around by a woman or having a woman not a family member visit them alone, they reassured her. “They said, ‘We see you as our mothers and our sisters. And our mothers in Afghanistan are so thankful.’”

“When Sarah is coming here everyone is very happy,” said N. Martz has found that there’s no such thing as a quick visit. “You walk in the door, and they offer you tea and nuts and dates,” she said. An invitation to share a meal soon follows. “You go for a 30-minute event and you’re staying for an hour and a half. You’re sitting on the floor, having Afghan food. If you say no, I can’t stay, there’s this look of bewilderment.”

Indeed, when two visitors from IRIS arrived in early March, the men offered saffron tea and a tasty chickpea and kidney bean stew cooked with onions, tomatoes, and okra, and served with rice and flatbread.

The apartment walls are adorned with pictures and phone numbers of the five women who have taken on most of the resettlement responsibilities. On the living room wall are maps of the world and the United States. Post-its on walls around the apartment include common English phrases they’ll need to learn.

N, the former Army commander, is the only English speaker and serves as the interpreter for the others. Their main concerns are to send money to their families in Afghanistan and to find a way to bring them to the United States. In daily calls to their families, they’ve learned that the Taliban has been hunting them for their association with the Afghan army and the U.S. military. “The life is very dangerous. The life is not safe for us and for our families,” N said.

Days earlier one of the men learned that the Taliban had come looking for him and taken his 19-year-old son instead. He was released after the family paid a ransom. Their relatives can’t work because fear of the Taliban keeps them confined to family compounds, so the soldiers send remittances to their families from Connecticut.

Among them, the four men have 25 children, and bringing them and their extended families here is their prime concern along with building a life here. B, 37, who has five children, hopes to become a truck driver. R, 32, also the father of five, would like to work as a car mechanic, which was his job in the Afghan army. H, 35, has 10 children and wants to provide an education for them. N, as the oldest brother in his family and the father of five, feels a responsibility to his family and says, “I will try to find a nice job.”

Martz and her colleagues will continue working with them to get them acclimated to life in the United States. Independence and self-sufficiency are the goals. “We’re all here to help get you out of the nest,” Martz tells them. “This is our opportunity to help you. You fought with our soldiers for 10 years. Now you are here, and it is our job to give you rest and treat you with kindness.”

Author works with Refugee Teens to Create Characters in 3 Novels

Written by Grady Trexler

In Ruby and the Sky, Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo’s first novel, Ruby, a twelve-year-old who has just moved to Vermont, learns to be courageous from a new friend, Ahmad, a Syrian refugee. In her second novel, A Galaxy of Sea Stars, when a family of special immigrant visa (SIV) recipients from Afghanistan move into the apartment above eleven-year-old Izzy, Sitara, the family’s daughter, teaches her how to use her voice to speak up for herself and others, even as she faces misunderstanding and teasing–and worse–about her hijab and her halal diet. In her third, and upcoming novel, Each of Us a Universe, Cal meets Rosine Kanambe, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and they attempt to summit a nearby mountain together. Although the characters in Ferruolo’s middle-grade novels are fictional, their lives and experiences are anything but. In fact, Ferruolo worked with IRIS clients — young refugee men and women — to ensure that the events in her stories accurately reflected the true refugee experience, and that her characters were nuanced and faithful representations of the people they claimed to be.

Ahmad, from Ruby in the Sky, was inspired by a friend that Ferruolo’s son brought home from school, a Syrian refugee who shared some of his experiences with her. She knew, however, that she would need help from others who had firsthand experience as refugees in order to finish the novel.

“If you choose to write outside your immediate experience,” says Ferruolo, “it is imperative that you do the hard work required to ensure the story and its characters are portrayed honestly and authentically.” After completing a draft of Ruby, she reached out to several refugee organizations around New England to see if they could help her connect with “sensitivity readers”—editor-readers willing to look over the manuscript in order to comment on its accuracy to their lived experience.

Ferruolo prefers the term “cultural consultants” because of the depth in which these readers enrich the story. “They are truly experts on the culture and experience I’m attempting to write about.” She was hoping to work with careful readers who could help her with everything from the kinds of traditional foods that a Syrian refugee might eat to the way a prayer room could be set up in a middle school.

Ashley Makar, IRIS’s community liaison, says that Ferruolo emailed her asking if it would be possible for her to hire some IRIS clients to read and give feedback on the manuscript.“She wanted to compensate them for their time and also the value of what they’re contributing,” says Makar. She, along with Ann O’Brien, IRIS’s director of community engagement, put together a group of high school-aged refugees that read the manuscript of Ruby and commented on its authenticity. Some of the refugees were Syrian, like Ahmad, and could advise her on specific Syrian cultural values, while others were from places like Burundi, and shared their experiences as refugees more broadly.

“We were so happy because we were kind of writing something to the public,” says Mahmood Alamre, an Iraqi refugee that Jeanne hired to work on Ruby. He says that working as a big group, the refugees were able to comment on what they thought worked, and what they thought didn’t.

For example, in an earlier draft of the story, Ahmad had a different name; the group decided that Ahmad better fit the profile of a young Syrian refugee that Ferruolo had sketched. Mahmood also says that originally, there was a scene in which Ahmad invites Ruby over to his home. He and the others advised Jeanne to change this scene, as it didn’t culturally fit for Ahmad to do so.Alamre says he’s happy that he worked on Ruby because he thinks it will help to expose more people to refugee stories and experiences. He has some experience sharing his story publicly, and says that a lot of folks are surprised at the life of a refugee. “They have no idea what a refugee is and what our life is,” he says.

Consolata Ndayishimye, a refugee from Burundi who lived in a refugee camp in Tanzania before coming to Connecticut, also consulted on Ruby. She says that the editing process with Ferruolo was incremental and organic. The consultants would read the draft, then present some suggestions to Jeanne, who would ask them questions, then write more, then share more writing, then ask more questions.

Makar says that Ferruolo stayed involved with the consultants and IRIS after Ruby was published; at press events, like book readings, Ferruolo invited the refugee youth to speak if they felt comfortable. She also volunteers with IRIS, such as at the annual summer learning program.

Ferruolo began to get an inkling of an idea for a story that included an Afghan SIV recipient–the story that would eventually become Galaxy–and wanted to include refugee youth even more than she already had.“I wanted the voice of Sitara to be their combined, collective voice,” says Ferruolo. For Galaxy, she met with a group of young refugee women even before she had written anything, and developed the story in conjunction with the youth women. Then she wrote the manuscript, and met with them several times over the course of the year, to get their feedback. “It was very illuminating,” says Asma Rahimyar, who consulted on Galaxy after the manuscript was written. Rahimyar, who isn’t a refugee but who was born in Connecticut to Afghan parents, says that it was rewarding to explore the commonalities and differences she had with the other young women.

“I was able to discuss characterization with her, in addition to specifics regarding Afghan culture,” says Rahimyar.
After publishing Galaxy, Ferruolo was struck with an idea for another story, this one centering around two young women–one white, one a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo–and began working with Gladys Mwilelo, who she had befriended some years prior.
Ferruolo says that she consulted much more heavily with Mwilelo than she had with her other two books–so heavily, in fact, that Mwilelo will appear on the cover of the book as a co-author with Ferruolo.

“We discussed the whole story together,” says Mwilelo, who was born in the DRC but lived as a refugee in Burundi for thirteen years before coming to Connecticut as a refugee in 2013. She says that the process began with Ferruolo asking her questions about her life, then writing a bit, then asking her more questions, then writing even more. The character of Rosine in Each of Us is heavily inspired by Mwilelo’s courage and inner strength.

Mwilelo says that she is still surprised and happy about becoming a co-author. “It makes me feel empowered, it makes me want to even do more,” she says. She also says that she is happy to help in a project that will introduce refugee voices into middle grade literature–if refugees are to be accepted into American society, she says, their stories also have to be accepted into American bookstores and libraries. Rahimyar agrees. “I felt lonely for extended periods of time and my solace was always books,” she says, but she never felt certain parts of her identity reflected back at her. She never read about, for example, a protagonist whose name was mispronounced. As an Afghan, she says this was extra hard, given that Afghan culture is so communal and she was in some ways detached from that culture living in the United States.

“Maybe it’s my grandmother’s voice in my head, but I feel compelled to include immigrants in my books,” says Ferruolo, who grew up with stories from her grandparents about their struggles as immigrants to the United States. They came from Austria-Hungary, what is now Slovakia, around 1913, to escape the poverty and direness of the impending war. When they arrived, she says, they faced discrimination; her father, for example, was punished for speaking Slovak in school. At one point, the Ku Klux Klan targeted them–in one version of the story, they burnt a cross in their yard; in another, the cross was in the adjoining graveyard. Either way, the message was clear: the cross was meant for the family. In fact, this story made it into Galaxy, although Ferruolo traded out the cross for the burning of a milk shed.

“Even in her later years, my grandmother was always trying to make sense of this discrimination,” says Ferruolo, which is why she thinks her grandmother was so eager to tell her stories. Ferruolo says that this spurred her own desire to tell other immigrant stories. “Seeing prejudice continue to be waged over and over on each new generation of immigrants has made me feel compelled to share their stories, especially with kids. It is when we learn more about each other that we find commonality. And it is only through education that we make progress.”She thinks a lot about the ethics of representing characters from cultures other than her own; there were some moments, she says, that she wondered if she was doing the right thing after all by writing these characters. For example, one review criticized Galaxy as positing that Sitara’s family only deserved to be in the United States because they assisted the military in the war. It is an interpretation Ferruolo feels is misplaced, since it was several of the cultural consultants who wanted this background to be included.

Nevertheless, Ferruolo maintains the importance of the inclusion of refugee characters via her cultural consultants. “I’ve been given this amazing opportunity to share words and stories with children all over the world. And I’ve been privileged to meet so many phenomenal young men and women through IRIS. It is my hope that my books can provide a platform to amplify their already powerful voices so they can tell their stories the way they want them to be told,” she says. “My place is to serve their voices. That is my number-one objective.” The consultants and Ferruolo have stayed in touch, even as the writing of the books wrapped up. Ndayishimye, who lives in Texas now, says that every time she is in Connecticut, she and Ferruolo get lunch. She also says that Ferruolo encourages her to write her own story, and every now and then, she sends her some paragraphs that she has written for Ferruolo to make notes on.

Mwilelo, too, says that Ferruolo has been a staunch advocate of her own writing. She says that, through Ferruolo, she has learned to not worry so much about grammar or technique and focus on writing down something that is authentic. “The importance of writing is writing your thoughts,” she says.

Mwilelo and some of the other consultants say that they most appreciate the bravery of Ferruolo’s characters, but she, in turn, said that she was inspired by the bravery of the young refugees and immigrants she worked with. While editing Ruby and drafting Galaxy, Ferruolo was undergoing surgeries and treatments for a rare cancer. “Hearing their stories and learning about the obstacles they overcame as they made their way to a new country,” says Ferruolo, “gave me the courage to face what I had to face.”

Syrian Cuisine & Pizza Come to Westville

Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

Five years after leaving war-torn Syria, Mazen Saloumi has achieved his dream of having his own restaurant. On July 22, family and friends from the Iraqi and Syrian communities joined Saloumi as he re-opened the Emesa Restaurant on Whalley Avenue in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood as its new owner.

“This is my career,” Saloumi said, adding that he learned to cook from his father. “He loved to cook. I inherited it from him.”

As a chef in Syria, he worked in restaurants throughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. He was working in Saudi Arabia when he learned that his visa would not be extended. With civil war raging in Syria, he went to Amman, Jordan, and arranged to bring his family there. After more than three years in Jordan, the family arrived in the United States as refugees through IRIS and settled in West Haven.

Saloumi found a job as a cook in Bab al Salam, a Mediterranean restaurant in Orange. While there he befriended Mohamed Alshloul, the previous owner of Emesa. Alshloul, who emigrated from Jordan in 1988, bought the restaurant with a partner in 2005 and became the sole owner in 2015. (The original owner was a relative of Frank Pepe, owner of the Wooster Square pizzeria.) For Alshloul, the restaurant was a part-time venture. He’s a biomedical engineer and owns a company that sells medical devices in the Middle East and North Africa. He managed the restaurant with his son, but when his son lost interest in the restaurant, he looked for a buyer.

Saloumi plans to offer a mix of dishes at the restaurant, including traditional pizzas from its early days as well as a selection of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dishes. His stints in restaurants across the Middle East expanded his repertoire, he says. “From each country I took some experience,” he says. “Each country is different, and you learn something from each country.”

His son, Ayman, helps out in the restaurant but is also studying biology at Southern Connecticut State University with an eye on a career in research. His daughter Ghena, 19, studies biology at the University of Connecticut, but has no career plans yet. Another daughter, Jena, 13, is still in school, and the youngest, Eleen, is still a toddler.

Photo; IRIS-Saloumi family_072221_27.
Mohamed Alshloul, the previous owner of the restaurant, with Mazen Saloumi.

IRIS & Co-sponsors Welcome African Families Seeking Asylum

March 2020 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

On the evening of February 7, a flurry of snow greeted a Greyhound bus as it pulled into the station on Union Avenue in New Haven. The arrival marked the end of a 53-hour ride from McAllen, Tex., and, for two families on board, an odyssey that started years earlier in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their journeys brought them to Brazil, then to South America’s northern reaches, across the deadly Darién Gap, and up through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border.

At the bus station, staff from IRIS and members of two co-sponsorship groups welcomed the families and took them to their new homes In New Haven and Madison. Both families are seeking asylum in the United States and have received temporary parole to stay in the country while their applications are processed.

The arrival of the asylum-seekers presents a departure for both IRIS and its co-sponsors. In the past they’ve received refugees who arrive with their immigration status settled and government support provided until they land on their feet. Unlike refugees, asylum seekers are not immediately authorized to work, leaving them financially dependent on their co-sponsors and IRIS for a year or longer. IRIS has helped asylum seekers already in New Haven by offering them case management services, but this was the first time they’d be co-sponsoring them.

In late December, IRIS received word that Catholic Charities needed help with an influx of African families at the border. In their shelters, the charities had many asylum-seekers who had no place to go.

“We responded immediately that we will take five families,” said Chris George, director of IRIS. He arrived at that number, he said, “based on a combination of factors; our capacity, what is it going to cost, how many community groups do I think can help us out, and what amount of families would have a significant impact? IRIS has more resources in terms of community support and private funding than most refugee resettlement agencies. I felt that this would be a good way to use these resources.”

IRIS remains willing to accept up to five families, but as of now, Catholic Charities has needed to place only two. On February 2, Alexine Casanova, IRIS Director of Case Management, flew to Texas to meet the families, explain the co-sponsorship process, and arrange travel to New Haven. Because plans were made on short notice, it was too expensive to buy one-way air fares, so they all came by bus, with Casanova — a fluent French speaker — joining them on the trip through the South to Atlanta and up the East Coast to New Haven.

Before Casanova left for Texas, IRIS had reached out to its community co-sponsors. George cautioned that although this would be similar to refugee resettlement—they’d still have to find and furnish an apartment, provide interpreters and cultural orientation, and introduce them to available services—the co-sponsors would also need to support them for a year or longer.

“Employment authorization is a huge difference between asylum seekers and refugees,” George said. “They are not eligible for cash assistance, food stamps, and health care insurance. We can find places that provide free health care and we can connect them to food pantries, but who’s going to pay their rent and cover their utilities and all the other expenses? All that has to come from either IRIS or a community group.”

The Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement (JCARR) in New Haven and the First Congregational Church in Madison offered to take in the families. The Angolan family, father, mother, and three daughters would stay in New Haven with support from JCARR. The Congolese family, parents and a baby girl, are in Madison.

Both groups have volunteer networks that include retirees, as well as such professionals as physicians, social workers, financial planners, and teachers who can offer their services.

Jean Silk, who leads JCARR, said the decision to accept a family was made quickly, but required consent of higher authorities at its five member synagogues and the Jewish Federation. Despite concerns over the financial commitment, JCARR, which has co-sponsored four refugee families, agreed to take in the Angolan family, who fled religious persecution at home.

“There wasn’t a soul in the group who said no,” Silk said. “We have to. The Torah says 36 times that we shall welcome the stranger because we were once the strangers.”

The family has settled into an apartment in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. Their oldest daughter, who is seven, has enrolled in kindergarten in a public school and her parents are eager to learn English.

The church in Madison took in the family who left a Congo wracked by rebel attacks. About 10 years ago, said Todd Vetter, senior minister, the church co-sponsored a refugee family from Iraq and last year went through training with IRIS to accept another family.

The Congolese family is living in a vacant in-law apartment while the church seeks a more permanent place in nearby Branford. Branford, Vetter said, is more suitable for its access to public transportation and the town’s programs in education and English as a Second Language.

“We were emotionally invested in helping someone and it didn’t matter whether they were a refugee family or an asylum-seeking family. The lack of access to public assistance and the ineligibility to work add a layer of complexity we’re still working through,” Vetter said. The church board approved the decision and a core group of volunteers prepared to receive the family. “There was universal approval and extraordinary enthusiasm for it. Every now and then, churches need to renew that sense of why we’re here and what it means to be a church.”

Standing up for Refugees

March 2020 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

A group formed in the wake of the 2016 election moves from protests to co-sponsoring a family.

It started with the defacing of a poster that declared solidarity with Muslims, the disabled, immigrants and other groups that face bias and discrimination. Just over three years later, a group in the Lower Connecticut River Valley that arose in the wake of the 2016 election has gone from activism to preparing to co-sponsor a refugee family with IRIS.

The poster was defaced after the 2016 election. It appeared at the home of an East Haddam resident and quoted civil-rights activist Shaun King, “Dear Muslims, immigrants, women, disabled, LGBTQ and all people of color, we love you boldly and proudly. We will endure.”

Before long someone had scrawled “Trump 2016” over it.

“It took a very nonpolitical message of support and politicized it,” said Wendy Fish, a resident of Deep River. “Someone had to do something about this.”

Within 48 hours, residents of the Lower Connecticut River Valley had spread the word through friends, churches, and synagogues and gathered a crowd of 350 for a two-mile march from Chester to Deep River to send their message of “support and advocacy for the dignity and human rights of all.”

They didn’t stop there. Calling themselves The Valley Stands Up (TVSU), the organizers applied for nonprofit status and organized book clubs and talks. They created six committees in charge of everything from finance to legislative action. They protested President Trump’s Muslim ban. They lobbied the state legislature on immigration issues. They signed on to a ProPublica project to document hate crimes.

In the summer of 2018, at an event related to the upcoming elections, TVSU organizers crossed paths with Will Kneerim, IRIS’s Director of Employment and Education. They invited him to speak to their group, which he did in January 2019, when he invited them to participate in the annual Run for Refugees. Somewhere along the way, Kneerim suggested that the group partner with IRIS to co-sponsor a refugee family. (The IRIS co-sponsorship program enables community groups like TVSU to welcome and resettle a refugee family to their area of the state.)

“It was easy to see that they had a lot of momentum, and a lot of very smart, very involved individuals,” Kneerim said. The group also had a diversity of age, skills and experience. “It’s a wonderful thing to connect a family with a co-sponsor group that has the possibility of having high school kids tutor kids who are entering school and parents who can more easily explain the challenges of paying an oil bill in the winter in Connecticut. We want people near retirement age who can pass down their wisdom in dealing with a school system or handling a doctor’s appointment. The makeup of TVSU made me feel that they had the diversity, the interest, and the passion to get involved.”

“We started thinking about that as a group,” said Mark Pierce, a retired physician and medical researcher, and one of the group’s founders. “The big issue was recruiting the members. That took a while.”

“It’s so important to find a community of people who are willing to commit to this and can commit a significant amount of time,” said Fish, who works as a technical writer.

The commitment means finding an apartment that’s affordable, near public transportation, and accessible to jobs and grocery stores. The group needs to furnish the apartment, typically with two or three weeks’ notice. It also means raising money to help pay for the family’s initial expenses in rent, utilities, and groceries. They also help the the parents find jobs and enroll their children in school. There are also scheduled check-ins with the family.

Pierce reached out to members of TVSU and to local churches and synagogues. In the end, TVSU recruited a team that included teachers, social workers, a physician, a real estate developer, and teachers of English as a Second Language. “You can’t believe the expertise of the people who have come forward,” Pierce said. Members of the group recently came to New Haven for a training session at IRIS.

In addition to skills, the group wanted some diversity that included people with children as well as retirees “who haven’t overcommitted,” said Paula Merrick, a semi-retired accountant.

The group has yet to be “greenlit,” IRIS lingo for vetted and approved. They were working on their application and fulfilling all the requirements to become a co-sponsor when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Connecticut. They have paused their preparations, due to the current public-health crisis, but are eager to resume as soon as they can.

Once they are greenlit, they will be offered the opportunity to resettle a newly arriving refugee family, and will have 48 hours to respond. They’ll have to consider the size of the family and whether there are any medical issues that may affect their decision. If they say yes, they’ll have a couple of weeks to prepare an apartment for them. And they do this in service of their mission.

“It’s a basic humanitarian impulse,” Pierce said. “We want to help people. We were offended by some of the things that we have seen related to immigration, like the family separation and the incarceration of non-accompanied children. This is a tangible way to do something in this area.”

And, said Fish, it has created new bonds and strengthened existing bonds within the valley towns.

“This is an outlet to work for your community,” she said, of the individuals, churches, and synagogues that have come together. “This is about taking care of each other.”

Bahati, Refugee and Manager of IRIS Youth Programs and Education Advocacy

March 2020 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

Bahati Kanyamanza started organizing young people as a refugee at a camp in Uganda. Now he’s applying the lessons learned to youth in New Haven.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Bahati Kanyamanza sat in the cafeteria at the New Haven Free Public Library on Elm Street with IRIS staff and students from the Yale Refugee Project.

It was a weekly meeting to plan for IRIS youth programs the Yale students run for high school students, and Kanyamanza was there to learn about the program and the people involved. He started on January 29 as manager of IRIS youth programs and education advocacy and he’s still listening and learning about IRIS and the New Haven immigrant and refugee community. He’s visited IRIS programs and schools the students attend and has spoken at New Haven schools about refugees and immigration.

“One thing I’ve realized through the work I’ve been doing is that young people don’t know or appreciate the opportunities they have here, compared to young people around the world,” he said. “One of the things I want to emphasize is creating a program where young people learn as much as possible to benefit from all these opportunities around them.”

Kanyamanza has been organizing young people since 2005, when he was living in a refugee camp in Uganda and he and his friends wanted to do something about the forced and early marriages, prostitution, and drug use, as well as lack of access to education, that they saw around them.

“When we realized this was happening in 2005, we said we’re going to mobilize the young people to do productive work like farming, co-curricular activities, and sports,” he said.

They enlisted young people to help older camp residents with farming and household chores. They secured a plot of land from the government and started a primary school. In a nearby town they found a cheap house that they converted into a dormitory so students from the camp could attend high school. “We felt that education was the only way that would help us solve our problems in the future,” he said.

Kanyamanza finished high school in 2006 and went on to get a college degree, then a law degree while living in the camp. In 2016, after a six-year process, he came to the United States as a refugee with his wife and daughter.

He grew up in the town of Jomba in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His family—he was the oldest of nine children—were subsistence farmers, growing bananas, potatoes, yams, peas, sugar cane, and sorghum to make beer. Anything left over, they sold to pay for school and clothing.

In 1996 rebels raided his village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, taking him captive and forcing him and other boys to haul away stolen food. Until he escaped three months later, his captors required him to do domestic chores, like washing their clothes. He was shot during his escape and at a clinic met a woman who took him in, until her village was attacked. For the next three years, he wandered from village to village, moving on after each rebel attack until he landed in the Kyangwali camp in Uganda in 1999. There he reunited with his father, who took care of him until his death in 2006. He wouldn’t see his mother and siblings for another 15 years.

In the United States, Kanyamanza and his young family settled in Elizabeth, N.J., until he enrolled in a program in sustainable development at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. He received his master’s degree in 2019 and took a job at a Boys & Girls Club in Dallas, Texas, before coming to IRIS.

At IRIS, he replaces Dennis Wilson, who’ll be transitioning to Director of Education.

“One of the clearly outstanding things about Bahati is the work he has done with youth and education,” Wilson said. “When he was a refugee in Uganda, Bahati was essentially running an NGO that supported and educated other youth who were in the camps.”

Along with encouraging immigrant and refugee youths to take advantage of opportunities in New Haven, Kanyamanza has another goal, character development.

“Having worked with young people for 15 years, I see our communities can prosper if you have the right leaders,” he said. “These are the future leaders we are working with. My belief is that the better we prepare them, the better the society ahead of us.”

A Home of Their Own

January 2020 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

On December 25th of last year, Laye Camara and Fatoumata Sylla, along with their two children, moved into their new home in New Haven. They had arrived in New Haven just over three years earlier with the help of IRIS, after a decade as refugees in Morocco. They are the first IRIS clients to own a home through the partnership of Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven and its Shoreline community build group, Raise the Roof.

“This is my home, it’s my home,” Camara said of the two-story home he helped build in the city’s Hill neighborhood. It was a welcome change from the two-bedroom apartment they lived in nearby. They have more room and the monthly mortgage is less than they were paying in rent.

“It’s a very nice house. Thank you, God,” said Sylla, as she prepared a stew of fish, cassava, and peanut sauce in her spotless kitchen on a recent Sunday afternoon. “We came here and in three years we have a new house. I am going to bless God.”

Both are from Guinea, a former French colony in West Africa where coups, military rule, and political violence have been the norm. Camara was a student when political problems forced him to leave.

Since arriving in the United States, Camara has worked in a restaurant and a local medical device company. He is now a driver for Uber. Sylla runs her own hair salon in West Haven, specializing in African braids.

Starting last summer, Camara, Sylla, and friends contributed 400 hours of sweat equity to the three-bedroom house. Working alongside Habitat staff and volunteers, Camara wielded hammers, saws, and screwdrivers from Mondays to Wednesdays, then spent the rest of the week, including Sundays, driving for Uber. With his flexible schedule, Camara takes the children, six-year-old Marie-Pierre and three-year-old Yousouf, to school and medical appointments.

“They had a balancing act going on because they had two small children,” said Frank Walsh, a volunteer with Raise the Roof who served as the family’s partner on the construction project. “It must have been stressful for them to get in the hours and meet family requirements and job requirements. They certainly managed.”

The homebuilding was a joint effort of Habitat and Raise the Roof, which has sponsored and helped build 16 homes over 16 years. Prospective homeowners with Habitat contribute sweat equity on their home and on neighbors’ homes. After completing the required 400 hours and homeownership classes, families purchase a Habitat home with a 25-year, no-interest mortgage.

Houses are built from scratch, Walsh said, following a standard Habitat footprint—two stories, three bedrooms, with a kitchen and a living and dining area on the first floor. Both parents are still learning English, so when it came time to apply to Habitat for Humanity, they got help from John Nihoul, a retired engineer who has volunteered with IRIS as an interpreter, driver, and cultural companion. He met Camara at the IRIS offices when he heard him speaking French to his daughter. Nihoul is Belgian and French is his first language. Camara and his family had recently arrived, so Nihoul helped by interpreting as needed. When Sylla was in the hospital for Yousouf’s birth, Nihoul took care of Marie-Pierre. Although he has since moved away from New Haven, the family still calls to wish him well on holidays and on his birthday.

“He has quite a history of rising up to the occasion,” Walsh said of Camara. “It’s a wonderful story of how in the few years since he came to this country, he now owns a home. That is remarkable in and of itself.”

Blessing of winter items for Refugees

December 2019 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

Voices rose in song, love, and understanding in a Yale Divinity School chapel on November 19, as 100 people gathered to bless winter garments collected for refugees and immigrants in the New Haven community.

Since the fall of 2016, the Andover Newton Seminary at Yale, in partnership with IRIS, has held a winter clothing drive. For a second time, the seminary and IRIS joined in a service of blessing in Marquand Chapel. The gifts to be blessed included coats and fleece jackets, as well as wool hats knitted by seminary students. The seminary, originally based in Newton, Mass., merged with the divinity school in 2017.

“Today we are acknowledging the Warm Welcome project where our knitters knit year-round to provide warm clothing for our IRIS partners,” said seminary Dean Sarah Drummond, as she opened the half-hour service. “It is a time to celebrate life and love.”

The blessing took place during one of the daily worship services that are held while classes are in session, said chapel director Emilie Casey. At last year’s blessing, Ashley Makar, outreach coordinator at IRIS and a graduate of the divinity school, offered a sermon. Afterwards, said Casey, “there was a time for the worshipers to write notes of warm welcome that were attached to the items of clothing that were distributed to clients of IRIS.”

For this year’s blessing, Makar and her colleague Laurel McCormack, a current divinity student and IRIS staff member, brought members of the IRIS young women’s leadership group. The high school and college students from Congo, Afghanistan, and Iraq meet twice a week for college and career prep classes, and for workshops related to leadership among women of color. The young women offered readings from the Scripture and the Qu’ran, as well as personal reflections. Divine Mahoundi and Noor Roomi, students at Gateway Community College, shared their perspectives on each other’s religion.

“We have found similar messages in the Qu’ran and the Bible,” said Mahoundi, a Christian from the Republic of Congo. “You have your religion and I have my religion. But let’s understand and love each other.”

“When we are far from each other, there are problems,” said Roomi, a Muslim woman from Iraq. “When we come together, we learn from each other.”

Throughout the service, the Marquand Gospel Choir, made up of students and faculty, performed several hymns. Many were written by choir director Mark Miller, a lecturer in Sacred Music at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music.

The service closed with the blessing offered by Ana Kelsey-Powell and Jathan Martin, students at the Andover Newton Seminary.

“God, we come before you today asking that you would bless us with abundance,” said Kelsey-Powell. “Bless us, oh God, with an abundance of gratitude that we might be mindful of our privileges and advocate for others in all times and places.”

“Oh, gracious God, bless these garments with the warmth of your love. May it be, for those who wear them, a symbol of community support and solidarity,” said Martin.

They concluded by asking the congregation to raise their arms towards the clothing as a sign of the blessing.

“In this service,” said Casey, “our hope was to lift up these donated items and the people that offered them and the people that received them, offer them up to God in prayer.”

Fardeen & Spozhmai become Citizens

November 2019 | Written by John Curtis | Photography © John Curtis

When Fardeen Shahnan was five years old, his family left Afghanistan for a safer haven in neighboring Pakistan. Fifteen years later, after the U.S. invasion routed the Taliban, the family returned to Kabul. Unable to find a job in his field of civil engineering, Shahnan went to work as an interpreter for the U.S. military and military contractors. Because of his work, he accompanied troops on patrol, he began receiving threats.

“We were receiving calls from the Taliban, ‘we are going to kill you,’” Shahnan said. “They had my name, my picture, all my information.”

Based on his work for the military, Shahnan applied for a special immigrant visa. He and his pregnant wife, Spozhmai, came to New Haven in February 2014, where they were resettled by IRIS.

On Nov. 7, Fardeen and Spozhmai became citizens in a naturalization ceremony at the federal courthouse on the New Haven Green.

“I’m feeling good, I’m excited,” Fardeen said after the ceremony. He and Spozhmai were joined by their 3-year-old son Yaqub. Their 5-year-old, Yusuf, was in school. Spozhmai is 37 weeks pregnant with their third son and Fardeen works in a New Haven hotel as an inspector in the housekeeping department.

“It’s great,” he said of the family’s life in New Haven. “People are so welcoming to refugees.”

In his remarks at the ceremony, Judge Robert M. Spector, welcomed the 32 new citizens from 19 countries, advised them of their responsibilities as citizens, and encouraged them to hold on to their heritage and culture.

“Those are the things that make you who you are. We don’t ask you to leave those things at the doorstep,” Spector said. “Your identity is not something you give up when you become a citizen of this country. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that.”