美国国家公共电台 NPR Living In America 101: When Refugees Arrive, What Do They Need To Learn?

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: 

While the Syrian refugee crisis gets much of the attention these days, newcomers arrive every day in the United States from all over the world. And when they get here, there is a lot to learn - language, culture, the healthcare system. To figure it all out, there are teachers to try to help. Gabrielle Emanuel of the NPR Ed team reports.

GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE 1: I want to tell you about someone I met in the airport. I was standing 2 there in Washington-Reagan on my way back from a reporting trip, debating whether to buy a snack. That's when a tall guy with a round face approached me. In a thick accent, he asked me to help him find his bag. He told me he'd just taken his first plane trip. As we walked to baggage claim, I learned his name - Edward Murinzi - and that's he's a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He just arrived to begin his new life.

EDWARD MURINZI: How will I start? You get scared. How will I manage?

EMANUEL: From finding his bag to finding his apartment and finding a job, there was so much for him to learn. I remember he thanked me for being his airport teacher, but it seemed to me he needed a teacher for the rest of America.

CLAIRE MUKUNDENTE: My name is Claire Mukundente.

EMANUEL: Halfway 3 across the country, in Chicago, I met a woman. And that could be her job description - not for Edward, but for many others. Claire works for the Pan-African Association and spends her days visiting new refugees and helping 4 them adapt to a new country. Today, she's heading into a well-worn apartment building on the city's north side. On the second floor, Alexia Mukambalaga and six of her family members share a two-bedroom apartment. They arrived two weeks ago from Congo, by way of Rwanda and Niger.

(CROSSTALK)

EMANUEL: The family crowds around a folding table for lunch, some standing, others sitting.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken, laughter).

EMANUEL: They tell Claire, food in America tastes like pineapples; it's so sweet. She says, food is always one of the first lessons - how to get it, how to cook it and what's healthy. Claire helps this family figure out what goes in the freezer and the fridge and how to use a stove. Claire says many Congolese have spent more than a decade in refugee camps, so a lot of the stuff in a kitchen is brand new to them - grocery stores, too.

MUKUNDENTE: Shopping can be a big deal, especially for your own food.

EMANUEL: Then she moves on to other lessons - social norms and gender 5 dynamics 6, the banking 7 system and school registration 8.

MUKUNDENTE: We talk about almost everything.

EMANUEL: Claire says these families have learned a lot shuttling between countries and refugee camps. But when they get to a place like Chicago, many of those skills don't translate.

Do you think of yourself as a teacher?

MUKUNDENTE: I see them as my family. I see them like me when I came.

EMANUEL: Clair fled Rwanda during the genocide. And after traveling through seven countries, she arrived in Chicago. It was rough. She cleaned hotel rooms and scrambled 10 to learn English and find daycare for her three kids. Ten years ago, she decided 11 to start teaching other refugees what she'd learned. But not all refugees have someone like Claire. Three months after I met Edward at the airport, I visited his one-bedroom apartment. It's about 30 minutes outside of Washington, and he shares it with four other refugees. He told me, soon after arriving, he realized he needed to be his own teacher, so he started observing everything.

MURINZI: I try to observe very silently.

EMANUEL: How to read a map and a bank statement - he taught himself a lot of that. But Edward says there was more. He calls it invisible lessons - ideas. The biggest one?

MURINZI: Time...

EMANUEL: Time.

MURINZI: ...Was paramount 12 to every success in America.

EMANUEL: Edwards says that during his 20 years in a refugee camp in Uganda, time had never been linked to money. Just being a person, you got a food ration 9. But here, he got a job. He was paid hourly as a line worker. He told me things have been hard. America hasn't quite been the promised land he expected.

MURINZI: I remember the story in the Bible - the Exodus 13.

EMANUEL: Back in the refugee camp, he always thought life would be easy in America, like the biblical land of milk and honey. But now, he finds himself remembering that the Israelites struggled as refugees and newcomers. Eventually, though, they learned to adapt to life in a new land, and he says he will, too. Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR News.