A Joyful Bustle to Get Ready for Guests: Syrian Refugees
LANCASTER, Pa. — A dull gray house on a hillside had to become a home. Another Syrian family of refugees would be arriving soon, and this empty, echoing old place needed to be readied in welcome.
The word had trickled down from the State Department’s refugee resettlement program. A mother, a father, his brother and four children, the youngest just 10. Muslims, traveling from Turkey. Flying into New York in the next few days.
Their imminent arrival explains all the commotion inside this slate-colored house in the small city of Lancaster, in south-central Pennsylvania. The state may have gone to Donald J. Trump, who likened the Syrian resettlement program to a “a great Trojan horse” for terrorists. But he isn’t president yet.
That is why volunteers and staff members from the Church World Service, a nationwide nonprofit that helps the government take in refugees fleeing violence and persecution, are cleaning cabinets, carting furniture and doing their best to make things homey. Just not too homey.
“Doing too much can make a family feel like it’s someone else’s home,” says Josh Digrugilliers, 26, the group’s local housing specialist, whose crowded key chain jangles in reminder of all the refugees in need.
He scours a government checklist of housing requirements for a resettlement, mindful that whatever he spends is deducted from a refugee’s one-time government grant of no more than $1,125. A family’s combined grants must cover its rent and other expenses until the nonprofit has helped the adults acquire Social Security numbers and jobs.
The used furniture being trundled in reflects the emphasis on economy. Some comes from the donations hoarded in a cluttered garage, where a “Welcome Home” sign in Arabic is on display. Other items were acquired cheap — chairs for $5, tables for $20 — at Root’s Old Mill Flea Market.
New paint and flooring give the house the smell of a fresh start, thanks to the landlord, John Liang, who came to Lancaster as a child, one of the “boat people” who fled Vietnam on dangerously overcrowded vessels after the war. He spent a year in a notoriously hellish refugee camp before coming to Lancaster, where he and his family delivered newspapers, shoveled snow, did sewing and assembly-line work. Anything.
Now 45, Mr. Liang works overtime at a nearby Kellogg’s cereal plant and manages several properties he owns, including this house, which he wants to be — just so. “There are other people living a lot harder, tougher, than what I went through,” he says.
A History of Acceptance
Mr. Digrugilliers applies his checklist to the kitchen, where the counter is crowded with mismatched dinnerware, new appliances and clutches of flatware bound with rubber bands. Draped over the oven handle is a dish towel printed with a calendar for 1968, another tumultuous year.
Then to the bedrooms upstairs. The children’s twin beds, bought at discount from the Lancaster Mattress Company, are covered with the black G of the Georgia Bulldogs, the winged wheel of the Detroit Red Wings and other invitations to sleep in cocoons of American culture.
Armed with a list of what he needs, he and a colleague, Orion Hernandez, climb into a beat-up van reeking of McDonald’s. They head to Walmart, where Mr. Digrugilliers recognizes a thin man — a Nepalese refugee who resettled here two years ago — leaving as he is walking in.
“Hey, how are you?” Mr. Digrugilliers calls out. “Hello,” the man calls back.
Such encounters happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office here.
Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States.
Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Ms. Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.
“We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same — until we hear something different,” she says.
Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans …”
Mr. Alfayadh himself arrived from Iraq in 2010. Though trained as an engineer, he worked at a Lowe’s — customer service, paint, lawn and garden — and as a substitute teacher before being hired to help other refugees. He is accustomed now to urgent late-night calls from fresh arrivals unfamiliar with, say, locks on doors.
New clients are often at their breaking point, uncertain what to make of this exotic land called Pennsylvania. Knowing how difficult it can be for anyone in crisis to see ahead — to jobs, school, a future — Mr. Alfayadh says he tries to impart a simple message:
“O.K. Tomorrow will be better.”
At Walmart, Mr. Digrugilliers and Mr. Hernandez commandeer two shopping carts each and begin racing through the cavernous store like contestants on the old “Supermarket Sweep” game show, grabbing specific items, down to umbrellas and sanitary pads. His purchases complete, Mr. Digrugilliers mounts his cart and wheels it into the dusk like a skateboard, exuberant with hope that some refugee family’s journey will be just as smooth.
It is not. The Church World Service soon receives word that this particular family’s resettlement has been delayed — a not-uncommon development that could be caused by something as simple as a spike in an asylum-seeker’s blood pressure at the airport.
But there is no shortage of tempest-tossed refugees. Mr. Alfayadh’s supervisor, Valentina Ross, remembers that another Syrian family is arriving in a few days: a father, a mother, three daughters and a boy. They will need a home.
Holiday Spirit Abounds
Today is the day. A holiday spirit has taken hold in downtown Lancaster, with a colossal Christmas tree glittering in Penn Square and ancient brick houses swathed in festive lights.
A mile away, a Church World Service caseworker named Gaby Garver, a focused college graduate of 22, is collecting provisions for the new family at a food pantry. Signing some paperwork, she says, “And no meat products for the family, please.”
As Ms. Garver prepares to leave with milk, vegetables and other items, a pantry volunteer asks: “Since you didn’t take any meat, would you like some extra rice?”
Yes, please.
More food is needed. Ms. Garver guides her 1999 Pontiac through the cold rain to the Save-A-Lot supermarket, where many goods sit in cut-open cardboard cases. She leaves 10 minutes later with bread, fruit, beans, sugar, tea and a receipt for $26.58, to be deducted from the family’s grant money.
Hunched against the weather, the slight young woman makes two trips carrying the food into the drab gray house. After stocking the refrigerator and cabinet, she conducts a last-minute inspection. The fridge is cold. The tap has hot water. The burners on the gas stove ignite.
Everything upstairs is fine as well, with even more homey touches added. New pajamas and towels. New clothes hangers. New picture frames, showing stock photos of cheerful families, on the shelves. And on one twin bed, a child’s soccer ball, still in its box.
Hugs and Handshakes
The rain has stopped, a slice of moon risen. Ms. Garver is driving now to the home of a Syrian family that arrived seven months ago. The mother has cooked a hot meal for the refugee family that is about to land any minute in New York, a good three-hour drive away.
Inside, where five young children zip and waddle about, the prepared meal sits in expectation on the dining-room table: a large aluminum tray bountiful with chicken and rice and a huge bowl of salad.
The oldest child, Mohamad, 14, helps Ms. Garver carry the food out to her vehicle, and she thanks him. He responds with the formality given to a new language being tried on for size.
“You’re welcome,” the boy says, and smiles.
Returning to the gray house, Ms. Garver fumbles in the dark to open the door while holding the tray of still-hot food. When she returns with the salad bowl, she stoops to collect a clump of junk mail, including a come-on addressed to “Our Neighbor.”
Later tonight, Ms. Garver and Mr. Alfayadh will drive a Ford van to Lancaster Airport, where they will meet two representatives from the local Islamic Center. Soon after, another van will arrive from Kennedy International Airport.
Hugs and handshakes will be exchanged in the December air. Luggage will be collected. And six Syrian refugees will be driven the 20 minutes to a warm home perfumed by warm food, in a city made radiant by the multicolored lights of the season.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/us/syrian-refugees.html?_r=0
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