I see the dead
sometimes...
many times
in my dreams they come
and at times linger on
even in my dreams
i know they are long dead
but they don't scare me
not more than a mice would
I saw my granmother once
my aunt propping pillows
so that she could sit up
she was back
and the mattress, rolled over since she died, was being spread again
gangajali dusted the room
lit some incense too
and my grandmother looked around
i caught her eye
and we looked at each other for a long time
i wanted to ask her
how was the land of the dead?
why do you return?
And will you go back again?
Sometimes the dead call out to me
and I listen
the calling faint and muffled
and I wake up
and find nobody
They are the ghosts of my past
dead long ago when I was just a child
now they revisit me
and we talk
I am always in the old rooms where they once lived
where my grandmother chewed her betel nuts
and my grandfather read his law books
They don't come to where I live
perhaps they would feel misplaced too like me
if they did
so i travel to them
And I long for those conversations
but they haven't come in a long time
and I wonder why
And I call out to them
come visit me
come to me from whereever you are
and let's talk about home and the past
I am a dweller of the past
like them I do not belong anywhere
like them i am restless too
they are the living dead
and i am a walking ghost
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
the smells of my past
the smell is a connector
everytime the rain falls and the grass is soaked
and the earth is drenched
the smell seeps in my house, my lungs and my soul
and my spirit dances with complete abandon
drunk with the smell
enchanted with its richness
it is same smell, the smell of my being
I breathe in too much
and quickly too
and keep doing it
Because I know soon the sky will be clear
and the light will pierce through the intricate web of dreams and memories
I wove in my drunken stupor
and the dance will come to a halt
the cruel, brutal light
so bright it hurts the eyes
and scorches the soul
it rips apart my little world
like a hot rod through flesh
then I turn inwards
to shut off that light
i rummage through the stuff in my old suitcase
a black one, the straps coming off
the buckles rusted
i sniff through the papers, i scan the pictures
somewhere in those old letters, crinkled books, faded photos
I live
drugged by the weak smells
Someplace in those little pockets of the old suitcase
my childhood lingers
waiting to be rescued
that suitcase, tucked away in the closet
with all its smells and sights
is my escape
and my solace
a retreat and a refuge
everytime the rain falls and the grass is soaked
and the earth is drenched
the smell seeps in my house, my lungs and my soul
and my spirit dances with complete abandon
drunk with the smell
enchanted with its richness
it is same smell, the smell of my being
I breathe in too much
and quickly too
and keep doing it
Because I know soon the sky will be clear
and the light will pierce through the intricate web of dreams and memories
I wove in my drunken stupor
and the dance will come to a halt
the cruel, brutal light
so bright it hurts the eyes
and scorches the soul
it rips apart my little world
like a hot rod through flesh
then I turn inwards
to shut off that light
i rummage through the stuff in my old suitcase
a black one, the straps coming off
the buckles rusted
i sniff through the papers, i scan the pictures
somewhere in those old letters, crinkled books, faded photos
I live
drugged by the weak smells
Someplace in those little pockets of the old suitcase
my childhood lingers
waiting to be rescued
that suitcase, tucked away in the closet
with all its smells and sights
is my escape
and my solace
a retreat and a refuge
Monday, April 23, 2007
the unseenamerica exhibit
When I attended the unseenamerica NYS class, I did not anticipate so many would turn up at the refugee center to see the pictures. The pictures were hung in the hallway and it was like a journey of its own...offering a glimpse into a refugee's life in a strange land. The connections with the past were so visible...the eagerness to merge with the new also visible in the smiles.
And i went around comparing the similarities in my own little house with those in those haunting pictures.
The story was published in Utica Observer-Dispatch April 21. I am copying the text here.
Refugees capture lives through lens
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA- The photograph of a refugee sleeping at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees taken by Bosnian refugee Tatjana Kulalic touched Hamilton College student Rita Tran.
Tran was among those Friday taking in the unseenamerica NYS project on display at the refugee center. The caption of Kulalic's photo described how refugees are always waiting for something.
"It hit me that you are always waiting," Tran said. "The pictures are so simple yet they tell you a lot."
For many community members, the exhibit of about 50 photos shot by 15 refugees offered insight into the struggles of adapting to a new culture, new weather and new people. Hamilton College student Emily Powell said the pictures showed how hard it is for refugees trying to cross over to a different country and another culture.
unseenamerica NYS, a project that gives cameras to working-class people so they can document their lives, worked with refugees in the Utica area to put together the exhibit. It is open for public viewing until Memorial Day.
The pictures show everyday life in a refugee household, pictures of snow and the city of Utica.
Sylvia Wilson, a visiting chaplain from Atlanta at Hamilton College, said she had heard of the strong refugee presence in the area. She learned about their lives through the photos that hung in the hallway at the refugee center.
"They are beautiful snapshots of these people and their lives," she said.
All the pictures had captions underneath them written by refugees describing the scene or the context.
Joan Carlon, who came from Syracuse, said the descriptions were powerful.
"It is compelling ... to give up everything and try to change," she said.
Connie Frisbee Houde, a photographer who helped with the project, said she loved the diversity communicated through the descriptions.
"You get a view into the person who took these," she said. "They are looking at it in a different way."
Utica is home to many refugees from around the world, and refugees make up about 15 percent of the city's population. Through projects such as unseenamerica NYS, the refugee center is trying to showcase the region's new residents to the community, said Daniel Sargent, director of multicultural affairs at the center.
One of the refugee center's missions is to help refugees lead a dignified life and Sargent said the exhibit supports that mission. A refugee's life is not just about struggles, and they can be artists, too, he said.
"It is going to add sophistication to the refugees," he said. "Rarely do we see refugees having a sublime vision."
Sidi Chivala, whose pictures were on display, said he was excited to see so many people at the show.
To him, the photographs served as a bridge to the community and helped local residents understand where refugees are coming from.
"People know who I am," he said. "Now they will have a background."
And i went around comparing the similarities in my own little house with those in those haunting pictures.
The story was published in Utica Observer-Dispatch April 21. I am copying the text here.
Refugees capture lives through lens
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA- The photograph of a refugee sleeping at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees taken by Bosnian refugee Tatjana Kulalic touched Hamilton College student Rita Tran.
Tran was among those Friday taking in the unseenamerica NYS project on display at the refugee center. The caption of Kulalic's photo described how refugees are always waiting for something.
"It hit me that you are always waiting," Tran said. "The pictures are so simple yet they tell you a lot."
For many community members, the exhibit of about 50 photos shot by 15 refugees offered insight into the struggles of adapting to a new culture, new weather and new people. Hamilton College student Emily Powell said the pictures showed how hard it is for refugees trying to cross over to a different country and another culture.
unseenamerica NYS, a project that gives cameras to working-class people so they can document their lives, worked with refugees in the Utica area to put together the exhibit. It is open for public viewing until Memorial Day.
The pictures show everyday life in a refugee household, pictures of snow and the city of Utica.
Sylvia Wilson, a visiting chaplain from Atlanta at Hamilton College, said she had heard of the strong refugee presence in the area. She learned about their lives through the photos that hung in the hallway at the refugee center.
"They are beautiful snapshots of these people and their lives," she said.
All the pictures had captions underneath them written by refugees describing the scene or the context.
Joan Carlon, who came from Syracuse, said the descriptions were powerful.
"It is compelling ... to give up everything and try to change," she said.
Connie Frisbee Houde, a photographer who helped with the project, said she loved the diversity communicated through the descriptions.
"You get a view into the person who took these," she said. "They are looking at it in a different way."
Utica is home to many refugees from around the world, and refugees make up about 15 percent of the city's population. Through projects such as unseenamerica NYS, the refugee center is trying to showcase the region's new residents to the community, said Daniel Sargent, director of multicultural affairs at the center.
One of the refugee center's missions is to help refugees lead a dignified life and Sargent said the exhibit supports that mission. A refugee's life is not just about struggles, and they can be artists, too, he said.
"It is going to add sophistication to the refugees," he said. "Rarely do we see refugees having a sublime vision."
Sidi Chivala, whose pictures were on display, said he was excited to see so many people at the show.
To him, the photographs served as a bridge to the community and helped local residents understand where refugees are coming from.
"People know who I am," he said. "Now they will have a background."
echoes...
"Whenever I leave Bosnia,
I feel I am guilty of something;
I feel time, not contentment,
And it's worse
Than the worst injection.
I have several Bosnian friends
who fall ill when they leave the country.
In Bosnia nothing disgusts me.
I could eat from the floor here in Bosnia."
by Bosnian poet Goran Samardzic
I feel I am guilty of something;
I feel time, not contentment,
And it's worse
Than the worst injection.
I have several Bosnian friends
who fall ill when they leave the country.
In Bosnia nothing disgusts me.
I could eat from the floor here in Bosnia."
by Bosnian poet Goran Samardzic
the spirit shall run amuck
ahh...the people, so many of them
they tire me
i feel awkward
Often times I don't know how to act
or to react
so many personalities
they split me
and stifle me
i feel gagged
and choked too
my spirit reined in
my soul entangled
but the mesh shall not hold me long
aah..the people...
they measure you
they take you in
they interpret you
body, mind and soul
and you are at display
you need to breathe
break free
tell them all
think all you can you fools, do all you can you bearers of wisdom
the spirit shall break free
and run amuck
I am the child of the wild
I am the child of unrealized dreams
while in the womb, my mother whispered to me
how she wanted me to be free
I was bred to be untamed
like a wild horse let loose
a disruptive force
within and without
you shall not hold me down
no god...do what you will
the spirit shall rise yet again
and run amuck
the heart will bleed
the soul will hurt
and hurt bad
but the spirit will be untouched
and will run wild
they tire me
i feel awkward
Often times I don't know how to act
or to react
so many personalities
they split me
and stifle me
i feel gagged
and choked too
my spirit reined in
my soul entangled
but the mesh shall not hold me long
aah..the people...
they measure you
they take you in
they interpret you
body, mind and soul
and you are at display
you need to breathe
break free
tell them all
think all you can you fools, do all you can you bearers of wisdom
the spirit shall break free
and run amuck
I am the child of the wild
I am the child of unrealized dreams
while in the womb, my mother whispered to me
how she wanted me to be free
I was bred to be untamed
like a wild horse let loose
a disruptive force
within and without
you shall not hold me down
no god...do what you will
the spirit shall rise yet again
and run amuck
the heart will bleed
the soul will hurt
and hurt bad
but the spirit will be untouched
and will run wild
Saturday, April 21, 2007
to my nana
The radio was always on in his room
the only sign of life in the old house
the dark green paint on walls, peeling off in places
the rusting window grills
and the unswept corridors
all seemed ancient and cold
in the living room
drops of rain fell through the cracks in the ceiling
they sounded like the ticking of a clock
distinct yet not noisy
Here I spent so many days
i came almost every weekend
dragged by my mother
i would have preferred to stay back instead
in my house where there was a television
and the luxury of no prolonged power cuts
here there were too many mosquitos
and my hands ached with all the slapping and fanning
I fanned myself with a newspaper
it used to be hot
There was no fridge
no television too
only an old radio that played old songs
and blared the news
I fretted
I grumbled
yet I would be here
everything had dust, tons of them
I sneezed a lot
Sometimes, nana would take me with him when he went to buy vegetables and kerosene oil
i tagged along, helped him carry the bags
in time i started counting the money and handing it over to the vendors
as nana could not see very well
yet he walked proud, head held high
i knew it required effort
i knew he was hurting
but he would not grab the stick
then he picked it up one day
and would not go anywhere without it
i still went with him
because he still needed eyes
at home, he poured out whiskey from a small bottle that he kept hidden somewhere in his dusty bookshelf
and drank alone
i sat there for lack of anything else to do
and he talked of matthew arnold
and of shakespeare
In time
during one of those visits
don't know when or how
We started talking
nana and i
He wrote me letters
i wrote to him too
and we talked about poetry when I visited the old house
sometimes, he would let me read to him from one of the books
I studied literature because he did
I wanted to be him
and wanted him to know I understood Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach too
that i could understand my nana
and i felt for him
And then one day
he died
it was a silent death
he died in his sleep
i found his diaries later
and i reconstructed his life
bit by bit
a painful journey for me too
I looked for my name
i was scattered in those pages
no special mention
just a log of when we visited
So many years later
I miss my nana
i know we could have talked at length now
now that i have grown up
among so many things
and with the radio in the background
we would have talked about Maxim Gorky, about Karl Marx
and over those whiskey glasses, i know he would have loved to recite from Dover Beach
and I know i would have understood
the only sign of life in the old house
the dark green paint on walls, peeling off in places
the rusting window grills
and the unswept corridors
all seemed ancient and cold
in the living room
drops of rain fell through the cracks in the ceiling
they sounded like the ticking of a clock
distinct yet not noisy
Here I spent so many days
i came almost every weekend
dragged by my mother
i would have preferred to stay back instead
in my house where there was a television
and the luxury of no prolonged power cuts
here there were too many mosquitos
and my hands ached with all the slapping and fanning
I fanned myself with a newspaper
it used to be hot
There was no fridge
no television too
only an old radio that played old songs
and blared the news
I fretted
I grumbled
yet I would be here
everything had dust, tons of them
I sneezed a lot
Sometimes, nana would take me with him when he went to buy vegetables and kerosene oil
i tagged along, helped him carry the bags
in time i started counting the money and handing it over to the vendors
as nana could not see very well
yet he walked proud, head held high
i knew it required effort
i knew he was hurting
but he would not grab the stick
then he picked it up one day
and would not go anywhere without it
i still went with him
because he still needed eyes
at home, he poured out whiskey from a small bottle that he kept hidden somewhere in his dusty bookshelf
and drank alone
i sat there for lack of anything else to do
and he talked of matthew arnold
and of shakespeare
In time
during one of those visits
don't know when or how
We started talking
nana and i
He wrote me letters
i wrote to him too
and we talked about poetry when I visited the old house
sometimes, he would let me read to him from one of the books
I studied literature because he did
I wanted to be him
and wanted him to know I understood Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach too
that i could understand my nana
and i felt for him
And then one day
he died
it was a silent death
he died in his sleep
i found his diaries later
and i reconstructed his life
bit by bit
a painful journey for me too
I looked for my name
i was scattered in those pages
no special mention
just a log of when we visited
So many years later
I miss my nana
i know we could have talked at length now
now that i have grown up
among so many things
and with the radio in the background
we would have talked about Maxim Gorky, about Karl Marx
and over those whiskey glasses, i know he would have loved to recite from Dover Beach
and I know i would have understood
seeking refuge...
the city offered no refuge
i came here to disappear
to dilute the spirit
to dissolve the soul
a soul battered by the betrayal
but i must think of it no more
i keep the pictures in my drawer
handy, within reach
so that i can remember how i looked like then
i looked happier
the smile is stretched
it is full
now it is a measured smile
i guess i am still recovering
I walk around
alone
but i feel free
the city is cruel
like me it is on extremes
the winter is harsh
the summers brutal
often times, the air is stifling, dry and still
I drive around in the strange city
hang out with like souls
who are fleeing their past
like me, they are escapists too
and sometimes I smoke with them
that's when we bond
the smoke mixes - curling up, thinning into the strange air
and our experiences too
they are escaping a real war
their lands torn by strife
I am escaping the war within
but we are all seeking some refuge
i am refugee by choice
they are refugees by force
i came here to disappear
to dilute the spirit
to dissolve the soul
a soul battered by the betrayal
but i must think of it no more
i keep the pictures in my drawer
handy, within reach
so that i can remember how i looked like then
i looked happier
the smile is stretched
it is full
now it is a measured smile
i guess i am still recovering
I walk around
alone
but i feel free
the city is cruel
like me it is on extremes
the winter is harsh
the summers brutal
often times, the air is stifling, dry and still
I drive around in the strange city
hang out with like souls
who are fleeing their past
like me, they are escapists too
and sometimes I smoke with them
that's when we bond
the smoke mixes - curling up, thinning into the strange air
and our experiences too
they are escaping a real war
their lands torn by strife
I am escaping the war within
but we are all seeking some refuge
i am refugee by choice
they are refugees by force
Friday, April 20, 2007
where are the ghosts?
in the cold winter nights, we would huddle, sit around a small fire
power cuts were normal
and at these times, darkness was welcome
and umesh would tell us stories
stories of his village
tales of ghosts
and tales of ghost busters
no, these were common folk
perhaps more daring than us
and through the flames i sneaked looks at others
they shuddered and yet clamored for more
the old witch in the tree
the one who roamed near the tamarind trees
and when it was time in the evening for women to cook dinner
would suddenly come down and demand food
a greedy witch
they told me long ago to look at the feet
they should be turned backwards, they said
and umesh confirmed
we talked about how my uncle once passed through a ghost
seven feet tall who asked for tobacco
in the cold winter nights, the tales sent an extra chill down our spines
but we still gathered
after umesh was done with the cooking
and had lit his fire
and folks at home were in their own worlds
it was a ritual
tales were aplenty
i suspect he made some up too
i had never seen ghosts
i felt umimportant in those little meets
but that was being a child
more fearless than now i guess
i live alone now
in a strange city
a city that is no america
i see all sorts of people around me
but no ghosts
and i miss umesh
sometimes i watch movies and read about ghosts
and i keep the light on
lest a ghost came by
but i still fall asleep
guess the ghosts are never coming
and the images I can't conjure
it is not the same
there is no fire
there are no little people around me
with expectant eyes and gaping mouths
hands shivering and faces dark and bright
the fire playing tricks
the eyes lit and yet brooding
there was a fear of going to the bathroom then
when all urged busy mothers to stand guard
in that innocence we underestimated the power of ghosts
what could our mothers do if one actually thought of paying a visit
and while in the bathroom, in the light of the candle
the shadows seemed weird
and we shouted at intervals
to assure oursleves
you never know the power of human voice
it cracks through the ominous shadows on the walls
where lizards elongated by the wavering light
seemed unnatural and unkind
it was long ago
when umesh and others were around
i remember he got me hooked to tea
and i have been drinking over-brewed tea ever since
out of habit and out of fondness
here i wander sometimes
most times
trying to pass those weary hours
in my house, in my little apartment
with the old sunflower wallpaper
the hours seem longer
i don't have a watch
i don't want to keep hours
i don't wait for nothing
it is a lull i am going through
only the change in the light
keep me in the realm of the time
and i wander even more
i believe in search of the ghosts of my childhood
power cuts were normal
and at these times, darkness was welcome
and umesh would tell us stories
stories of his village
tales of ghosts
and tales of ghost busters
no, these were common folk
perhaps more daring than us
and through the flames i sneaked looks at others
they shuddered and yet clamored for more
the old witch in the tree
the one who roamed near the tamarind trees
and when it was time in the evening for women to cook dinner
would suddenly come down and demand food
a greedy witch
they told me long ago to look at the feet
they should be turned backwards, they said
and umesh confirmed
we talked about how my uncle once passed through a ghost
seven feet tall who asked for tobacco
in the cold winter nights, the tales sent an extra chill down our spines
but we still gathered
after umesh was done with the cooking
and had lit his fire
and folks at home were in their own worlds
it was a ritual
tales were aplenty
i suspect he made some up too
i had never seen ghosts
i felt umimportant in those little meets
but that was being a child
more fearless than now i guess
i live alone now
in a strange city
a city that is no america
i see all sorts of people around me
but no ghosts
and i miss umesh
sometimes i watch movies and read about ghosts
and i keep the light on
lest a ghost came by
but i still fall asleep
guess the ghosts are never coming
and the images I can't conjure
it is not the same
there is no fire
there are no little people around me
with expectant eyes and gaping mouths
hands shivering and faces dark and bright
the fire playing tricks
the eyes lit and yet brooding
there was a fear of going to the bathroom then
when all urged busy mothers to stand guard
in that innocence we underestimated the power of ghosts
what could our mothers do if one actually thought of paying a visit
and while in the bathroom, in the light of the candle
the shadows seemed weird
and we shouted at intervals
to assure oursleves
you never know the power of human voice
it cracks through the ominous shadows on the walls
where lizards elongated by the wavering light
seemed unnatural and unkind
it was long ago
when umesh and others were around
i remember he got me hooked to tea
and i have been drinking over-brewed tea ever since
out of habit and out of fondness
here i wander sometimes
most times
trying to pass those weary hours
in my house, in my little apartment
with the old sunflower wallpaper
the hours seem longer
i don't have a watch
i don't want to keep hours
i don't wait for nothing
it is a lull i am going through
only the change in the light
keep me in the realm of the time
and i wander even more
i believe in search of the ghosts of my childhood
lemon tree and kites
Can’t measure time
It does not keep pace with me
Or is it that I can’t catch up with it
Three decades, almost
And I still feel like climbing the lemon tree
As a child I used to
And now want to be perched somewhere among those thorny branches
Hanging those hand-painted Santa Claus cutouts
I want to fly the kites again
With my little brothers
And though I could hardly ever get it in the air
I want to be able to look at the horizon full of colorful kites again
It does not keep pace with me
Or is it that I can’t catch up with it
Three decades, almost
And I still feel like climbing the lemon tree
As a child I used to
And now want to be perched somewhere among those thorny branches
Hanging those hand-painted Santa Claus cutouts
I want to fly the kites again
With my little brothers
And though I could hardly ever get it in the air
I want to be able to look at the horizon full of colorful kites again
Thursday, April 19, 2007
one night as always...
Losing it...
i am on the edge tonight
as eliot said "my nerves are bad tonight"
i am suspended in time
and i want to gaze into the future
i m impatient tonight
tell me
someone tell me
am i staying in here
or should i start packing stuff
and start disposing off things
but i just bought them
and i am still paying instalments on them
i am calling the astrologer tonight
maybe she can tell
who can tell?
i wonder
who else can?
I think of nothing...
the blank screen, the familiar keyboard and the now-cold cup of coffee stare at me
they are waiting - all of them
but i sit and smoke into the endless night
thoughts have left me
but memories still hound me
and they haunt me too
there are so many things that come in flashes
i see the lizards on the walls
i see the smoke curling up from the cheap cigarettes that the rickshaw-walla smoked underneath the parapet of my house
i see the old paint on the walls, the cracks in the door and the dirty fans
i see faces - known and unknown
but they are all so familiar
i see them all
and see them again and again
i don't want to think
there is no end to it
it makes me yearn
it makes me miserable
i am stuck
in time, in place and in thought
in action too
what can i leave behind to claim what i left behind
is there something at all
but will what i left behind be still intact in the moment
my friends have kids now
my boyfriend has another girlfriend now
and my little brothers are dating women now
One cousin is 6-feet now
i feel old
and i feel cheated
when i stepped out, i assumed i could step back in
and all will be the how i left them...in that moment, in that space, in those surroundings
i feel i am losing it too
my memory is unreliable
i can't verify it
i can't go back in time
and i have been traveling in time always
maybe i should just sip the coffee and wait for life to come back
in the meanwhile, i should continue this existence
i am on the edge tonight
as eliot said "my nerves are bad tonight"
i am suspended in time
and i want to gaze into the future
i m impatient tonight
tell me
someone tell me
am i staying in here
or should i start packing stuff
and start disposing off things
but i just bought them
and i am still paying instalments on them
i am calling the astrologer tonight
maybe she can tell
who can tell?
i wonder
who else can?
I think of nothing...
the blank screen, the familiar keyboard and the now-cold cup of coffee stare at me
they are waiting - all of them
but i sit and smoke into the endless night
thoughts have left me
but memories still hound me
and they haunt me too
there are so many things that come in flashes
i see the lizards on the walls
i see the smoke curling up from the cheap cigarettes that the rickshaw-walla smoked underneath the parapet of my house
i see the old paint on the walls, the cracks in the door and the dirty fans
i see faces - known and unknown
but they are all so familiar
i see them all
and see them again and again
i don't want to think
there is no end to it
it makes me yearn
it makes me miserable
i am stuck
in time, in place and in thought
in action too
what can i leave behind to claim what i left behind
is there something at all
but will what i left behind be still intact in the moment
my friends have kids now
my boyfriend has another girlfriend now
and my little brothers are dating women now
One cousin is 6-feet now
i feel old
and i feel cheated
when i stepped out, i assumed i could step back in
and all will be the how i left them...in that moment, in that space, in those surroundings
i feel i am losing it too
my memory is unreliable
i can't verify it
i can't go back in time
and i have been traveling in time always
maybe i should just sip the coffee and wait for life to come back
in the meanwhile, i should continue this existence
Monday, April 16, 2007
it is all praise...
"In the men of Hind the usages of Hind are praiseworthy. In the men of Sindh those of Sindh...
Ways of worship are not to be ranked as better or worse... It is all Praise, it is all right."
Ways of worship are not to be ranked as better or worse... It is all Praise, it is all right."
dear god....are u listening
"Dear God, Life is Hell"
doesn't that sum all of it?
And what if I ever reached that stage of calling God a "Dear" and yet tell him how his world is so screwed up...wouldn't that be liberating???
For now, my search for a nice, non-conspiring God continues....
"Dear God, Life is surely hell or worse."
Well, it is what it is and we are part of what we lost. so it drags on in hopes that someday i will redeem myself...though i am fuck-up when it comes to redeemable qualities...
Away from everything that I ever felt connected with...it surely is hell.
where are you Dear God? Are you there where they say you are? Maybe I could pay you a visit and bribe you to keep my sanity intact in the maze of worlds i live in...help me sort out one world - complete and whole.
"Dear God, where is heaven?"
Is it my lost home I left by choice and now missing it so bad that it seems heaven-like in my mind?
Find me a heaven...dear God... and I will never complain again...:)
but i wonder...and i wonder with a mind corrupted with knowledge and diffused with emotions and rendered incoherent...i can't trace my thoughts...they come and go and i can't hold on to them so i vomit it all on this screen lest they never come back again
If there is a God, why can't I see him or her ever...
If there is justice, why are millions dying in Darfur or of AIDS or in the war...
Why do we just wait and watch and sip our drinks in the comfort of our living rooms and denouce it all...we suck
Where are the questions to my answers? where will i find a solution...if there is any...will i just be lost in a maze of questions...is the doom near?
I am despairing, i can't save myself from the insanity that is around me...i am losing my innocence...drowning it all in a glass of margarita over those never-ending, inconclusive discussions on the ills of the world, the palgue of our profession...
I seek myself...my humanity, my happiness, my solitude
i want to run away. to retire before i lose myself
i am closing in...fortifying myself...the needle is piercing my skin, the pain is soothing, the slumber is welcome
I want to abandon it all...the knowledge because it corrupts...it makes me tread cautiously, it makes me careful...politically correct...i want to speak out, i can't, i feel muffled...my thoughts are random, i fear being branded as incoherent
It is like losing it all...it is like coming under anasthesia, the pungent smell is engulfing me, indifferent to and shutting out the smell of blood, of sweat...it is all around me, spreading itself on my identity...it is numbing me, killing my senses, my touch...
doesn't that sum all of it?
And what if I ever reached that stage of calling God a "Dear" and yet tell him how his world is so screwed up...wouldn't that be liberating???
For now, my search for a nice, non-conspiring God continues....
"Dear God, Life is surely hell or worse."
Well, it is what it is and we are part of what we lost. so it drags on in hopes that someday i will redeem myself...though i am fuck-up when it comes to redeemable qualities...
Away from everything that I ever felt connected with...it surely is hell.
where are you Dear God? Are you there where they say you are? Maybe I could pay you a visit and bribe you to keep my sanity intact in the maze of worlds i live in...help me sort out one world - complete and whole.
"Dear God, where is heaven?"
Is it my lost home I left by choice and now missing it so bad that it seems heaven-like in my mind?
Find me a heaven...dear God... and I will never complain again...:)
but i wonder...and i wonder with a mind corrupted with knowledge and diffused with emotions and rendered incoherent...i can't trace my thoughts...they come and go and i can't hold on to them so i vomit it all on this screen lest they never come back again
If there is a God, why can't I see him or her ever...
If there is justice, why are millions dying in Darfur or of AIDS or in the war...
Why do we just wait and watch and sip our drinks in the comfort of our living rooms and denouce it all...we suck
Where are the questions to my answers? where will i find a solution...if there is any...will i just be lost in a maze of questions...is the doom near?
I am despairing, i can't save myself from the insanity that is around me...i am losing my innocence...drowning it all in a glass of margarita over those never-ending, inconclusive discussions on the ills of the world, the palgue of our profession...
I seek myself...my humanity, my happiness, my solitude
i want to run away. to retire before i lose myself
i am closing in...fortifying myself...the needle is piercing my skin, the pain is soothing, the slumber is welcome
I want to abandon it all...the knowledge because it corrupts...it makes me tread cautiously, it makes me careful...politically correct...i want to speak out, i can't, i feel muffled...my thoughts are random, i fear being branded as incoherent
It is like losing it all...it is like coming under anasthesia, the pungent smell is engulfing me, indifferent to and shutting out the smell of blood, of sweat...it is all around me, spreading itself on my identity...it is numbing me, killing my senses, my touch...
find me a home
I Belong There
by Mahmoud Darwish
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.
And I wonder where do I belong...
"I don’t belong here…
in America...
I am torn as always
It has been a constant…being split
I live in my world, in my mind’s space
My mother is young still and my father is smoking still
but no...wait...now my father has gray hair and my mother has wrinkles
the walls in my house are yellow now...not biege
I can't find it. I mean my old home, where I belonged
No...this is not my home
I live as if I live in a motel...
some bags are still packed...some boxes I never opened
i wait...i wait to go back
but where?
And as always, I am running from one end to another finding a hook maybe
I never belonged here
I never belonged there either
The home is an idea, an idea adorned by memory
And I crave it so…
Will that craving ever end? Will this madness ever go?
Find me a home, a home where I am not a misfit, a home that can contain me
So that I am no longer torn and shuttling between worlds
Maybe I should learn to walk without memory
by Mahmoud Darwish
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.
And I wonder where do I belong...
"I don’t belong here…
in America...
I am torn as always
It has been a constant…being split
I live in my world, in my mind’s space
My mother is young still and my father is smoking still
but no...wait...now my father has gray hair and my mother has wrinkles
the walls in my house are yellow now...not biege
I can't find it. I mean my old home, where I belonged
No...this is not my home
I live as if I live in a motel...
some bags are still packed...some boxes I never opened
i wait...i wait to go back
but where?
And as always, I am running from one end to another finding a hook maybe
I never belonged here
I never belonged there either
The home is an idea, an idea adorned by memory
And I crave it so…
Will that craving ever end? Will this madness ever go?
Find me a home, a home where I am not a misfit, a home that can contain me
So that I am no longer torn and shuttling between worlds
Maybe I should learn to walk without memory
here in this moment i live in a million different worlds
i move in time
but something is still
in the mind it is the home, in the heart it is a mix of the real and the aspirational
i try hard to shrug and walk away but like the car seat belt, it tugs at me...if i break free too hard, it locks me in
and that's the state in live in...and it makes me a cripple because i don't know which world to inhabit
a world which is rendered dream-like because I am not in it or a world that i move in but which is so unreal and almost barbaric because it ties me down
maybe i don't want to know either
maybe if i knew, i would not admit it
if i admitted it, maybe i would hate myself
self-hate is unbearable sometimes
self-loathing is hellish
i still continue my travel through memories, thorugh time and through space
no bookings to be done, no itineries to be planned
i travel by instinct. one second i am here, the other second i am somewhere else
only in my mind, i move and i move without inhibitions
a nomadic existence is not appealing anymore
in my sleep i am in those parts and in my waking hours i am in these parts
the transition is hard but i do it everyday. it tires me...all these journeys
i adapt, i re-adopt and I let go
and it continues
the worlds are different and walking in and out of them consumes me
i am traveler in time, i guess
one part is past, one is present
there is no future
permanence eludes me and i wonder why
am i damned? will i always be doing this back and forth journeying in time and mind?
damn it if i am damned and doomed
but something is still
in the mind it is the home, in the heart it is a mix of the real and the aspirational
i try hard to shrug and walk away but like the car seat belt, it tugs at me...if i break free too hard, it locks me in
and that's the state in live in...and it makes me a cripple because i don't know which world to inhabit
a world which is rendered dream-like because I am not in it or a world that i move in but which is so unreal and almost barbaric because it ties me down
maybe i don't want to know either
maybe if i knew, i would not admit it
if i admitted it, maybe i would hate myself
self-hate is unbearable sometimes
self-loathing is hellish
i still continue my travel through memories, thorugh time and through space
no bookings to be done, no itineries to be planned
i travel by instinct. one second i am here, the other second i am somewhere else
only in my mind, i move and i move without inhibitions
a nomadic existence is not appealing anymore
in my sleep i am in those parts and in my waking hours i am in these parts
the transition is hard but i do it everyday. it tires me...all these journeys
i adapt, i re-adopt and I let go
and it continues
the worlds are different and walking in and out of them consumes me
i am traveler in time, i guess
one part is past, one is present
there is no future
permanence eludes me and i wonder why
am i damned? will i always be doing this back and forth journeying in time and mind?
damn it if i am damned and doomed
Monday, March 26, 2007
Immigration hike...Do you care?
The Bush government wants the immigration fees to be increased almost by 86 percent and has not considered the low-income groups especially refugees how they will be hit by such a measure. As an immigrant writing on refugees, I wrote the story and numerous story chats and you view those here http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070326/NEWS/703260338/1001
have highlighted why America is the way it is. People just don't get it or are too disconnected to get it. They live in their cocoons and feel America is the land of milk and honey and all immigrants and refugees come here because they become free here and "melt in the pot".
If you just point out it is unjust system, they will quickly brand you as a communist, which I don't mind in the least. So ill-informed are these people that it actually makes me sad.
The article was published in Utica Observer-Dispatch March 26, 2007. I am copying the text for your perusal.
Region's new citizens face hike in fees
Refugee center protests increase
March 26, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — Refugees and immigrants in the region are rushing to apply for citizenship and green cards in advance of a planned 70 percent increase in immigration fees.
Many refugees will need to save a full month's pay to afford the proposed fee that would approach $1,000 in many cases, according to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which is protesting the increase.
The cash-strapped U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency says it has no choice but to raise the fees because the agency is spending far more than it takes in.
Zawning Win, a refugee from Myanmar (formerly Burma), who applied two weeks ago for his green card, said the increase is inconsiderate.
"It is so expensive. I don't know why they increase the fees," he said. "It is difficult for us to survive already."
Win has no medical insurance. With his income, it is often difficult to pay for rent, car insurance, telephone bills, water and food, he said.
Refugee center Executive Director Peter Vogelaar has sent letters to New York Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, as well as to U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica.
These letters convey the impact of the increase on refugees, many of whom work low-wage jobs.
'An economic necessity'
The federal government says the higher fees are needed because Citizenship and Immigration Services relies on fees for its budget.
"It is an economic necessity," agency spokesperson Shawn Saucier said. "We understand the hardships."
In 1988, Congress created a user fee account for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, making it a fee-based agency. Since then, the immigration benefit operation has no access to appropriated funds for its daily operations.
There was an increase of around 76 percent in immigration fees in 1998, Saucier said.
Those applying for citizenship can ask for a fee waiver, which depends on a number of factors including household income, number of dependents and the discretion of the officer, Saucier said.
Limited options
Vogelaar said the 70 percent increase will make it difficult for many refugees in the region to maintain a legal immigrant status.
A person working 40 hours a week and 20 days a month at the minimum wage makes barely more than $1,000. Because many refugees are not conversant in English, it is difficult for them to get other well-paying jobs.
Professor Nestor Rodriguez of the University of Houston said the proposed increase will more likely hit refugees and low-income immigrant groups who will have to resort to loan sharks to pay the fees.
"It may not be bad for people who have good jobs," said Rodriguez, who is also the director of the university's Center for Immigration Research.
"They may have to give up something like health care or food to pay," he said. "It is like tax — it will burden those who can afford it the least. There is a disconnect between the people who are raising the cost and the people who have to pay."
'Not able to vote'
About 15 percent of Utica's population consists of refugees from all over the world.
Refugees have contributed immensely to Utica's economy, Vogelaar said. But the increase is a detriment to refugees gaining citizenship and reaping benefits as taxpayers and citizens, he said.
"They can legally remain here, but their investment would never be realized," he said. "They are not able to vote."
In the last couple of months, Azira Tabucic, who works in the immigration department at the refugee center, has received an unusually high number of applications for citizenship and green cards.
Around 65 applications were received in January, and even now as many as 40 are waiting to be processed, Tabucic said.
"People are applying ahead of time," Vogelaar said.
Saucier said the revenues from the new fee structure will help improve services and eliminate delays.
But Jorge Osterling, a professor at George Mason University, said the increase is against the philosophy of granting asylum to people fleeing political insurgencies, religious persecution and executions in their countries.
"You can't offer help and protection and then charge them like this," he said.
THE IMPACT
•The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees helps around 400 people gain citizenship every year.
•Currently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fees are $400, including $75 for biometrics or fingerprinting for a citizenship application.
•The charges have increased four-fold in the last nine years from $95 in 1998.
•Now, the federal agency is proposing a further increase of 70 percent, to $675.
However, the fees for filing for adjustment of status, which is the first step toward gaining citizenship for many immigrants, is going to go up even more significantly. The fees are $400 currently, but if the new increase comes about, it would be $985 including the cost for biometrics.
Source: Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees
have highlighted why America is the way it is. People just don't get it or are too disconnected to get it. They live in their cocoons and feel America is the land of milk and honey and all immigrants and refugees come here because they become free here and "melt in the pot".
If you just point out it is unjust system, they will quickly brand you as a communist, which I don't mind in the least. So ill-informed are these people that it actually makes me sad.
The article was published in Utica Observer-Dispatch March 26, 2007. I am copying the text for your perusal.
Region's new citizens face hike in fees
Refugee center protests increase
March 26, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — Refugees and immigrants in the region are rushing to apply for citizenship and green cards in advance of a planned 70 percent increase in immigration fees.
Many refugees will need to save a full month's pay to afford the proposed fee that would approach $1,000 in many cases, according to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which is protesting the increase.
The cash-strapped U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency says it has no choice but to raise the fees because the agency is spending far more than it takes in.
Zawning Win, a refugee from Myanmar (formerly Burma), who applied two weeks ago for his green card, said the increase is inconsiderate.
"It is so expensive. I don't know why they increase the fees," he said. "It is difficult for us to survive already."
Win has no medical insurance. With his income, it is often difficult to pay for rent, car insurance, telephone bills, water and food, he said.
Refugee center Executive Director Peter Vogelaar has sent letters to New York Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, as well as to U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica.
These letters convey the impact of the increase on refugees, many of whom work low-wage jobs.
'An economic necessity'
The federal government says the higher fees are needed because Citizenship and Immigration Services relies on fees for its budget.
"It is an economic necessity," agency spokesperson Shawn Saucier said. "We understand the hardships."
In 1988, Congress created a user fee account for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, making it a fee-based agency. Since then, the immigration benefit operation has no access to appropriated funds for its daily operations.
There was an increase of around 76 percent in immigration fees in 1998, Saucier said.
Those applying for citizenship can ask for a fee waiver, which depends on a number of factors including household income, number of dependents and the discretion of the officer, Saucier said.
Limited options
Vogelaar said the 70 percent increase will make it difficult for many refugees in the region to maintain a legal immigrant status.
A person working 40 hours a week and 20 days a month at the minimum wage makes barely more than $1,000. Because many refugees are not conversant in English, it is difficult for them to get other well-paying jobs.
Professor Nestor Rodriguez of the University of Houston said the proposed increase will more likely hit refugees and low-income immigrant groups who will have to resort to loan sharks to pay the fees.
"It may not be bad for people who have good jobs," said Rodriguez, who is also the director of the university's Center for Immigration Research.
"They may have to give up something like health care or food to pay," he said. "It is like tax — it will burden those who can afford it the least. There is a disconnect between the people who are raising the cost and the people who have to pay."
'Not able to vote'
About 15 percent of Utica's population consists of refugees from all over the world.
Refugees have contributed immensely to Utica's economy, Vogelaar said. But the increase is a detriment to refugees gaining citizenship and reaping benefits as taxpayers and citizens, he said.
"They can legally remain here, but their investment would never be realized," he said. "They are not able to vote."
In the last couple of months, Azira Tabucic, who works in the immigration department at the refugee center, has received an unusually high number of applications for citizenship and green cards.
Around 65 applications were received in January, and even now as many as 40 are waiting to be processed, Tabucic said.
"People are applying ahead of time," Vogelaar said.
Saucier said the revenues from the new fee structure will help improve services and eliminate delays.
But Jorge Osterling, a professor at George Mason University, said the increase is against the philosophy of granting asylum to people fleeing political insurgencies, religious persecution and executions in their countries.
"You can't offer help and protection and then charge them like this," he said.
THE IMPACT
•The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees helps around 400 people gain citizenship every year.
•Currently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fees are $400, including $75 for biometrics or fingerprinting for a citizenship application.
•The charges have increased four-fold in the last nine years from $95 in 1998.
•Now, the federal agency is proposing a further increase of 70 percent, to $675.
However, the fees for filing for adjustment of status, which is the first step toward gaining citizenship for many immigrants, is going to go up even more significantly. The fees are $400 currently, but if the new increase comes about, it would be $985 including the cost for biometrics.
Source: Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees
my dilemmas as a journalist
When I see story chats on my stories on refugees and immigrants, I feel saddened by the intolerance. There is rampant ignorance about issues and many people don't understand basic things like refugee status, immigration and world politics. It gets to me sometimes and I am tempted to defend my case but the objectivity clause in the journalism school that was programed into us, makes me hesitate.
There is no such thing as objectivity. Humans can't be.
I can no longer sit back and view those comments. I was never a taer for the objectvity logic. By the choice of topics or in the process of writing where we sift through a ton of quotes to find one that fits sour view of the story, we are not being objective.
to be continued...
There is no such thing as objectivity. Humans can't be.
I can no longer sit back and view those comments. I was never a taer for the objectvity logic. By the choice of topics or in the process of writing where we sift through a ton of quotes to find one that fits sour view of the story, we are not being objective.
to be continued...
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Running to be one with all...pushing for integration at all levels
The Boilermaker Road Race is the biggest annual event in Utica. Until 2005, refugees were not a part of it though the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has been working in the region since 1979 and has resettled close to 11,000 refugees in the Mohawk Valley.
In 2006, refugees cheered on the runners at Culver Avenue and this year, a handful of them are training to run. For them, it is not just a race but a way to prove to themselves and to the community they are very much part of Utica. The race symbolizes being one with all.
I met Hasan and others during the course of other stories. And I was surprised to see their dedication toward integration at all levels. It was then that I thought of writing this story, which was published in Observer-Dispatch March 17, 2007.
I am copying the text and the link below
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070317/NEWS/703170322/1001
Pride drives refugees to run Boilermaker
Want to make name for community
March 17, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — Last year during the Utica Boilermaker Road Race, Somalian refugee Abdi Talas Hasan stood along the International Mile and cheered on the runners.
This year, he will be joining those runners.
"I saw no Somali Bantus among them," he said.
Participating in the nation's largest 15K road race is yet another sign of refugees' increasing integration into the Mohawk Valley. Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, said their participation acknowledges and showcases the diversity in the community.
The resource center and Boilermaker officials created the International Mile on Culver Avenue in 2006 to acknowledge the region's growing population of refugees. For the refugees, the race is not only about running or winning, but showing the community they're very much part of Utica's life.
From cheering on runners, it was a natural next step for them to hit the road and join the race.
"I want to support Utica, show that we can do something," said Sidi Chivala, a Somali Bantu, who will run the Boilermaker July 8 this year. "Utica is our home."
There are around 350 Somali Bantus in Utica, and at least a handful of them will run the Boilermaker Road Race this year for the first time. The refugee center is offering to help refugees with the logistics of registering for the race.
Murjan Abdulahi, a Somali Bantu, is training hard with four other Somali Bantus.
"I want to win and get the name...for the people to know I am here," he said.
Earle Reed, who is the founder of the race, said it was wonderful that refugees will run this year.
"This is the race that has diversity," he said. "Refugees running are a great facet to our 30th anniversary."
Hasan, Abdulahi's cousin, who interpreted for him, said the race was important to them because it was a way to make their presence felt in the community.
"We want the people to know Somali Bantus are a large group here," he said.
Their excitement is evident. Hasan's voice trembles with the enthusiasm that pushes him in the harsh winter to go practice at Mohawk Valley Community College on weekends.
They run for an hour, stretch and support each other with hopes of winning the race. Last year when Kenyans won the race, Hasan felt proud. He spent many years in Kenyan refugee camps and said it felt like his own victory.
"I was watching them run...I was happy when they won," he said.
In October 2006, Hasan was sure he was running and he asked others from his community if they wanted to join him. He got together a group of five men, who now practice over the weekends at MVCC.
There are no trainers and no dieticians for these men. They have turned to a traditional diet to build stamina for the race, Hasan said.
"We call it seema," he said. "It is ground maize cooked in water with meat and vegetables."
They eat it twice a week to build muscle and drink lots of water.
Hasan knows the race is going to be tough. There have been moments during practice that he has felt exhausted and felt he could no longer run, but the desire to earn recognition for his community has kept him going, he said.
"I know I will be hot, but I will keep running," he said, the resolve showing in his clutched fists and his determined eyes.
Reed said Boilermaker officials will do their best to include more refugees in the race.
"It is a win-win deal for us," he said. "They are a part of us."
Tips for first-time runners
•Run with a friend. It will will motivate you more.
•Never go for a run after eating solid food.
•Drink lots of fluids.
•Start slow. Don't run too fast too soon. A one-mile run is a good starting point.
Source: Earle Reed, founder of the Boilermaker Road Race
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
In 2006, refugees cheered on the runners at Culver Avenue and this year, a handful of them are training to run. For them, it is not just a race but a way to prove to themselves and to the community they are very much part of Utica. The race symbolizes being one with all.
I met Hasan and others during the course of other stories. And I was surprised to see their dedication toward integration at all levels. It was then that I thought of writing this story, which was published in Observer-Dispatch March 17, 2007.
I am copying the text and the link below
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070317/NEWS/703170322/1001
Pride drives refugees to run Boilermaker
Want to make name for community
March 17, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — Last year during the Utica Boilermaker Road Race, Somalian refugee Abdi Talas Hasan stood along the International Mile and cheered on the runners.
This year, he will be joining those runners.
"I saw no Somali Bantus among them," he said.
Participating in the nation's largest 15K road race is yet another sign of refugees' increasing integration into the Mohawk Valley. Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, said their participation acknowledges and showcases the diversity in the community.
The resource center and Boilermaker officials created the International Mile on Culver Avenue in 2006 to acknowledge the region's growing population of refugees. For the refugees, the race is not only about running or winning, but showing the community they're very much part of Utica's life.
From cheering on runners, it was a natural next step for them to hit the road and join the race.
"I want to support Utica, show that we can do something," said Sidi Chivala, a Somali Bantu, who will run the Boilermaker July 8 this year. "Utica is our home."
There are around 350 Somali Bantus in Utica, and at least a handful of them will run the Boilermaker Road Race this year for the first time. The refugee center is offering to help refugees with the logistics of registering for the race.
Murjan Abdulahi, a Somali Bantu, is training hard with four other Somali Bantus.
"I want to win and get the name...for the people to know I am here," he said.
Earle Reed, who is the founder of the race, said it was wonderful that refugees will run this year.
"This is the race that has diversity," he said. "Refugees running are a great facet to our 30th anniversary."
Hasan, Abdulahi's cousin, who interpreted for him, said the race was important to them because it was a way to make their presence felt in the community.
"We want the people to know Somali Bantus are a large group here," he said.
Their excitement is evident. Hasan's voice trembles with the enthusiasm that pushes him in the harsh winter to go practice at Mohawk Valley Community College on weekends.
They run for an hour, stretch and support each other with hopes of winning the race. Last year when Kenyans won the race, Hasan felt proud. He spent many years in Kenyan refugee camps and said it felt like his own victory.
"I was watching them run...I was happy when they won," he said.
In October 2006, Hasan was sure he was running and he asked others from his community if they wanted to join him. He got together a group of five men, who now practice over the weekends at MVCC.
There are no trainers and no dieticians for these men. They have turned to a traditional diet to build stamina for the race, Hasan said.
"We call it seema," he said. "It is ground maize cooked in water with meat and vegetables."
They eat it twice a week to build muscle and drink lots of water.
Hasan knows the race is going to be tough. There have been moments during practice that he has felt exhausted and felt he could no longer run, but the desire to earn recognition for his community has kept him going, he said.
"I know I will be hot, but I will keep running," he said, the resolve showing in his clutched fists and his determined eyes.
Reed said Boilermaker officials will do their best to include more refugees in the race.
"It is a win-win deal for us," he said. "They are a part of us."
Tips for first-time runners
•Run with a friend. It will will motivate you more.
•Never go for a run after eating solid food.
•Drink lots of fluids.
•Start slow. Don't run too fast too soon. A one-mile run is a good starting point.
Source: Earle Reed, founder of the Boilermaker Road Race
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
through the lenses they speak...the whispers muffled, the voices hushed but the images telling
Unseen America, a project that gives cameras to people from all walks of life for a few weeks and asks them to tell their stories through the pictures, is working with the refugees in Utica.
I attended one of the classes and it was wonderful to see the pictures. Many were portraits, some were of the food they cooked, yet all photos reflect their dilemmas, struggles and travails of the life they live here - a life so different from the one they had been living.
The new life has credit cards...plastic money, washers and driers and insurance problems among other things. And it is baffling. Most have not seen electricity, many lived in jungles and almost all have not used credit cards ever...
The links to the articles on unseenamerica NYS and its work with the refugees in the area that were published by Utica Observer-Dispatch Sunday March 18, 2007
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180323/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180315/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180317/1001
I am also copying the text of the articles that appeared in Observer-Dispatch. There is also a photo gallery of the pictures clicked by two refugees and a narrative by a Bosnian refugee who talks about her refugee experience.
Refugees capture new lives through a camera (link to slideshow)
Photos reflect life in Utica and hint at their homelands
March 18, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — As a child growing up in Bosnia, Tatjana Kulalic climbed her country's mountains, looked at the city in the distance and felt free. In the civil war that later ravaged her country, she lost that feeling and was forced to remain within the city limits for four years.
She recently revisited her past through photographs of Utica she took as part of the unseenamerica NYS project. She climbed up the hills in Roscoe-Conkling Park, took out a camera and started clicking pictures of Utica's horizon.
"It has a connection with Bosnia," she said, pointing at a picture of the city in the distance, silhouetted against the gray sky. "That picture ... gives me a feeling of freedom, peace and connection. That picture is home."
Kulalic is one of 15 refugees who attended a photography workshop organized by unseenamerica NYS, a project that gives cameras to working-class people so they can document their lives through photographs and be creative as a subject and photographer.
The organization is working with the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees to schedule an exhibition of the photographs for April 20.
The refugees are asked to answer various questions such as "Who are you?" or "What is home?" through their pictures. In doing so, they tell their stories and feelings about living in a different country, said Zoeann Murphy, the regional coordinator of unseenamerica NYS.
Peter Vogelaar, the executive director of the refugee center, said the project will help showcase Utica's diversity.
"It is wonderful," he said.
Connie Frisbee Houde, a photographer who helped refugees with the project, said she was surprised with the pictures' variety and storytelling.
Her favorite is a photograph of a curtain and a wall defining public and private space, she said. Many refugees belong to vastly different cultures and notions of what is private and public differ greatly.
Curtains divide the inner sanctums of the house from what is considered public space where guests can be ushered in, Murphy said.
"Refugees have a very different relationship to the concept of home," she said.
Many pictures describe the experience of being a refugee. One of Kulalic's pictures show an African man dressed in traditional clothes sleeping in the waiting room at the refugee center. It is a contrast of old and new and also of the eternal wait for refugees, she said.
"As refugees we are always waiting for something to happen — some good news, some money," she said.
The refugees enrolled in this program are from Sudan, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Bosnia and Somalia. The pictures, whether of traditional fish curry or snow banks, somehow tie into their experiences and impressions as a refugee.
Sudanese refugees Chambang Mut and Abdelshakour Khamis brought out the contrast in their lives by capturing the snow and the city's buildings, which are starkly different from what they experienced in Africa.
"I clicked pictures of the snow because we don't have that in Sudan," Mut said.
Another picture showed his co-worker at Price Chopper dancing and laughing with a broom.
"Sometimes the work is exhausting," he said. "He was just happy at work. It was good."
Abdelshakour Khamis, a Sudanese refugee, remembers when he woke up on his first morning in Utica and saw the city engulfed in fog.
He was transported back to his country where sandstorms blurred the skyline of the city. Many of his pictures are of Utica's skyline.
"I took them because they remind me I am here and reminds me of home," he said. "The hills at the back reminded of old home but the foreground was new."
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
Her roots are in Bosnia, which she left in 1999 after a civil war divided the country. But her house and job are in the Mohawk Valley.
"I am somewhere in between," she said. "I belong but I don't really belong. There is a conflict."
Kulalic's photographs as part of the unseenamerica NYS project capture some of the nostalgia and dilemmas of a refugee and immigrant.
She drives around the area trying to find places that resemble Bosnia, she said. In the seven years, Kulalic has been to Bosnia only once and found it was different.
It wasn't the only thing she noticed was different.
"I found myself changed," she said. "You take influences from here with you. It becomes different."
Despite living here for years, buying furniture and creating her own space, she still doesn't have the feeling she's here to stay.
"It seems temporary. I feel I am waiting for something," she said. "I could be somewhere else."
Like many immigrants, coming into a different culture was stressful. Adapting to it took time.
The credit cards, the insurance and the family system — everything was different. Although she learned English at school, the language was still a barrier.
The culture was different, too. The emphasis on individualism did not match with her experience. In Bosnia, families are tied together, she said.
Kulalic spends as much time as possible with her son Isak, going on trips, taking him fishing and just hanging out with him.
But outside home, things were new and different. But she learned.
Now, she works at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees in the immigration department and helps sort out immigration and visa issues.
The connections with her past life are important to her. She cooks Bosnian food, reads Bosnian books and talks to Isak in Bosnian to keep the bonds intact. Her house has many artifacts from Bosnia that are still her prized possessions, she said.
"We talk about our country, we look at photographs," she said. "I don't want to lose touch."
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Sudanese refugee enjoys freedom
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Sudanese refugee Chambang Mut would like to call himself an American — he holds an American passport and is living the American dream. But when people classify him, there's always a hyphen attached.
"I am always African-American or Sudanese-American," he said. "Here in American culture, they put people in categories."
But he's not complaining. He likes America and his freedom here.
"Nobody can tell me 'shut up' here," he said.
His photographs, part of the unseenamerica NYS project, capture new experiences for him such as the snow, the work culture and his used car.
Mut, who came to the United States in 1995 from Uganda where he was studying, misses home. Like many others, though, he has little left to go back to.
His parents have died and there aren't many opportunities in Sudan, where rival factions are still waging war. Two civil wars have already ravaged Sudan, making millions flee to neighboring countries for safety.
Mut, who left his village in November 1984, never saw his family again. He could just talk to them on the phone, he said.
"I do miss home very bad," he said. "But I like it here. Things are easy here if you want to work. Getting jobs is difficult at home."
Adapting to America was not easy for Mut, who had to re-learn English because the accent was difficult to understand. Even now it is frustrating trying to get himself understood, he said.
One example: Mut ended up paying a lot to a car mechanic because both had a problem in understanding each other, he said.
A Sudanese flag shares the space with an American flag on his desk in his room. Like many Americans, Mut is studying and working at the same time. He has taken out loans, works odd jobs and is determined to make it big here.
"Maybe I will become a counselor or maybe a politician ... or a teacher ... something," said Mut, who is a sociology student at SUNYIT.
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
I attended one of the classes and it was wonderful to see the pictures. Many were portraits, some were of the food they cooked, yet all photos reflect their dilemmas, struggles and travails of the life they live here - a life so different from the one they had been living.
The new life has credit cards...plastic money, washers and driers and insurance problems among other things. And it is baffling. Most have not seen electricity, many lived in jungles and almost all have not used credit cards ever...
The links to the articles on unseenamerica NYS and its work with the refugees in the area that were published by Utica Observer-Dispatch Sunday March 18, 2007
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180323/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180315/1001
http://uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/NEWS/703180317/1001
I am also copying the text of the articles that appeared in Observer-Dispatch. There is also a photo gallery of the pictures clicked by two refugees and a narrative by a Bosnian refugee who talks about her refugee experience.
Refugees capture new lives through a camera (link to slideshow)
Photos reflect life in Utica and hint at their homelands
March 18, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
UTICA — As a child growing up in Bosnia, Tatjana Kulalic climbed her country's mountains, looked at the city in the distance and felt free. In the civil war that later ravaged her country, she lost that feeling and was forced to remain within the city limits for four years.
She recently revisited her past through photographs of Utica she took as part of the unseenamerica NYS project. She climbed up the hills in Roscoe-Conkling Park, took out a camera and started clicking pictures of Utica's horizon.
"It has a connection with Bosnia," she said, pointing at a picture of the city in the distance, silhouetted against the gray sky. "That picture ... gives me a feeling of freedom, peace and connection. That picture is home."
Kulalic is one of 15 refugees who attended a photography workshop organized by unseenamerica NYS, a project that gives cameras to working-class people so they can document their lives through photographs and be creative as a subject and photographer.
The organization is working with the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees to schedule an exhibition of the photographs for April 20.
The refugees are asked to answer various questions such as "Who are you?" or "What is home?" through their pictures. In doing so, they tell their stories and feelings about living in a different country, said Zoeann Murphy, the regional coordinator of unseenamerica NYS.
Peter Vogelaar, the executive director of the refugee center, said the project will help showcase Utica's diversity.
"It is wonderful," he said.
Connie Frisbee Houde, a photographer who helped refugees with the project, said she was surprised with the pictures' variety and storytelling.
Her favorite is a photograph of a curtain and a wall defining public and private space, she said. Many refugees belong to vastly different cultures and notions of what is private and public differ greatly.
Curtains divide the inner sanctums of the house from what is considered public space where guests can be ushered in, Murphy said.
"Refugees have a very different relationship to the concept of home," she said.
Many pictures describe the experience of being a refugee. One of Kulalic's pictures show an African man dressed in traditional clothes sleeping in the waiting room at the refugee center. It is a contrast of old and new and also of the eternal wait for refugees, she said.
"As refugees we are always waiting for something to happen — some good news, some money," she said.
The refugees enrolled in this program are from Sudan, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Bosnia and Somalia. The pictures, whether of traditional fish curry or snow banks, somehow tie into their experiences and impressions as a refugee.
Sudanese refugees Chambang Mut and Abdelshakour Khamis brought out the contrast in their lives by capturing the snow and the city's buildings, which are starkly different from what they experienced in Africa.
"I clicked pictures of the snow because we don't have that in Sudan," Mut said.
Another picture showed his co-worker at Price Chopper dancing and laughing with a broom.
"Sometimes the work is exhausting," he said. "He was just happy at work. It was good."
Abdelshakour Khamis, a Sudanese refugee, remembers when he woke up on his first morning in Utica and saw the city engulfed in fog.
He was transported back to his country where sandstorms blurred the skyline of the city. Many of his pictures are of Utica's skyline.
"I took them because they remind me I am here and reminds me of home," he said. "The hills at the back reminded of old home but the foreground was new."
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Tatjana Kulalic shuttles between two worlds.
Her roots are in Bosnia, which she left in 1999 after a civil war divided the country. But her house and job are in the Mohawk Valley.
"I am somewhere in between," she said. "I belong but I don't really belong. There is a conflict."
Kulalic's photographs as part of the unseenamerica NYS project capture some of the nostalgia and dilemmas of a refugee and immigrant.
She drives around the area trying to find places that resemble Bosnia, she said. In the seven years, Kulalic has been to Bosnia only once and found it was different.
It wasn't the only thing she noticed was different.
"I found myself changed," she said. "You take influences from here with you. It becomes different."
Despite living here for years, buying furniture and creating her own space, she still doesn't have the feeling she's here to stay.
"It seems temporary. I feel I am waiting for something," she said. "I could be somewhere else."
Like many immigrants, coming into a different culture was stressful. Adapting to it took time.
The credit cards, the insurance and the family system — everything was different. Although she learned English at school, the language was still a barrier.
The culture was different, too. The emphasis on individualism did not match with her experience. In Bosnia, families are tied together, she said.
Kulalic spends as much time as possible with her son Isak, going on trips, taking him fishing and just hanging out with him.
But outside home, things were new and different. But she learned.
Now, she works at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees in the immigration department and helps sort out immigration and visa issues.
The connections with her past life are important to her. She cooks Bosnian food, reads Bosnian books and talks to Isak in Bosnian to keep the bonds intact. Her house has many artifacts from Bosnia that are still her prized possessions, she said.
"We talk about our country, we look at photographs," she said. "I don't want to lose touch."
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Sudanese refugee enjoys freedom
March 18, 2007
UTICA — Sudanese refugee Chambang Mut would like to call himself an American — he holds an American passport and is living the American dream. But when people classify him, there's always a hyphen attached.
"I am always African-American or Sudanese-American," he said. "Here in American culture, they put people in categories."
But he's not complaining. He likes America and his freedom here.
"Nobody can tell me 'shut up' here," he said.
His photographs, part of the unseenamerica NYS project, capture new experiences for him such as the snow, the work culture and his used car.
Mut, who came to the United States in 1995 from Uganda where he was studying, misses home. Like many others, though, he has little left to go back to.
His parents have died and there aren't many opportunities in Sudan, where rival factions are still waging war. Two civil wars have already ravaged Sudan, making millions flee to neighboring countries for safety.
Mut, who left his village in November 1984, never saw his family again. He could just talk to them on the phone, he said.
"I do miss home very bad," he said. "But I like it here. Things are easy here if you want to work. Getting jobs is difficult at home."
Adapting to America was not easy for Mut, who had to re-learn English because the accent was difficult to understand. Even now it is frustrating trying to get himself understood, he said.
One example: Mut ended up paying a lot to a car mechanic because both had a problem in understanding each other, he said.
A Sudanese flag shares the space with an American flag on his desk in his room. Like many Americans, Mut is studying and working at the same time. He has taken out loans, works odd jobs and is determined to make it big here.
"Maybe I will become a counselor or maybe a politician ... or a teacher ... something," said Mut, who is a sociology student at SUNYIT.
— Chinki Sinha
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Article on Utica's refugee in Christianity Today
Finally, after New York Times, other publications are waking up to the diversity in a small town such as Utica. The article focuses on Karen people who fled the oppression and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and are helped by the Tabernacle Baptist Church in resettlement process. The church has helped them with household items and other things. Hopefully, this will raise lots of questions and highlights the strengths of the refugees and the local community and be a model for others.
Below I have copied the link to one of my article that appeared in Observer-Dispatch that I wrote on how the Karens were donated bicycles by a local so that they don't have to walk to class in the harsh winters.
The Town that Loves Refugees
Christians in Utica, New York are resettling the world one displaced soul at a time.
Denise McGill | posted 2/15/2007 08:49AM
Like many Christians moving to a new town, Say Wah Htoo made finding a new place to worship a top priority. So one Sunday morning shortly after arriving in Utica, New York, she attended a nearby church. It had familiar theology, a few songs she knew, and the obligatory smiles and handshakes after the service.
But Htoo (pronounced "Too") needed more. She had been raised in a Christian home deep in the jungles of Myanmar (Burma), a member of the Karen people, persecuted by a brutal regime. Her perilous escape from Myanmar brought her to central New York State through a refugee resettlement program.
Walking through the ornate doors of Tabernacle Baptist Church, she was a penniless, war-scarred single mother. Her faith had taken a severe beating during her travails.
"When I arrive here, I am safe. Everything is safe," Htoo explains. "I got free when I arrived here."
Tabernacle's members swung into action when Htoo showed up. On a typical Sunday, 300 people attend, and nearly one-third of them are Karen refugees. A welcoming committee delivered a free rice cooker to her apartment. They offered to drive her to job interviews and met many other day-to-day needs. This American Baptist congregation's outreach has become so renowned that the denomination holds up Tabernacle as a national role model. Tabernacle volunteer Gwen Deragon says, "God had a reason to put the Karen here. They needed a place to go, and we needed them."
Tabernacle's church spire is an established fixture in the skyline of Utica, once bustling with blue-collar, manufacturing jobs. But the mills started closing in the years after World War II, and Tabernacle's fortunes fell with those of the surrounding community. In 1960, Utica's population peaked at 100,000 and then began to shrink.
Tabernacle's wood-beamed sanctuary started to resemble an empty ark turned upside down. Members considered rebuilding in the surrounding suburbs, but they prayerfully decided to stay downtown and minister to the remnant community there. When the first Karen family showed up in 1999, welcoming them to Utica seemed a natural way to help stem the city's 40 percent population loss.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Karen, a Burmese hill-tribe people numbering 7 million, suffer greatly as they fight for independence. Abuses include "executions, rape, torture, the forced relocation of entire villages, and forced labor," Human Rights Watch reported. Congress has imposed its strictest sanctions against Myanmar for abuses including violations of religious freedom and human trafficking. At least 30 percent of the Karen in Burma and Thailand are Christians.
As Tabernacle's congregation researched the Karens' situation, they uncovered an unusual story. In 1812, the first Protestant missionaries ever sent from the United States went to Burma. From Burma, Adoniram Judson wrote home asking for help. In 1828, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Utica sent printer Cephas Bennett and his family.
For more than a century, Tabernacle had at least one church member serving in Burma, many in direct ministry to the Karen. But generations passed, and missionaries retired and passed away. The connection was all but forgotten.
Today, Tabernacle's pastor Mark Caruana says, "Distant cousins are being reunited with us. We marveled at the providence of God. Who would have thought that in Utica, New York, Americans would find this long-lost connection with people halfway around the world?"
Tabernacle's outreach to the Karen mirrors the entire city of Utica's outreach to refugees from around the world. People from 31 countries have made harrowing journeys to Utica, a town where bumper stickers once read, "Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights."
The situation in Utica is ideal for refugees. Cheap housing and abundant low-wage jobs mean newcomers quickly find places to live and work. Utica's population is now around 60,000, including 8,000 former refugees.
Officially, refugees are persons displaced from their home countries because they were caught in armed conflict or were at risk of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, or political opinions. Every year, the U.S. accepts up to 70,000 of the 14 million refugees worldwide and resettles them, legally and permanently, across the nation.
Ray Bakke, head of the Bakke Graduate University of Ministry in Seattle, has spent his career developing a theology of urban ministry and immigrant outreach. He says in the Bible, refugees prove to be a blessing to their host nations—one example is Egypt, where Mary and Joseph fled with Jesus after Herod's threats.
"We ought to be saying, 'They're coming to restore our faith,' and rejoice," Bakke says.
Bakke points to Psalm 107 as a promise of divine care for refugees: "[T]hey cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle."
Beginning with Boat People
After the Vietnam War, a group of Utica citizens, including leading pastors, were deeply moved by the suffering of Southeast Asians and by their valiant efforts to survive and flee the war.
The group decided to help Asian refugees migrate to Utica and created the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR). This non-sectarian organization partners with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which resettles immigrants nationwide. Much of the credit for MVRCR goes to Peter Vogelaar, executive director. The center offers a wide spectrum of services to help refugees adjust to American life. It receives $1.5 million annually in federal aid.
Last summer, about 40 recent immigrants crammed themselves into an MVRCR classroom without air conditioning. Cambodian monks sat in saffron robes. Somali Muslim women were draped in yards of boldly patterned cotton. Pentecostals from Belarus were outfitted in conservative, European-style attire.
Chris DeSanctis, a local bank executive, taught them the fundamentals of American life, such as the importance of establishing a credit history. Her lesson was translated into four languages. Many refugees had lost money in homeland banks, so they typically carried cash. But they were curious about the credit card offers they kept getting in the mail.
These programs are one reason the refugee center succeeds in integrating immigrants into Utica's life. If people build a credit history, they can eventually buy a home. If they own homes, they tend to fix up their houses and yards, so they buy supplies at the local hardware store. At some point, they may hire a local plumber. They pay property taxes, so they may also have an interest in the school board and voting and U.S. citizenship. In short, they invest in the community.
Utica's diverse faith community forms another pillar of support for refugees. Mosques, temples, and churches address the physical and spiritual needs of refugees. Up to 10 percent of Utica may be Muslim, due to the influx of Bosnian refugees. The local mosque is one of the most ethnically varied in the nation.
The Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches are teeming. A Slavic Pentecostal church has a new building on the edge of town, filled with 1,000 members who fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union.
Vogelaar says the benefits of religious harmony in Utica may ripple beyond the town's borders. "We can say Christians and Muslims don't need to be fighting. We don't need to vilify each other."
"Many people perceive refugees to be a problem people," Vogelaar says. "But they have overcome problems. They are survivors."
Urbanologist Bakke says Christian hosts and migrants alike need to stop looking at refugees as victims who have nothing to contribute.
"God's people tend to think of themselves as victims, but the motif of Scripture is they're on mission," Bakke says.
He encourages new immigrants and refugees to live out Jeremiah 29:7: "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Bakke says the home front is a new mission field. "Churches at home must begin to model with integrity that which they have sent missionaries abroad to do. By sending them abroad in the first place, the church was confessing a transcultural commitment to the oneness of Jesus Christ."
Caruana, pastor at Tabernacle Baptist, has empathy for locals who resist deep involvement in resettlement outreach. Longtime church members admit to being uncomfortable with unfamiliar people.
Nevertheless, his church contributes heavily to the physical needs of refugees and recruits churches across the state to adopt a refugee ministry as well. The result is a powerful transformation across the board.
"The Karen on the whole are probably more sacrificial in their giving patterns than many, not all, but many of our long-term American friends," Caruana says.
"The Karen also bring a whole different set of gifts with them. They've opened up the church to a world beyond itself, which is an incredible gift."
Often, Karen families send funds to struggling relatives in Asia with little means of subsistence. One Karen family with two low-skilled workers and three children has managed to buy a home and send thousands of dollars to Asia to build a church, all within five years.
In Myanmar, Christians have long functioned under their own leadership. So finding ways to integrate Burmese Christians into Western churches poses a great challenge.
Along the modern Myanmar-Thailand border, where refugees hide, "You will find Bible schools, you will find churches, you will find pastors being trained and being ordained and doing ministry and being sent out into communities," Caruana says.
In the end, refugee ministry success comes down to Americans who are willing to reach out. Tom Deragon, a lay leader at Tabernacle Baptist, provides a powerful example.
An American Indian, Deragon suffered as a child under government-mandated assimilation. But Deragon also received foster care from devout believers whose faithful words and deeds drew him toward Christian faith. To him, the current wave of refugees is no different from waves of previous generations—bringing with it a mix of good people and daunting challenges.
Tom Deragon and his wife, Gwen, found they could help most by focusing on one family at a time. Their assistance tends to involve lots of late-night phone calls and emergency plumbing projects. But the investment has its rewards. The first Karen baby born in Utica was named Tom.
No Easy Button
Not all refugees live happily ever after. Down the street from Tabernacle is Trinity Lutheran Church. This congregation has also invested much time, talent, and treasure into refugee outreach.
Lutherans created a Bible study at the home of John Kweh especially for African believers. Kweh and his family of 14 lived in a large house in need of repair. Originally from Liberia, they had fled certain death in civil war.
Now safe from gunfire, John's son Juty, 23, has become discouraged by the trap of materialism. "America is kind
of bittersweet," Juty Kweh told CT in an August interview. "In Africa, we lived without things. But at least we lived freely. No bills! What we do now is so tedious."
Last summer, John, Juty, and two other sons, Samson and Phillip, drove an hour or more each way to work a night shift. Their top prayer request at the time was for jobs close to home.
Then, tragically, a few weeks after the Kwehs were interviewed by CT, they were involved in a horrific crash during their commute. Three people—Juty, Samson, and another friend—lost their lives. Badly injured, John and Phillip were hospitalized for months.
This devastating loss was magnified for surviving family members who realized that the deceased had survived the horrors of ethnic cleansing only to die in an accident.
But the event galvanized all of Utica. Vogelaar says, "Through the tragedy, the refugee community and the church community are coming together to support this family." It was a raw reminder of life's fragility.
God Didn't Forget
Around 1980, when Say Wah Htoo was nine years old, marauding government forces attacked her village of Karen rice farmers. Their church and all the homes were burned. Her family scattered to the four winds.
She followed her father, a middle-school teacher, to a rebel camp of the Karen National Liberation Army. She managed to attend a makeshift school there and took classes in Bible, math—and combat. She joined the army at age 15. Two years later, her father died in battle. Government forces slaughtered thousands and forced the rest to flee to the jungle wasteland between Myanmar and Thailand.
Htoo joined the exodus and snuck into Bangkok, hoping for a chance to further her education. But the big city got the best of the Christian girl from a backwater village. Without documentation or means of support, she lived in persistent fear of arrest and deportation. Soon, she became one of the millions of Asian women trapped in sexual exploitation.
"I arrived in Bangkok, and it's a big city, and I've never been in the big city," she explains. "That's why I didn't know anything. I can do nothing. I tried to continue my education, and I found one guy, and he said he's going to help me."
"But he lied to me, and he persuaded me, and he—I don't know how to say that—he has his wife and his children, but he has me like a wife."
Htoo hangs her head and softly weeps. "I have to live with him, and I got a baby."
Htoo remained in touch with surviving family members in Burma. But they were scandalized by the news of her out-of-wedlock child. Htoo says, "Every night, every day, I prayed to God to give me a better life."
Somehow, Htoo and her daughter escaped from the man's house. She found people to help her apply for asylum through the United Nations.
"I knew that American country is a big country," Htoo says. "That's why I believed that maybe my daughter can go to school, and it will be good for her education and her life."
Eventually, U.S. officials took her case. In time, she and her daughter landed in Tabernacle church in Utica. Today, Htoo has an apartment and a minimum-wage job, and through Utica's Christian community, she is aware that a merciful God will meet her deepest needs for forgiveness and security.
Poe Kee, a Karen single man, immigrated to the United States about the same time that Htoo did. With her aunt in Utica acting as a traditional Karen matchmaker, Po Kee married Htoo within six months. They met the week of their wedding and were never alone together until their wedding night. Theirs was the first Karen wedding at Tabernacle. Tom Deragon walked the bride down the aisle.
Htoo turns giddy when talking about Po Kee. Now married five years, they have two daughters in addition to Htoo's first child, Pa Suda.
"Po Kee accepts Pa Suda like a daughter, and he loves her like a daughter," says Htoo. "He never jokes about my life before."
But last year, Po Kee was diagnosed with leukemia. Htoo wept and doted over him at the hospital. At home, he lay silently in her lap for hours on end. Miraculously, the cancer has now gone into remission—after just one round of chemotherapy.
"When I lived in Bangkok, Thailand," Htoo says, "I felt problems. I wanted to blame God. I said, 'God is not taking care of me.' " She felt kinship with the biblical Joseph—a victim of injustice in a foreign land.
But like Joseph, Htoo discovered God had not abandoned her. "Later, I humbled myself, and I knew that God planned everything for my good."
For generations, residents of Utica had christened their troubled town "the city that God forgot." But Utica's immigrant Christians are writing new chapters in the city's history about how God didn't forget them—one resettled life at a time.
Pastor Caruana says, "We have children in this congregation, all of them growing up thinking that it is absolutely and perfectly normal to be part of a church where there are people from literally around the world—together."
Denise McGill is assistant professor of visual journalism at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
A small piece I wrote on Karen refugees, who have recently arrived in Utica
Link - http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070113/NEWS0101/701130314/1001
Bikes give Burma refugees a lift
Getting to English classes was difficult for local newcomers
Saturday, Jan 13, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA — Burma refugee J.C. Hter Nay Clay used to walk in the freezing cold to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees for his English language classes.
Starting Monday, he won't have to.
Clay joined about eight other Karen refugees from Burma Friday at Welch's Bicycle Shop in repairing old bikes, which they then received.
With winter setting in, the donation could not have been timelier for the refugees. Clay reflected Friday on the ordeal he used to face in just trying to get to class.
His children go to school at 8:10 a.m., which barely gave him time to get to the refugee center by 8:30 from his Elizabeth Street home. He usually made it on time, but other times he didn't.
"I'm running ... almost. It is bad. Cold," he said.
It was the first vehicle in the United States for all the refugees. They couldn't wait to get on their bikes and ride to their homes.
"That's my first bicycle in the family," said Nay Say Ban, who came here three months ago from Burma. "I am really happy."
Shop owner Howard Welch has been donating bikes to residents for years, often through his "Bikes for Kids" program. The bikes generally are donated to him by police or other residents, and the effort Friday was done in conjunction with the Tabernacle Baptist Church's refugee ministry's efforts.
"I love to do it. It is giving back to the community," said Welch, a former Utica Common Councilman. "These new people...they are so good. Very polite."
The Karen population in Utica has grown in the last few months after the U.S. government waived a provision for refugees coming from Myanmar, another name for Burma. The Tabernacle Baptist Church helps these refugees settle in and provides them with household items, clothes and other things.
Edith Davison of Tabernacle Baptist Church's refugee ministry had asked Welch if he had extra bikes to give to refugees. Several Karen refugees had told her how long they had to walk to attend classes.
"They live far because the low-cost apartments are far," Davison said. "Bicycles are not for recreational purposes. They are required for school."
The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has resettled thousands of refugees in the area. While the center works toward helping them with housing and employment, it is financially difficult for the center to address refugees' transportation needs.
Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the resource center, said transportation for refugees is always a challenge and the center has no program to help refugees find means of transport.
"We help them, encourage them. Whatever assistance is given is greatly appreciated," he said.
Now that he has a bike, Thaw Htu Htoo won't have to walk the half-hour-plus in the snow each morning.
"I am so happy," he said, as he gripped the bike's handle. "This is my first bike here."
AT A GLANCE
Many refugees who settle in Utica can't afford their own cars, and often must walk long distances to get to their destinations. On Friday, recent Karen refugees from Burma helped refurbish bikes at Welch's Bicycle Shop on Whitesboro Street in Utica. They then received the bikes.
Edith Davison and her husband, the Rev. James Davison, of Tabernacle Baptist Church helped arrange the event. Many of the refugees will use the bikes to get to early-morning English language classes at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. Shop owner Howard Welch said he'd like to do the program again.
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Below I have copied the link to one of my article that appeared in Observer-Dispatch that I wrote on how the Karens were donated bicycles by a local so that they don't have to walk to class in the harsh winters.
The Town that Loves Refugees
Christians in Utica, New York are resettling the world one displaced soul at a time.
Denise McGill | posted 2/15/2007 08:49AM
Like many Christians moving to a new town, Say Wah Htoo made finding a new place to worship a top priority. So one Sunday morning shortly after arriving in Utica, New York, she attended a nearby church. It had familiar theology, a few songs she knew, and the obligatory smiles and handshakes after the service.
But Htoo (pronounced "Too") needed more. She had been raised in a Christian home deep in the jungles of Myanmar (Burma), a member of the Karen people, persecuted by a brutal regime. Her perilous escape from Myanmar brought her to central New York State through a refugee resettlement program.
Walking through the ornate doors of Tabernacle Baptist Church, she was a penniless, war-scarred single mother. Her faith had taken a severe beating during her travails.
"When I arrive here, I am safe. Everything is safe," Htoo explains. "I got free when I arrived here."
Tabernacle's members swung into action when Htoo showed up. On a typical Sunday, 300 people attend, and nearly one-third of them are Karen refugees. A welcoming committee delivered a free rice cooker to her apartment. They offered to drive her to job interviews and met many other day-to-day needs. This American Baptist congregation's outreach has become so renowned that the denomination holds up Tabernacle as a national role model. Tabernacle volunteer Gwen Deragon says, "God had a reason to put the Karen here. They needed a place to go, and we needed them."
Tabernacle's church spire is an established fixture in the skyline of Utica, once bustling with blue-collar, manufacturing jobs. But the mills started closing in the years after World War II, and Tabernacle's fortunes fell with those of the surrounding community. In 1960, Utica's population peaked at 100,000 and then began to shrink.
Tabernacle's wood-beamed sanctuary started to resemble an empty ark turned upside down. Members considered rebuilding in the surrounding suburbs, but they prayerfully decided to stay downtown and minister to the remnant community there. When the first Karen family showed up in 1999, welcoming them to Utica seemed a natural way to help stem the city's 40 percent population loss.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Karen, a Burmese hill-tribe people numbering 7 million, suffer greatly as they fight for independence. Abuses include "executions, rape, torture, the forced relocation of entire villages, and forced labor," Human Rights Watch reported. Congress has imposed its strictest sanctions against Myanmar for abuses including violations of religious freedom and human trafficking. At least 30 percent of the Karen in Burma and Thailand are Christians.
As Tabernacle's congregation researched the Karens' situation, they uncovered an unusual story. In 1812, the first Protestant missionaries ever sent from the United States went to Burma. From Burma, Adoniram Judson wrote home asking for help. In 1828, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Utica sent printer Cephas Bennett and his family.
For more than a century, Tabernacle had at least one church member serving in Burma, many in direct ministry to the Karen. But generations passed, and missionaries retired and passed away. The connection was all but forgotten.
Today, Tabernacle's pastor Mark Caruana says, "Distant cousins are being reunited with us. We marveled at the providence of God. Who would have thought that in Utica, New York, Americans would find this long-lost connection with people halfway around the world?"
Tabernacle's outreach to the Karen mirrors the entire city of Utica's outreach to refugees from around the world. People from 31 countries have made harrowing journeys to Utica, a town where bumper stickers once read, "Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights."
The situation in Utica is ideal for refugees. Cheap housing and abundant low-wage jobs mean newcomers quickly find places to live and work. Utica's population is now around 60,000, including 8,000 former refugees.
Officially, refugees are persons displaced from their home countries because they were caught in armed conflict or were at risk of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, or political opinions. Every year, the U.S. accepts up to 70,000 of the 14 million refugees worldwide and resettles them, legally and permanently, across the nation.
Ray Bakke, head of the Bakke Graduate University of Ministry in Seattle, has spent his career developing a theology of urban ministry and immigrant outreach. He says in the Bible, refugees prove to be a blessing to their host nations—one example is Egypt, where Mary and Joseph fled with Jesus after Herod's threats.
"We ought to be saying, 'They're coming to restore our faith,' and rejoice," Bakke says.
Bakke points to Psalm 107 as a promise of divine care for refugees: "[T]hey cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle."
Beginning with Boat People
After the Vietnam War, a group of Utica citizens, including leading pastors, were deeply moved by the suffering of Southeast Asians and by their valiant efforts to survive and flee the war.
The group decided to help Asian refugees migrate to Utica and created the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR). This non-sectarian organization partners with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which resettles immigrants nationwide. Much of the credit for MVRCR goes to Peter Vogelaar, executive director. The center offers a wide spectrum of services to help refugees adjust to American life. It receives $1.5 million annually in federal aid.
Last summer, about 40 recent immigrants crammed themselves into an MVRCR classroom without air conditioning. Cambodian monks sat in saffron robes. Somali Muslim women were draped in yards of boldly patterned cotton. Pentecostals from Belarus were outfitted in conservative, European-style attire.
Chris DeSanctis, a local bank executive, taught them the fundamentals of American life, such as the importance of establishing a credit history. Her lesson was translated into four languages. Many refugees had lost money in homeland banks, so they typically carried cash. But they were curious about the credit card offers they kept getting in the mail.
These programs are one reason the refugee center succeeds in integrating immigrants into Utica's life. If people build a credit history, they can eventually buy a home. If they own homes, they tend to fix up their houses and yards, so they buy supplies at the local hardware store. At some point, they may hire a local plumber. They pay property taxes, so they may also have an interest in the school board and voting and U.S. citizenship. In short, they invest in the community.
Utica's diverse faith community forms another pillar of support for refugees. Mosques, temples, and churches address the physical and spiritual needs of refugees. Up to 10 percent of Utica may be Muslim, due to the influx of Bosnian refugees. The local mosque is one of the most ethnically varied in the nation.
The Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches are teeming. A Slavic Pentecostal church has a new building on the edge of town, filled with 1,000 members who fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union.
Vogelaar says the benefits of religious harmony in Utica may ripple beyond the town's borders. "We can say Christians and Muslims don't need to be fighting. We don't need to vilify each other."
"Many people perceive refugees to be a problem people," Vogelaar says. "But they have overcome problems. They are survivors."
Urbanologist Bakke says Christian hosts and migrants alike need to stop looking at refugees as victims who have nothing to contribute.
"God's people tend to think of themselves as victims, but the motif of Scripture is they're on mission," Bakke says.
He encourages new immigrants and refugees to live out Jeremiah 29:7: "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Bakke says the home front is a new mission field. "Churches at home must begin to model with integrity that which they have sent missionaries abroad to do. By sending them abroad in the first place, the church was confessing a transcultural commitment to the oneness of Jesus Christ."
Caruana, pastor at Tabernacle Baptist, has empathy for locals who resist deep involvement in resettlement outreach. Longtime church members admit to being uncomfortable with unfamiliar people.
Nevertheless, his church contributes heavily to the physical needs of refugees and recruits churches across the state to adopt a refugee ministry as well. The result is a powerful transformation across the board.
"The Karen on the whole are probably more sacrificial in their giving patterns than many, not all, but many of our long-term American friends," Caruana says.
"The Karen also bring a whole different set of gifts with them. They've opened up the church to a world beyond itself, which is an incredible gift."
Often, Karen families send funds to struggling relatives in Asia with little means of subsistence. One Karen family with two low-skilled workers and three children has managed to buy a home and send thousands of dollars to Asia to build a church, all within five years.
In Myanmar, Christians have long functioned under their own leadership. So finding ways to integrate Burmese Christians into Western churches poses a great challenge.
Along the modern Myanmar-Thailand border, where refugees hide, "You will find Bible schools, you will find churches, you will find pastors being trained and being ordained and doing ministry and being sent out into communities," Caruana says.
In the end, refugee ministry success comes down to Americans who are willing to reach out. Tom Deragon, a lay leader at Tabernacle Baptist, provides a powerful example.
An American Indian, Deragon suffered as a child under government-mandated assimilation. But Deragon also received foster care from devout believers whose faithful words and deeds drew him toward Christian faith. To him, the current wave of refugees is no different from waves of previous generations—bringing with it a mix of good people and daunting challenges.
Tom Deragon and his wife, Gwen, found they could help most by focusing on one family at a time. Their assistance tends to involve lots of late-night phone calls and emergency plumbing projects. But the investment has its rewards. The first Karen baby born in Utica was named Tom.
No Easy Button
Not all refugees live happily ever after. Down the street from Tabernacle is Trinity Lutheran Church. This congregation has also invested much time, talent, and treasure into refugee outreach.
Lutherans created a Bible study at the home of John Kweh especially for African believers. Kweh and his family of 14 lived in a large house in need of repair. Originally from Liberia, they had fled certain death in civil war.
Now safe from gunfire, John's son Juty, 23, has become discouraged by the trap of materialism. "America is kind
of bittersweet," Juty Kweh told CT in an August interview. "In Africa, we lived without things. But at least we lived freely. No bills! What we do now is so tedious."
Last summer, John, Juty, and two other sons, Samson and Phillip, drove an hour or more each way to work a night shift. Their top prayer request at the time was for jobs close to home.
Then, tragically, a few weeks after the Kwehs were interviewed by CT, they were involved in a horrific crash during their commute. Three people—Juty, Samson, and another friend—lost their lives. Badly injured, John and Phillip were hospitalized for months.
This devastating loss was magnified for surviving family members who realized that the deceased had survived the horrors of ethnic cleansing only to die in an accident.
But the event galvanized all of Utica. Vogelaar says, "Through the tragedy, the refugee community and the church community are coming together to support this family." It was a raw reminder of life's fragility.
God Didn't Forget
Around 1980, when Say Wah Htoo was nine years old, marauding government forces attacked her village of Karen rice farmers. Their church and all the homes were burned. Her family scattered to the four winds.
She followed her father, a middle-school teacher, to a rebel camp of the Karen National Liberation Army. She managed to attend a makeshift school there and took classes in Bible, math—and combat. She joined the army at age 15. Two years later, her father died in battle. Government forces slaughtered thousands and forced the rest to flee to the jungle wasteland between Myanmar and Thailand.
Htoo joined the exodus and snuck into Bangkok, hoping for a chance to further her education. But the big city got the best of the Christian girl from a backwater village. Without documentation or means of support, she lived in persistent fear of arrest and deportation. Soon, she became one of the millions of Asian women trapped in sexual exploitation.
"I arrived in Bangkok, and it's a big city, and I've never been in the big city," she explains. "That's why I didn't know anything. I can do nothing. I tried to continue my education, and I found one guy, and he said he's going to help me."
"But he lied to me, and he persuaded me, and he—I don't know how to say that—he has his wife and his children, but he has me like a wife."
Htoo hangs her head and softly weeps. "I have to live with him, and I got a baby."
Htoo remained in touch with surviving family members in Burma. But they were scandalized by the news of her out-of-wedlock child. Htoo says, "Every night, every day, I prayed to God to give me a better life."
Somehow, Htoo and her daughter escaped from the man's house. She found people to help her apply for asylum through the United Nations.
"I knew that American country is a big country," Htoo says. "That's why I believed that maybe my daughter can go to school, and it will be good for her education and her life."
Eventually, U.S. officials took her case. In time, she and her daughter landed in Tabernacle church in Utica. Today, Htoo has an apartment and a minimum-wage job, and through Utica's Christian community, she is aware that a merciful God will meet her deepest needs for forgiveness and security.
Poe Kee, a Karen single man, immigrated to the United States about the same time that Htoo did. With her aunt in Utica acting as a traditional Karen matchmaker, Po Kee married Htoo within six months. They met the week of their wedding and were never alone together until their wedding night. Theirs was the first Karen wedding at Tabernacle. Tom Deragon walked the bride down the aisle.
Htoo turns giddy when talking about Po Kee. Now married five years, they have two daughters in addition to Htoo's first child, Pa Suda.
"Po Kee accepts Pa Suda like a daughter, and he loves her like a daughter," says Htoo. "He never jokes about my life before."
But last year, Po Kee was diagnosed with leukemia. Htoo wept and doted over him at the hospital. At home, he lay silently in her lap for hours on end. Miraculously, the cancer has now gone into remission—after just one round of chemotherapy.
"When I lived in Bangkok, Thailand," Htoo says, "I felt problems. I wanted to blame God. I said, 'God is not taking care of me.' " She felt kinship with the biblical Joseph—a victim of injustice in a foreign land.
But like Joseph, Htoo discovered God had not abandoned her. "Later, I humbled myself, and I knew that God planned everything for my good."
For generations, residents of Utica had christened their troubled town "the city that God forgot." But Utica's immigrant Christians are writing new chapters in the city's history about how God didn't forget them—one resettled life at a time.
Pastor Caruana says, "We have children in this congregation, all of them growing up thinking that it is absolutely and perfectly normal to be part of a church where there are people from literally around the world—together."
Denise McGill is assistant professor of visual journalism at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
A small piece I wrote on Karen refugees, who have recently arrived in Utica
Link - http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070113/NEWS0101/701130314/1001
Bikes give Burma refugees a lift
Getting to English classes was difficult for local newcomers
Saturday, Jan 13, 2007
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA — Burma refugee J.C. Hter Nay Clay used to walk in the freezing cold to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees for his English language classes.
Starting Monday, he won't have to.
Clay joined about eight other Karen refugees from Burma Friday at Welch's Bicycle Shop in repairing old bikes, which they then received.
With winter setting in, the donation could not have been timelier for the refugees. Clay reflected Friday on the ordeal he used to face in just trying to get to class.
His children go to school at 8:10 a.m., which barely gave him time to get to the refugee center by 8:30 from his Elizabeth Street home. He usually made it on time, but other times he didn't.
"I'm running ... almost. It is bad. Cold," he said.
It was the first vehicle in the United States for all the refugees. They couldn't wait to get on their bikes and ride to their homes.
"That's my first bicycle in the family," said Nay Say Ban, who came here three months ago from Burma. "I am really happy."
Shop owner Howard Welch has been donating bikes to residents for years, often through his "Bikes for Kids" program. The bikes generally are donated to him by police or other residents, and the effort Friday was done in conjunction with the Tabernacle Baptist Church's refugee ministry's efforts.
"I love to do it. It is giving back to the community," said Welch, a former Utica Common Councilman. "These new people...they are so good. Very polite."
The Karen population in Utica has grown in the last few months after the U.S. government waived a provision for refugees coming from Myanmar, another name for Burma. The Tabernacle Baptist Church helps these refugees settle in and provides them with household items, clothes and other things.
Edith Davison of Tabernacle Baptist Church's refugee ministry had asked Welch if he had extra bikes to give to refugees. Several Karen refugees had told her how long they had to walk to attend classes.
"They live far because the low-cost apartments are far," Davison said. "Bicycles are not for recreational purposes. They are required for school."
The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has resettled thousands of refugees in the area. While the center works toward helping them with housing and employment, it is financially difficult for the center to address refugees' transportation needs.
Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the resource center, said transportation for refugees is always a challenge and the center has no program to help refugees find means of transport.
"We help them, encourage them. Whatever assistance is given is greatly appreciated," he said.
Now that he has a bike, Thaw Htu Htoo won't have to walk the half-hour-plus in the snow each morning.
"I am so happy," he said, as he gripped the bike's handle. "This is my first bike here."
AT A GLANCE
Many refugees who settle in Utica can't afford their own cars, and often must walk long distances to get to their destinations. On Friday, recent Karen refugees from Burma helped refurbish bikes at Welch's Bicycle Shop on Whitesboro Street in Utica. They then received the bikes.
Edith Davison and her husband, the Rev. James Davison, of Tabernacle Baptist Church helped arrange the event. Many of the refugees will use the bikes to get to early-morning English language classes at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. Shop owner Howard Welch said he'd like to do the program again.
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Link to a piece I wrote on refugees and the new year's day
I wrote the piece when I had just started my job as a reporter at Utica O-D in December of 2006. For many of us the English New Year's is not something very significant. It is just a change in the way we write the date...and I thought it would be interesting to look at how refugees in Utica celebrated the New Year's or whether they did not. Turned out many had their own new year's days. It also hints at integration and how for many of us coming from vastly different societies, we are living on the border...we never let go of things that we know as ours and yet we try to become familiar with the strange...it is very interesting to see how integration for immigrants works at multiple levels. It is complex.
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061231/NEWS/612310331
New Year's Day — with a twist
Sunday, Dec 31, 2006
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA — Jan. 1 will be just another day for many people in the Mohawk Valley.
For some of the diverse communities in Utica, New Year's Day will fall in months of the year other than January.
During the past several decades, Utica has seen an influx of refugees from all over the world, from Belarus to Myanmar, after the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees started welcoming and resettling them in 1979.
The refugees brought their own cultures and beliefs and have held fast to the traditions, celebrating them and preserving their heritage. New Year's celebrations are one part of their heritage. Here's how some communities and families celebrate:
Cambodians
Chandara Pros will sit at home and celebrate New Year's Eve like many traditional American families. He probably will watch the ball drop at Times Square in New York City on television, eat dinner with family and go out.
But in April, he will join many other Cambodians in visiting the Wat-Sotheathek-Uticaram temple on 1552 Steuben St. and celebrating the Buddhist New Year.
"That is my culture," said Pros, who came to Utica in 1985. "We do a lot of things. We clean the temple, cook a lot of traditional food and pray."
In Cambodia, Khmer or Cambodian New Year is the biggest traditional festival and lasts for four days. Cambodians prepare traditional food to welcome the angels who bless their house and take care of them the whole year.
They also exchange gifts and show respect to elders. This year, the New Year celebrations will start April 14.
Many Cambodians came to Utica as refugees in the 1980s and have since built their temple and contributed to the diversity in the city. Most of them are Buddhists and follow the lunar calendar.
Burmese-Arkanis
At 109 Addington St., 2007 also will be welcomed in April. January is just the 10th month of the year, and there's three more months before the start of the Buddhist New Year.
Khaing Ray Linn Aung's family is from Burma, now Myanmar. They are Arkanis Burmese and are mostly Buddhists.
Because of the military regime and ethnic cleansing in their homeland, many Burmese people came to the United States under refugee status. Many of them made Utica their home. Among them are Karen, Arkanis and Burmese people.
Their New Year's, which is called Maha Thingyan, is also celebrated for three days and is spent fasting, praying and throwing water on each other.
Khaing Oo said she will not do anything on Dec. 31 or Jan. 1.
"It is not our culture," she said.
But come April, Oo will celebrate New Year's with her community. They will make traditional rice balls with sugar cubes, powdered with coconut, and other food such as chicken curry and rice. The Burmese New Year will begin April 15.
"We will go to the temple. The monk will tell us stories about god. We will pray and spend time with family," she said.
In Utica, the weather will not allow for a water festival such as they are used to in Myanmar. But Oo said they will wait until July to do it.
"It is so much fun," she said. Last year, community members went to New York City for the water festival.
Throwing water on each other is done to welcome the rains in Myanmar. It also symbolizes the cleansing of soul and body so that people may start the New Year with a purified soul.
Muslims
Kashif Qureshi still remembers the halim, dish of chicken, which his mother used to make for Muharram, the first month in the Islamic Calendar. The first day of this month, which will be Jan. 31 in 2007, is the start of the Islamic New Year.
"She used to cook halim and we distributed it to families. It is a holy month for us," he said. "The day is meant for prayers, lots of it."
Qureshi came to the United States about 15 years ago from Pakistan. There is a large Muslim population in Utica, including about 6,000 Bosnian Muslims who came to the city in the 1980s.
Many Muslims now exchange cards and gifts for New Year's, he said.
Muharram is also the most sacred of all the months. It commemorates the death of Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. On the tenth day, also called the Ashurah, many Muslims fast.
Many Muslims in Utica, who are from different parts of the world, will spend their New Year's Day on Jan. 31 praying and doing charity.
For Arbai Majeni, a Somali Muslim, Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 will be just holidays.
"I will do nothing," she said. "During Muharram I will pray and spend time with the family."
Majeni is from Somalia and came to Utica about four years ago.
Burmese — Karen
The Christmas tree at Saw Chit's house is still lit brightly, but the lights are not on for New Year's Day.
A Karen Burmese refugee, Chit is Christian. But unlike many others who will herald the New Year on Jan. 1, he will celebrate the Karen New Year with about 500 Karen people at Westminster Presbyterian Church.
"It is not the same every year," Chit said. "It is different from the English New Year's because we, the Karen people, came before Christ from other lands."
The first Karen New Year was officially celebrated in 1939. In 1938, the Karen leaders demanded that the British administration in Burma recognize their New Year and declare it a national holiday.
The Karen New Year's fell on Dec. 19 this year, but because it was not a weekend and the holidays, the Utica Karen Organization will celebrate it on Dec. 30 so that people can enjoy the celebrations on a weekend.
The Utica Karen Organization started organizing Karen New Year's celebrations two years ago. Karen people from Buffalo, Albany and Syracuse come down to Utica to celebrate the New Year.
"We have traditional clothes, traditional dance and music on that day," Chit said.
The families will cook food, which will consist of sticky rice and curry, and carry it to Tabernacle Baptist Church before moving to the other church for prayers and entertainment programs, Chit said.
The Karen came to Utica as refugees to escape the military regime in Myanmar.
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061231/NEWS/612310331
New Year's Day — with a twist
Sunday, Dec 31, 2006
By CHINKI SINHA
Observer-Dispatch
csinha@utica.gannett.com
UTICA — Jan. 1 will be just another day for many people in the Mohawk Valley.
For some of the diverse communities in Utica, New Year's Day will fall in months of the year other than January.
During the past several decades, Utica has seen an influx of refugees from all over the world, from Belarus to Myanmar, after the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees started welcoming and resettling them in 1979.
The refugees brought their own cultures and beliefs and have held fast to the traditions, celebrating them and preserving their heritage. New Year's celebrations are one part of their heritage. Here's how some communities and families celebrate:
Cambodians
Chandara Pros will sit at home and celebrate New Year's Eve like many traditional American families. He probably will watch the ball drop at Times Square in New York City on television, eat dinner with family and go out.
But in April, he will join many other Cambodians in visiting the Wat-Sotheathek-Uticaram temple on 1552 Steuben St. and celebrating the Buddhist New Year.
"That is my culture," said Pros, who came to Utica in 1985. "We do a lot of things. We clean the temple, cook a lot of traditional food and pray."
In Cambodia, Khmer or Cambodian New Year is the biggest traditional festival and lasts for four days. Cambodians prepare traditional food to welcome the angels who bless their house and take care of them the whole year.
They also exchange gifts and show respect to elders. This year, the New Year celebrations will start April 14.
Many Cambodians came to Utica as refugees in the 1980s and have since built their temple and contributed to the diversity in the city. Most of them are Buddhists and follow the lunar calendar.
Burmese-Arkanis
At 109 Addington St., 2007 also will be welcomed in April. January is just the 10th month of the year, and there's three more months before the start of the Buddhist New Year.
Khaing Ray Linn Aung's family is from Burma, now Myanmar. They are Arkanis Burmese and are mostly Buddhists.
Because of the military regime and ethnic cleansing in their homeland, many Burmese people came to the United States under refugee status. Many of them made Utica their home. Among them are Karen, Arkanis and Burmese people.
Their New Year's, which is called Maha Thingyan, is also celebrated for three days and is spent fasting, praying and throwing water on each other.
Khaing Oo said she will not do anything on Dec. 31 or Jan. 1.
"It is not our culture," she said.
But come April, Oo will celebrate New Year's with her community. They will make traditional rice balls with sugar cubes, powdered with coconut, and other food such as chicken curry and rice. The Burmese New Year will begin April 15.
"We will go to the temple. The monk will tell us stories about god. We will pray and spend time with family," she said.
In Utica, the weather will not allow for a water festival such as they are used to in Myanmar. But Oo said they will wait until July to do it.
"It is so much fun," she said. Last year, community members went to New York City for the water festival.
Throwing water on each other is done to welcome the rains in Myanmar. It also symbolizes the cleansing of soul and body so that people may start the New Year with a purified soul.
Muslims
Kashif Qureshi still remembers the halim, dish of chicken, which his mother used to make for Muharram, the first month in the Islamic Calendar. The first day of this month, which will be Jan. 31 in 2007, is the start of the Islamic New Year.
"She used to cook halim and we distributed it to families. It is a holy month for us," he said. "The day is meant for prayers, lots of it."
Qureshi came to the United States about 15 years ago from Pakistan. There is a large Muslim population in Utica, including about 6,000 Bosnian Muslims who came to the city in the 1980s.
Many Muslims now exchange cards and gifts for New Year's, he said.
Muharram is also the most sacred of all the months. It commemorates the death of Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. On the tenth day, also called the Ashurah, many Muslims fast.
Many Muslims in Utica, who are from different parts of the world, will spend their New Year's Day on Jan. 31 praying and doing charity.
For Arbai Majeni, a Somali Muslim, Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 will be just holidays.
"I will do nothing," she said. "During Muharram I will pray and spend time with the family."
Majeni is from Somalia and came to Utica about four years ago.
Burmese — Karen
The Christmas tree at Saw Chit's house is still lit brightly, but the lights are not on for New Year's Day.
A Karen Burmese refugee, Chit is Christian. But unlike many others who will herald the New Year on Jan. 1, he will celebrate the Karen New Year with about 500 Karen people at Westminster Presbyterian Church.
"It is not the same every year," Chit said. "It is different from the English New Year's because we, the Karen people, came before Christ from other lands."
The first Karen New Year was officially celebrated in 1939. In 1938, the Karen leaders demanded that the British administration in Burma recognize their New Year and declare it a national holiday.
The Karen New Year's fell on Dec. 19 this year, but because it was not a weekend and the holidays, the Utica Karen Organization will celebrate it on Dec. 30 so that people can enjoy the celebrations on a weekend.
The Utica Karen Organization started organizing Karen New Year's celebrations two years ago. Karen people from Buffalo, Albany and Syracuse come down to Utica to celebrate the New Year.
"We have traditional clothes, traditional dance and music on that day," Chit said.
The families will cook food, which will consist of sticky rice and curry, and carry it to Tabernacle Baptist Church before moving to the other church for prayers and entertainment programs, Chit said.
The Karen came to Utica as refugees to escape the military regime in Myanmar.
Copyright ©2007 uticaOD.com All rights reserved.
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