Sunday, March 6, 2011

blog assignment #8

Throughout my time here in Rome, my service learning took place in Joel Nafuma Refugee Center. Located in the crypt of the church, it offers a place for congregation for political refugees of Rome. The reason for this is because the refugee camps in Rome close during the day and literally kick out the refugees at 8am and don’t allow them to come back until 5pm. The center is here for refugees to be able to come to a place that is safe, accepting, and neutral for them to get off the streets. The center is open to refugees from 8am to 2pm, here the refugees are given general commodities such as shaving razors, lotion, soup and shampoo, tooth brushes and clothes. In the center, there are game tables, a television, and a classroom. Everyday, they get served tea and a small snack, and two times a week they get lunch.

I chose the refugee center because I’ve done some work with the South East Asian refugee community in Seattle and thought it would be interesting to see the comparisons from Rome and Seattle. The first time we went to the center, it was after 2 and we were able to talk to members that ran the center. After this introduction my impression of the center wasn’t the best, they basically explained the worst that could happen and that these refugees were very emotional distraught. Although this wasn’t what I experienced while with my time there, I felt that there were some hostilities but none of them expressed it to us. In my opinion, I think they were being courteous as they were still representing their countries of origin.

In the two days we’d go in a week, we were able to experience both the morning and afternoon sessions there. What we do in the mornings was to split up and help out with usual things in the morning, help with tea, handing out necessities, and teaching English. In the afternoon session we all would be in the classroom helping teach English and typing. In the mornings I helped with handing out things and the problem with this was the language, I didn’t speak much Italian and most of the refugees didn’t either. So with the development of hand signals and me learning what the names of certain things helped resolve that problem quickly. The other problem that occurred a lot was the refugees waiting in line for these things. I don’t think the problem was them not respecting one another, I think it was some felt they didn’t need to wait. Sometimes this was acceptable as some would want something quick and wouldn’t affect the flow of the line but there were others that did the exact opposite. I tried to regulate this by standing in the front of the line and seeing what people would need and telling them to wait in line. Then the issue with this was that I had no authority to tell these people what to do and some felt that way and would let me know through profanity and racist comments. I took no mind to them.

Throughout the weeks, coming to the refugee center was easier since we knew what we were doing and got used to it all. The only thing that was hard was approaching the refugees, the first day we were all in the classroom we were told not to force anything on the refugees, “if they wanted to learn English they’ll come into the classroom.” This was the same way with talking to them, if they wanted to talk, they’ll talk to you. So that’s how it was, we just let them approach us and talk about what they wanted to talk about and a lot of them did want to talk. It would always start the same, they would come up and ask where we were from, most of the time they wouldn’t believe it when I said I was American since I was of Asian decent. Many would leave after me telling them I was American as they taught I wasn’t being truthful to them so they didn’t feel the need to talk to me anymore, but there were some that were curious to why I called myself American and wanted to know more. Then I would explain to them that I’m an Asian American and America, for the most part, is diverse. I was also able to connect with them by telling them that my parents were refugees and from there it was easier to ask questions, this was usually the start of my informal interviews. I was only able to do this with probably a total of three of them but it was fun and enlightening as I got a lot of information about their treatment here in Rome and a first person view on the regulations and policies of refugees in Europe.

After our time at the refugee center, my impressions changed a lot. A lot of them just didn’t want to be singled out. They did this in many different ways, some examples was the clothes they choose to wear and the wanting to lose their accents. At first, with the clothes I thought that they were picky but it could be because they wanted to look apart of Italian society and not stand out. So physically looks they could fit in, but then it was their English. Some of them knew English, but with their accents and grammer, they could easily be considered foreigner. That’s why the only things they wanted to learn in class; was how to lose their foreign accent. It wasn’t until afterwards thinking about why they were so picky with the clothes and English that I came up with the idea that they were afraid of standing out. Although this could all be me over analyzing things and they could just be picky and want to improve their English.

All in all, I feel that my time at the refugee center was quite informative, enjoyable, and I am happy I was given the opportunity to be apart of it. I was able to learn more on what we’ve been learning here about issues towards non-Italians and being able to compare refugee policies with another country, other than America. Although, I did have some questions that were unanswered about the center; I wanted to know why whomever started this did so. Also there were no women there, and there were only people from Afghanistan and Africa, I wanted to know where the others were. Finding the answers are probably very easy to answer with the contacts that I have with the center and I could easily ask over phone or email.

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