90 Days
Imagine that today you didn’t wake up like usual. You weren’t in your comfy cotton long johns, or home in bed with your spouse and 1.2 children sleeping in the next room. Instead you woke up in a one-room bamboo thatched house on a hard dirt floor with your five family members lying beside you. Gone are the high-sloped ceilings, KitchenAid appliances and indoor plumbing. Now you have a water tank for your morning shower, a campfire for breakfast and leaves for a roof. You have just woken up in a Thai refugee camp. Now imagine that you have lived here for the past nine years.
In this camp, you have few rights, and when you leave the camp, you have even fewer. Here all you can do is try to survive from one day to the next without hope for the future. Yet all this changes when one day news comes that the U.S. government has granted you and your family refugee status, and you will be allowed to resettle in the United States. You have been given a chance that less than 1 percent of the world’s 16 million refugees are given.
Just a few months ago, this rare opportunity came to a Burmese refugee family living in Umpiem Mai refugee camp in Thailand. They readily accepted, packed their bags and left Thailand to begin a life in a place they knew nothing of: the small college town of Bowling Green, Ky.
Refugee resettlement agencies help refugees during their first 90 days in the country to find employment, start learning English, enroll their children in school and begin to acclimate to American society. But on day 91, the agency has no further obligation to them, and the family is expected to be self-sufficient. Having only 90 days to become self-sufficient seems almost unfathomable, but this year it is estimated that 80,000 refugees will accept this challenge.
This Burmese family of six are just a few of the 500 refugees who are expected to resettle in Bowling Green in 2009. Every one of these newcomers is being resettled with the help of the International Center, a resettlement agency. These refugees are forced out of their countries for reasons ranging from religious persecution to political oppression.
Ali Joh Hae and his family would never again have to worry about persecution again because in mere moments they would step off their flight onto American soil. It was a land that signified a life of safety and opportunity that they had never experienced before.
Welcome to the U.S.
It was a Thursday night and the Nashville airport was quieting down. Hundreds of feet and suitcases slowly glided across the carpet as flight arrivals and departures were being announced overhead.
Some airport goers waited anxiously for their loved ones to arrive, while the business suits nonchalantly checked their cell phones. It seemed like any other night, routine really; but for one Burmese family it was monumental, the beginning of a new life. It was a little past 10 on this late January night, and Ali Joh Hae and his family were about to begin their 90-day transition to American society.
Welcomed by unseasonably warm weather, Ali Joh Hae, his wife, Mi Too, and their sons, Maung Maung, 6, Kyaw Lwin, 5, Maung Oo, 3, and Maung Tway, 11 months, passed through airport security. Their smiles reflected a mixture of determination and uncertainty. They were starting completely fresh, with nothing but two backpacks and two bags that carried all of their clothes, a few cooking pots, precious religious books, and photographs of the family and the life that they had left in Thailand.
They had survived much to be standing in the airport that night. They had endured Burma, survived in a refugee camp in Thailand for more than eight years, been selected as refugees to come to the United States, and traveled for days to get from Thailand to the Nashville airport. Each one of these was a huge feat.
Fortunately, this family was not entering the United States alone. They were greeted by staff from Bowling Green International Center: a Burmese caseworker named Thin Lwin and a Bosnian van driver. Both of their caretakers were former refugees. For the first 90 days, they would be under the care of Thin Lwin. That night she had come to guide them through the airport, but she would also be there to help them begin adjusting to the United States. In the following days, she would help them “become American.”
That might mean helping them sift through piles of paperwork needed to get Medicaid and Social Security, or taking them to Wal-Mart for the first time. Whatever it was, the next 90 days promised to hold a wealth of challenges and first experiences for this family. Shortly they would witness the beauty of white snowflakes blanketing the frozen Kentucky ground, but they would also learn America could be frustrating, confusing. They knew no English and could not communicate. They soon discovered if they were alone and in trouble, they were in the hands of fate.
Home Sweet Home
After leaving the airport, the family piled into the International Center’s 15-passenger van and prepared themselves for the 70-mile trip that would take them to their new home in Bowling Green. An hour later, they arrived. On the surface, it wasn’t anything special. It was a sparse apartment with a kitchen, one bathroom and two bedrooms for all six of them. The only things decorating the walls were little nicks and bumps. It was nothing exceptional, but it was more than they had ever had in Thailand.
Here in Kentucky, they had beds, a bathroom with running water, and a kitchen with a countertop overflowing with food for their first days in the United States. They had arrived, and now they could begin their journey to self-sufficiency.