It has been ten months since our Rohingya family arrived in Massachusetts. Their transition to American life has been difficult after many years, and in some cases a lifetime, in a refugee camp. They have needed a lot of support from both the International Institute of New England (IINE) and the Interfaith Partnership group.
Although our specific responsibility has been to support the cohort of seven which included two adult siblings, their spouses and three children, the family is actually twelve people including a brother and his family who arrived in the spring, plus the matriarch of the family and a teenage brother. They all live in two apartments in Lowell.
At this point the oldest brother, who speaks fairly good English, is fully employed working the overnight shift. His job involves sterilizing medical supplies. He works overtime whenever it’s available and, along with his brother, is paying the full rent and utilities at one apartment. A member of IPRR has been meeting with him to teach him how to understand his paycheck, how to pay bills, use a credit card to build a credit history, and to start a savings account. This is all very new for him since his previous experience was earning $3/day and living in a cash economy. His next goal is to learn to drive and to have his own apartment with his wife and child.
His sister and her husband have had a more difficult time. They have struggled to learn English and have had some bumps in the road to overcome. He is now attending English classes 3 days a week at IINE and is eager to be employed. She is gradually coming to terms with the need to work to pay the bills in spite of the cultural norms around women working outside the home.
Getting a job is difficult when you can’t yet independently navigate the complicated process of submitting applications and taking phone calls from prospective employers. IINE has a philosophy of tough love with their clients. Our financial support will end soon. Both IINE employment specialists and the creative problem solvers in the Interfaith Partnership are working hard to find placements that will get them started.
In the meantime, the Partnership has provided Cultural Orientation classes to the whole family, weekly English instruction to the women, and bike riding lessons to the children, taken the families on picnics and to Halloween events in Lowell, and accompanied their mother to medical appointments.
The happy smiles on their daughters’ faces when they get off the school bus make us optimistic that they will all find their way.