by Cid Standifer
Omer stares pensively into space for a moment, trying to recall a certain word. His assignment for the evening is to describe a fruit: how it smells, its color, its taste.
“How do you spell tomato?” he asks. His tutor spells it for him, hesitating for a moment to decide whether or not there is an “e” at the end. Omer’s brother Abdelsalam, who is in the same grade, works on math problems, reading over the word problems slowly. Kaywa, an infant, makes quiet noises as she drifts off to sleep in a nearby crib.
Omer, Abdelsalam and Kaywa are all refugees from the Southern Sudan, where a brutal civil war has been raging for close to two decades. Their native language is Arabic, and about a year ago they were dropped into the middle of an Anglophone American world.
For this reason, a group from Grinnell goes to Des Moines by van a few Mondays every month to help Sudanese high-schoolers like Omer and Abdelsalam and adults learn English.
Austin Dean ‘06 first heard about the program after returning from abroad this semester and said that “it seemed like something very worthwhile to do.” However, the first session was not without its challenges.
“The biggest challenge is that initial five minutes when you walk in the door,” he said, “and you basically have no clue what you’re going to do ... Likewise, the kids going to the program don’t know what to expect either.” However, Dean quickly broke the ice by discussing soccer with his student, Dogale, who is a sophomore in high school.
Grinnellians help the students with a variety of tasks, but their primary goal, according to volunteer John Snyder ‘05, is to help the refugees become comfortable with the English language. “Instead of actually teaching, it’s more encouragement and reassuring them that they’re doing a good job and trying to point out their mistakes without seeming too critical,” he said.
Mahlet Demissie ‘06 has volunteered repeatedly but has always helped the students with math homework rather than language skills. However, she said that the language barrier can present a major problem with her work as well.
She described how with one student, “we were doing really simple math, fractions, and I didn’t know how to explain it to her ... They understand. They just don’t know how to apply it.”
Despite the huge cultural and linguistic barriers the refugees face, Demissie said, “There’s a huge motivation. They came from harsh situations, and they just want to succeed.”
The student that Snyder worked with dreams of becoming a cardiologist, but he may return to the Sudan someday. “It’s a bit unclear whether or not he wants to go back,” said Snyder, “but he expressed the fact that there’s still great danger in his country, and he would have issues going back as long as that’s the case.”
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