Story 1: Journey to the Third Coast rough draft

 

“It’s like living in hell” says Dogon Sedigy.  His far off voice from Rwanda seems closer than the distance a map might suggest.  He continues to describe his living situation in Gihembe.  “We live in red mud huts with [a] plastic roof with no electricity.  The huts have one room and we study up to grade 9 and stop there.”  Gihembe is a refugee camp Byumba, about 601 km north of Kigali and has a population of roughly 20,000 within little more than 40 hectares of land.  HIV, drugs and prostitution run rampant amongst its inhabitants.  But as refugees, the Congolese that dominate the population have no other option.

Across the ocean, Austin has also seen a population that what feels like over population.  Our roads are overly congested, and housing prices are soaring and pushing people out of the city.  And among the young professional foreigners moving into Austin are refugees, like Sedigy.

Patricia Hagen has been involved with the refugee population for years.  Hagen says “They come here with no job, no house, and work so hard for their children, they don’t have time to learn English”.  It is a hard transition to come into America for anyone expatriating their native countries, especially for those that are fleeing their native countries.

{I need to get a better understanding of this process and why people choose to come to Austin, or rather why they did choose to come to Austin.  I have an interview tomorrow with the intake coordinator of Casa Marianela, and potentially one at Caritas.  If that falls through, I can find another refugee that lives here in Austin.  The story angle has changes a little because Texas won’t allow any more refugees, but I do know that there are community organizations that have more of a budget than they know what to do with.  Meaning, despite what is said, there are still available resources.  I am having a little trouble narrowing this story down, and I need to finish my interviews before I can move forward with it.  I know the questions that I will ask:

  1. What is the process of claiming asylum?
  2. How is this different than claiming asylum in another country?
  3. Why was Austin a destination for refugees?
  4. How do they affect the local economy?

 

I will have hyperlinks from Hagen, formerly of a refugee mentoring program, Jennifer Long of Casa Marianela, and potentially Mamadou Balde resettlement manager at Caritas.  The hyperlinks will go to an audio file that will be each person stating what they have done within the refugee population here in Austin and their most memorable story while dealing with refugees, things that I won’t write into the story, but would rather work to create another story about this story which is just about the process of how and why one would resettle in Austin and what the refugee crisis really looks like from the inside.}

 

Whatever the specifics, there is a major theme amongst refugees, both here and abroad, hope and getting an education. {I think this would be a good place (linked to hope and getting an education) for Hagen’s soundbite of the young refugee girl who wanted to go to MIT.  Hagen worked as her advocate and sat with her through setbacks but the girl remained hopeful and would not let these setbacks hold her back}

“Some of the goals of [the] community is go back to their homeland, Congo, and educate their children because they cannot afford an education. They wish they went back to Congo to reduce the high rate of young people who are now contaminating HIV at high speed” says Sedigy.