“Slowly Is the Journey”

By AuthorHouse

Swahili Proverb
Polepole ndiyo mwendo.Slowly is the journey
Thank you for trusting my ability as a writer. Maybe someone will understand who we really are.... REFUGEEs...and why we need shelter.
Beatrice Kaite Mbayo











A collection of journey stories written by 61 students from the English as Second Language Program at Bluegrass Community College in Lexington, Kentucky. Many of our authors arrive in the United States as refugees seeking a safe place to live and prosper. Others arrive as immigrants and by means of a variety of visas. ESL students come to BCTC in search of a better life, education and opportunity. These authors are from 28 countries around the world. We are pleased and honored to share their words telling about struggles they have gone through to get this far and their dreams for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504983037

Book preview

© 2016 Keith Gilbertson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/04/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8302-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8303-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903579

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Dedication

Notes from the Cover Artist

Photographs

Acknowledgements

Chapter One: Africa

Kaite Beatrice Mbayo—Democratic Republic of Congo

Is There Any Love?

Slowly is the Journey

The Best Place to Be: The River

Salt? Snow?

The Crying Trees

My Defining Moment

My Most Important Person

We are Grit!

Reves de ma Patrie, or Dreams of my Homeland

Alplato Chukpue—Padmore-Liberia

A Tough Journey

Keep Walking

The Journey is Slow but Sure

The African Journey

They Are Right

Princia Itaula-Kifoumba—Republic of the Congo

My Heart is Bleeding!

The only way to attain the destiny that I always dreamed about

Espérance Nde’emya—Democratic Republic of Congo

Thank God who Helped Us

Joseph Ebu-Ghana

Life is a Journey and You Have to Live It

Joseph Ebu Junior—Ghana

How I was raised

Joseph Ebu—Ghana

Please Save my Sister!

Amuri Kikoko—Democratic Republic of Congo

LIFE IS UNPREDICTABLE

Awoto—Togo

Escape from a Voodoo Priest

Zabibu Hussein—Burundi

I Have to Touch the American Ground

Collette Muyumba—Democratic Republic of Congo

Finally, this dream has come true

Guelor Ndele—Central African Republic

Getting to school and back home.

Freddy Dokossi—Central African Republic

Watching Prison Break in Bangui, Central African Republic

Elisha Mutayongwa—Democratic Republic of Congo

My New Life had Just Begun

Jafari Amuri—Democratic Republic of Congo

It Was a Blessing to Make it to a Place Where it was Safe

Msingelwa Kapela—Democratic Republic of Congo

How to Build a House in the Refugee Camp

Eddy Ndala—Democratic Republic of the Congo

Kinshasa: My Hometown

Guerschom Kayembe—Democratic Republic of Congo

Don’t Forget Where You Came From

Aka Kpla—Cote d’Ivoire Ivory Coast

How Will We Feel, Far From Our Family?

Josephine Muyumba—Democratic Republic of Congo

The Dark - Light Side of My Life

Chapter Two: Bhutan, Nepal, China, Vietnam

Tara Bastola—Bhutan

But What to Do? I Had to Move

Tara Bastola—Bhutan

A Stronger and a Better Person

Keshabi Adhikari—Bhutan

That Scary Day of My Life Nepal Refugee Camp

Chandra Thapa Mangar—Bhutan

My Life as a Street Dog

Prabina Bhattrai—Nepal

Carefree Days in Nepal

Diwash Bhattrai—Nepal

Piece of Cake

Lachi Upreti—Bhutan

My Kind Mother

The House is a Temple for Us

Tuka Dhital—Bhutan/Nepal

A Bright Life Here in the United States

Ram Upreti—Born in Jhapa, Nepal, a son of Bhutanese refugees

Getting Water in a Bhutanese Refugee Camp in Nepal

Elephants in the Camp

Bipin Parajuli—Nepal

I asked stupid questions

Vrushal Shah—India

USA is the best country to make a future.

Yu Minghui/ Vicky Yu—China

My parents made a very smart decision to have me.

Li Hong—China

Sisters in China Much Better Than If We Were Alone

My Hanh—Vietnam

Not Safe to Live There Anymore

Henry Ottan—Papua New Guinea

Blessed by Loving Parents

Nelia Kovalchuk—Ukraine

We Came Here to Keep Us Safe

Chapter Three: Mexico, Central America, South America, Cuba and Haiti

Mirna Cerrada—Venezuela

You Always Need to Have a Goal

Samantha Hernandez—Cuba

101 %

Maria Valesco—Mexico

God has a Different Path for Me

I am Continuing to Learn

Arley Lara—Mexico

We are Here to Find a New Life, a Better Future

Cesar Perez—Mexico

Good for Me and My Future

Sandra Rodriguez—Colombia

Opportunities to Continue Growing

Jean Bonel Dumay—Haiti

That Day my Life Changed Completely

Kensy Dumay—Haiti

Three Obstacles That Stopped Me

MT—Haiti

Fighting with the Darkness

When I look at the Future, There is a Big Question

Carlos Bosch—Mexico

Give it a shot in Lexington, Kentucky

Ricardo Camacho—Honduras

I Had to be Strong for Them

Caterina Lunari—Venezuela

My Dreams in My Hands

Kimberly Orozco—Mexico

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

Erendira Ramirez—Mexico

It is Not Easy

Grecia Alcantar—Mexico

It’s All Good as Long as We Are With Our Mother

Oliver Leon—Venezuela

Thinking About my Life and my Future

Chapter Four: Middle East

Heba M.Ali—Iraq

My Journey to a Better life

Shamikh Al Otaibi—Saudi Arabia

Biggest Decision in My Life

Sam Assad—Palestine

Family is the Core of Everything

Souha Kousa—Syria

Choose One Road and Keep Going

Omar Aljohani—Saudi Arabia

A Spurt from my Grandpa

Ali N—Iran

We only need to be hopeful

Fadi Abu Zaghrit—Palestine

You have to go back to school.

Hiba El-azar—Iraq

American Sniper in Iraq

Radhwan Hashem—Iraq

The first day of the Iraq War: My Unforgettable Experience

Radhwan Hashem

Procedures Refugees Should do When They Come to the USA

Zea—Iraq

How Immigrating to the US Changed My Life

Noora Alkhalil—Iraq

Journey to My Second Home in the U.S.A

Fida Qundeel—Palestine

We Are All the Same Born in Bethlehem

Chapter Five: European Immigrants from Norway

Verdi Gilbertson

A Norwegian Immigrant’s Adventure Margrethe Falla

Chapter Six: For Teachers and Students

Chapter Seven: How our authors came to the United States from their home countries

FOREWORD

The genesis of this book occurred in the fall of 2013 during a first level writing class for ESL students at Bluegrass Community and Technical College. We introduced the class to the word grit by watching a Ted Talk video about Grit. "Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint." Angela Duckworth "The key to success? Grit" by Angela Duckworth www.ted.com

After watching this video we discussed the meaning of grit and how important it is for us to have this quality in our lives in order to be successful. The writing prompt for the assignment was "Write about you a person you know who has grit. Give specific examples."

Several students wrote very good essays about their parents, grandparents or even famous athletes. Our featured author, Kaite Beatrice Mbayo chose to write about herself as a person with grit and she was right on target with her very honest self-assessment. She caused me to do much more reflection on the subject of true grit. Her survival and survival of her two sons against tremendous odds most definitely qualifies as GRIT. For her to be succeeding in her new country demonstrates that she has tapped into the key to success namely grit. Her heartfelt story about her and her two young son’s ordeal as refugees causes me to become even more aware each day of the tremendous and valuable voices of our students from all over the world. Their stories of struggles against the odds should give us inspiration to tap into our own sources of Grit. We look forward to a full length book of more stories by Kaite Beatrice Mbayo in the near future

With Beatrice’s first telling of her own life of grit, the idea of a compiling a book of stories written by our ESL students came into being. Several students started talking about their lives back in their home countries. The next lesson in the writing class plan involved talking about proverbs and idioms. Here is when the title, Slowly is the Journey was chosen. This is a Swahili proverb told by one of our African students. Some of our students who speak Swahili agreed that this means, It doesn’t matter how slowly you are getting along because with time you get to where you want to go. With this theme of journey as our focus, we asked students to tell their own individual journey stories.

This book serves as a means to make the voices of ESL students at BCTC into resounding voices. Each of the authors have written stories about their journeys before arriving in our class rooms at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington, Kentucky. Many have written about where they hope to go from here as they continue their journey on in life. I will be forever thankful to the many wonderful ESL students at BCTC who give us the tremendous honor of teaching them ways to improve their writing, reading speaking and listening skills while growing proficient in their new language of English.

A few of our student authors were a little apprehensive about including their stories in a real book. They were worried their writing wasn’t good enough or had too many mistakes. Will you fix some of the words to correct my mistakes? many asked us. Sure, we told them, We will gently edit your story to make you look even better but we won’t change any of your stories. Even famous authors have editors.

We did our very best to maintain the clear, authentic voices of our authors and maybe even left in some minor errors. No need to look. No problem.

Our ESL Program at BCTC

By Sarah Galvin

When we created our academic ESL classes in 2003, I could not have imagined the lives of the individuals who would sit in those classes many years later in 2016. As a teacher, I would walk into the classroom on the first day without an understanding of how my students got there. I used to think I was just naïve about the admission process to our college. Now I understand I was naïve about things much greater than that. We don’t see the difficult road that many of our students must travel before they are able to be students in our classes. Some of their journeys are short; others involve years of hardship, danger, and struggle. For many of our immigrant and refugee students that road includes things much too painful to write about.

Nowhere on American college campuses will you find more diversity than in an academic ESL class. Our ESL students are made up of immigrants, refugees, and international students from around the world. They have ranged in age from 17 to 70. Some have PhD’s; others have spotty education due to war or other dangerous situations. They represent all of the world’s major religions, ethnicities, and languages. Their journeys have all been different, but we are so grateful that each person’s journey has led them here to our classrooms. We hope to be a stop on their path to a better life, a place that values the rich experiences and stories that they carry with them.

BCTC and our students are so lucky to have Keith Gilbertson who encouraged, cajoled, and pulled these stories out of our students. I have never known a teacher who was more welcoming, patient, or kind than Keith. This book is his vision. He has put in countless hours working with students to add a detail here or clarify something there. He has given voice and value to these stories, and all of us will be the better for it.

Sarah Galvin

Academic Advisor, International Student Services

ESL Coordinator

Bluegrass Community and Technical College

Lexington, Kentucky

DEDICATION

To ESL students from all over the world who arrive in the United States in search of shelter from the storms. May you and your families find a good life with shelter, safety, freedom, education and many opportunities.

Welcome!!!!!

NOTES FROM THE COVER ARTIST

Amanda Morris M.D.

Central to the foreground are a mother and her two children making the journey by foot. She is carrying all her belongings that she can carry on her back. Interestingly, many women carried a plastic bucket like one she has on top of her load. The fabrics are colorful examples from the coverage I saw about the situation in Congo.

The Congo River makes up the center of the background as that is central to her memories. A variety of landscapes are on each bank to describe the different scenes in her poems… an African elephant, the communities, the savanna, the forests, the mountains. She travels by foot, and there is a boat to symbolize water passage.

Dominating above is a sunset and a star - the sunset sets the tone for how she always traveled in the dark for security, while its light and the star symbolize guidance and shepherding by her faith in God to provide strength and hope for taking that other step forward into the unknown.

Journey Maps

Illustrations by Amanda Morris M.D.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Authors were given the option to include their portraits in our book. Most of the photographs were taken by the editor while others were submitted by authors through their Facebook accounts. Some authors chose not to include their photo and there were some authors who over our slow journey of two years of working on this book, we have lost contact with.

Authors

Some of authors chose to use just their first names but wanted to have their story written and included in our book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost we thank each and every author who contributed stories to our book. This has been a very enjoyable project as many students read a story of another author and decided, Hey, I’d like to be a part of this."

We thank Sarah Galvin, coordinator of our ESL program, for her encouragement, excitement and guidance with our book.

Thanks to our cover artist and map illustrator, my daughter-in law, Doctor Amanda Morris M. D.

We thank our proof readers, my sons Dr. Eric Gilbertson and Dr. Matthew Gilbertson and from our ESL and English Department Dr. Jim Fenton. Also thanks to my good friend and neighbor, retired English teacher Mike Owens for proofreading and suggestions and ESL student Ahmad Al Ali from Saudi Arabia for proofreading.

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Many of our 61 student authors

Swahili Proverb

Polepole ndiyo mwendo.

Slowly is the journey.

Meaning: It doesn’t matter how slowly you are getting along because with time you get to where you want to go.

Grit

Inspiration for this book came from Nara Choi from South Korea who was a student in an ESL listening class and presented a Grit video to our class. Thanks Nara. She plans to study Food Science at a major university in the United States after she completes her study at BCTC

Grit & Perseverance

This will take a day

No, this will take a week on the way

It will take a month, months?

May be years before you reach there

Beatrice Kaite Mbayo

We all, as humans, are the same in many ways but we are also different because of our life changing experiences. We all have the desire to feel in love, have babies, and feel safe.

Fida Qundeel Palestine

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The world from where our authors came from to Lexington, Kentucky

Our web page www.slowlyisthejourney.blogspot.com

Visit our site to find learning activities, quizzes, photos, maps, videos and more details about our authors

We have included links for researching facts about the countries of our authors. In the e-book edition, he links are active and clickable. When reading the paperback copy you may type in the links or use the old fashioned way to look up information.

CHAPTER ONE

Africa

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Africa: The paths of our authors

Is There Any Love?

Kaite Beatrice Mbayo

Democratic Republic of Congo

The town is moving

It is the 24th of December, 7 pm and it’s like the day has started

A day that everybody is prepared for

Prepared for a feast, the day Jesus Christ was born

Christmas is a day that was celebrated with joyful music and dances.

Traditional dancers are practicing

I can hear the drums sounding like a storm

I can still see their hips and bodies moving

I cannot wait until the 25th comes

When the dancers exhibit their dance in a public place

The crowd will gather around

Women will be screaming to the best dancers

Their body will be moving to the rhythm of the drum

Hips turning like they have no bones… Now that is celebration.

That’s a day were men and women will stand along each other talking about love,

History, farms, food, love and anything that you can imagine

The palm wine will be brought

Man and woman will drink

Suddenly the sound comes in the sky,

A sound of a flying plane

The plane turns back toward the city

People start to panic

Taking away the music and joy

Running was the only option

Kids and women were panicking

Soldiers start gathering

There is war in the city

Bombs are thrown there and here

Shooting is all over

Running and screaming heard all over

It a sauve qui peut *

Will you go out of the city? Or stay in?

Dogs were barking, trying to hide.

The chickens were hiding too

Kids were left behind women screaming and carrying and pulling kids

Men encouraging each other

Husbands, calling for their wives

Wives calling for their husbands

Is there any love left?

Any love to put your child on your back?

Is there any love left to think about your wife and family?

Is there any love for your brothers?

Is there any brotherhood anymore?

There is war in the city.

It’s every man for himself

The smell of death fills the city

*Sauve qui peut – Every man for himself

Slowly is the Journey

Kaite Beatrice Mbayo

Travelling from one city to village

From villages to the city

From the city to villages

On foot or bike,

On the truck or by train

Walking or carried

Crossing rivers, oceans, lakes, forest

Seeing all kinds of vegetation

From flat to mountains

Savanna to wooded area,

Crossing rivers on feet or on the bridge,

Travelling by small or, big boat it does not matter

Seeing all kind of animals

Ants to elephants

Worried for the next destination that is unknown

Not only will the animals be the danger

Human can be too

A secret,

Travelling country to country

There is a secret

A secret that is not worthy to tell

A secret that keeps you safe

If you reveal it you become an enemy

They are doing their job, do not reveal the secret

Crossing the ocean in dangerous wind, water wide in front of me,

My eyes cannot see the end

The infinite surface of water lies like a sky,

Am I going to make it to the next stop..?

Fear covers me

Like the Holy Spirit when Mary conceived Jesus,

Worried! Ya, I was

The sharks deep down the ocean are waiting for food

Dolphins down there talking to each other,

Surrounding us in a sign of protection

Saying no word are the passengers aboard,

No one could say a word

No one,

The engine roaring was the only noise.

The captain,

The captain’s face is a kind that you don’t want to see

He can put you in the water any time

My life has no value

No one cares,

They get from you all the things you have

There` s no law of protection for us

It is a law of the strongest fish that eat the small ones.

Sometimes the fish can come out alive

Here, there` s no hope of surviving

If the big fish decides to eat the small fish,

There is no one that will stop it

Am I going to make it?

Wondering how many souls are down there?

God in the heaven looking at us

Busy answering all the world prayers,

Is my file near on the table yet?

Is God having enough time to open it?

Is he? Can He say yes to my demand?

A yes is the only answer I am waiting for.

If he says no, I may die

Please open it Dear King of the Universe

Open it now King of the universe

It is just one sentence

Keep me safe and let me reach the destination

I hope He will see my file

There is an emergency, there is fear,

Hope someone on earth is praying for safety some where

Hope that file has been opened already so that my heart can be in peace,

While I am waiting for my file to be open…

Someone in this world did put in a request that is granted, prayer of safety

And my soul will be in peace

Maybe someone has already done it for us

And that will keep us strong and safe,

Is there any one in a same situation somewhere out there?

Yes there’s one in DR Congo, another one in Afghanistan,

Is there another one in Syria?

Crossing borders with no passport, the secret is revealed

When the sun goes down,

This is the best time to travel,

The sun comes out

Still on the journey

Goes on and on, still on the journey,

A journey to the end of the world

A journey to a country

A country that is unknown

This will take a day

No this will take a week on the way

It will take a month, months?

May be years before you reach there,

May be you will not reach there

There, where we hope for peace

Maybe you will end up in prison

Maybe they will shoot you if you are found,

Maybe someone will feed you without knowing you

Maybe someone will accommodate you,

Maybe someone will give you water to drink

Maybe give you a dress to change

Maybe give you a soap to wash your body

Maybe your head full of chawa* will