Refugee scholars must deal with much more than studies

Opinion

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This article was published 17/09/2010 (4969 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Citizens of Nowhere

From Refugee Camp to Canadian Campus

By Debi Goodwin

Doubleday Canada, 311 pages, $33

IN 2006, one out of five Canadians was born somewhere else; in 2008, more than 250,000 immigrants arrived here, many of them refugees from wartorn countries.

In her absorbing first book, former CBC journalist Debi Goodwin documents the emotional journeys of 11 young Somali and Ethiopian refugees, eight men and three women, in their first year as scholarship students in Canada.

Many of these students were orphans who had gone through atrocities in their own countries.

Goodwin was inspired to write this book after her visit to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya in 2007. She later produced a documentary about the students she met who were slated to attend Canadian universities through WUSC, the World University Service of Canada program.

The following year, she returned to Dadaab to interview the next batch of students and decided to track their progress during their first year on Canadian soil.

This was no mean feat, for the students had been accepted into various post-secondary institutions from Victoria to Halifax. An Ontario resident, Goodwin criss-crossed the country many times to interview the students, in addition to maintaining weekly contact with them by phone and email.

The tautly written narrative is divided into five sections: the students’ backgrounds, their process of adaptation, the weather, future plans and reflections.

To some extent, sections of the book are reminiscent of the sentiments expressed by Burmese activist Zoya Pham in her memoir Little Daughter about her culture shock while attending university in England and Bangkok.

In the case of the African students, all 11 relished the opportunity to leave Dadaab. “To be a refugee is like living in a sealed, dark room … there was no freedom of movement, no good jobs if you have an education, no work permitted even if you have the education. And sometimes you go without food.”

Yet despite their keen intelligence and drive to succeed, the period of adjustment to Canadian life was far from easy. In fact, loneliness plagued the majority of the students. So did confusion over our customs regarding food, restaurants and pets.

Throughout, Goodwin juxtaposes details about the gloomy news from Somalia with interviews and commentaries about each student’s emotional journey.

Mention should also be made of the black-and-white photographs interspersed throughout the narrative. Particularly evocative are the images of the refugee camp itself; they provide readers with a visual context for the students’ previous environment.

Much to her credit, Goodwin resists sugar-coating the students’ progress during their first year. Some suffered anxiety about their financial situations, while others had to revise their academic programs in favour of courses more likely to land them jobs.

As well, Goodwin discusses the student’s adjustment in terms of gender differences. At the same time, she decries the lack of consistency from province to province regarding financial support for the WUSC students beyond their first year of university.

“It is too easy to think of ‘refugees’ as a block,” Goodwin states, “as something other, even as something to be feared. It is harder to take the time to realize that their individual stories have elements in common with our own.”

Hopefully, the experiences of this select group of newcomers will draw the attention of Canadian readers, especially those involved in the field of education, from service workers to teachers to university administrators.

Bev Sandell Greenberg is a writer and editor. She has worked extensively with refugees in Vancouver and Winnipeg.