Rochester refugees get taste of Thanksgiving

To move to a new part of the world as a child is to ensure a steady stream of unforeseen, exciting, terrifying and baffling experiences.

The bustle of the city, the droning of an unfamiliar language, the sharp taste of unfamiliar foods. Always something.

Monday was a day of such experiences for some of the children at Rochester International Academy, the school near Edgerton Park where young immigrants and refugees begin their American education.

In the evening, there was a Thanksgiving dinner, served in two waves to nearly 700 students and family members. There were huge platters of turkey and stuffing, piles of sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.

For the scores of volunteers, it was familiar; for the new Americans, a pleasant surprise.

It was the strange events of Monday morning, though, that are more likely to stick in the memories of the children from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It practically smacked them in the face as they stepped outside to catch the bus.

Snow!

"It was confusing," said Mohamed Koko, a Sudanese sixth-grader who arrived here with his family from an Egyptian refugee camp four months ago. He'd never seen the stuff before.

He was not alone. For that reason, the school holds an assembly every year on first-day-of-snow day, summoning a full complement of interpreters so that all the students, speaking about 20 languages among them, understand the key talking points.

"For example — you can't go outside in flip-flops, because your feet will freeze," said Terri Orden, a counselor. "We have to go over these things."

As a secondary revelation, the dinner was very good. Part of the school's curriculum is to acclimate the students to their new country, so they spent the last week learning about Thanksgiving and what it means to Americans.

"Maybe in my country, we'd have something like this for a very special day. ... But this is better," sixth-grader Rebecca Baraka said. "I like how we are all together."

She and six siblings came over last winter with their mother from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She speaks four languages and wants to be a doctor when she grows up — or a teacher, if she can do so at the International Academy.

"I love this school so much, I wish I could stay here forever," she said. "I love this school more than my house."

Some of the 300 students at the school are immigrants but many are refugees. They observed a moment of silence Monday to mark the terrorist attacks in Paris but have been buffered — at least at school — from the nationwide debate on how to welcome refugees to the United States.

"We don't talk about it a lot here, because they've been through it," Principal Mary Diaz said. "They've lived it. We just want them to feel safe."

Got refugee questions? We have answers.

All the school's staff volunteered their time for the dinner. The cafeteria cooked all the food, including 30 donated turkeys. As the children filed out to the school buses, they picked up whatever cold weather clothes they needed from among donated items.

Ahmed Moubl, of Yemen, has four children at the school. Speaking through an interpreter, he expressed his own gratitude to Diaz and the community.

"We can get everything we need here," he said. "We left a lot, but this is our new home. This is our home country."

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com

How to help

Rochester International Academy collects warm clothes, especially coats, to distribute to its students each winter. Clean clothes in good condition can be dropped off at the school, located at the former Jefferson High School campus, 1 Edgerton Park, Rochester, NY. The phone number is (585) 243-5250.