The Reclamation Project

Book Review of “Outcasts United”

Encounter the culture clash that is Outcasts United, including a 31-year-old Jordanian and coach, an Atlanta suburb, and dozens of refugee boys who have a passion for soccer.

Warren St. John’s tale shows the intangible, unexplainable bond created between a single woman trying to prove her independence and her rag-tag team of boys just trying to survive day-to-day life in America. After tearing from her wealthy Jordanian roots to set up a new life in Georgia, Luma Mufleh volunteers herself as a soccer coach for a group of refugee boys she watches kicking around an old soccer ball in an empty lot. Determined to defeat the negative voices from city hall, affluent suburban parents, and her personal demons, Luma pushes herself and her team, The Fugees, to extraordinary heights. St. John, a reporter for the New York Times, tells The Fugee’s story with an alarming eye for detail, and an impressive ability to tap into human emotions.

Like soccer? Read this book. Like heartbreaking success stories? Read this book. Like good literature? Read this book.

-Sarah

"Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus."

—  Mother Teresa

Freedom isn’t Free

 

I’ve grown very tired of everyone saying freedom isn’t free.

 

The reason is, well, it’s because I don’t know where it came from and quite frankly, I think that some guy named Sal could be responsible, like maybe he started the whole thing after one too many beers at a 4th of July picnic a few years back and all of a sudden it’s become our unofficial national freedom slogan and it’s in our songs and on our bumper stickers and tee shirts and it causes us all to get a little verklempt, like we’re supposed to somehow get it if we say it.

 

Of course freedom isn’t free any more than bondage is pricey. What we do know is that every battle of every war that has ever been fought from the beginning of time to this moment has erupted to defend freedom or to earn some type of freedom or simply to fight for the right to freely exercise this or that and throughout the ages we just keep fighting and we think we’re closer, so much closer to real freedom, but we’re really so far away because we’ll never truly be free.

 

I do have a point, and I promise to get to it.

 

You see, it’s really some cosmic irony that no matter how I want to define free — you know, free to be you and me, free to worship, free to dance, free to vote, free to exercise my freedom — well, I really shouldn’t even try to get my arms around the word because it means way too much and it really should find its true definition in a global sense, you know, for humanity as a whole.

 

I say this because we all know, without saying it, that our brothers and sisters of various races and backgrounds and creed and culture, in our own backyards or across the oceans are dying a little and often a lot each day because they’re caught up in persecution of the physical kind or the spiritual kind or the emotional kind and they’re oppressed and entangled in that very pricey bondage that should cause all of us to realize the true shackles that encircle this planet we walk on. And this causes me to wonder if you or I can honestly enjoy any freedom if we know that another member of humanity isn’t liberated within this large globe of prisoners.

 

I know, I know, this is heavy stuff that travels over and beyond borders and maybe flies in the face of true patriotism. I realize these are not issues that we can tackle all at once like some sweeping army from the North. Nor do I think we should give up our celebration of certain freedoms we enjoy. I just know that it’s not always about patting each other on the back at picnics with some guy named Sal as we get choked up and say in unison freedom isn’t free, and, oh, pass me the chips; or even as we take a moment of silence and rightly honor our service men and women (who by the way are doing amazing things and, yes, even dying for us in yet another freedom battle).

 

No, it is about each of us living out the rest of the year and crossing enemy lines and freeing prisoners by befriending someone whose gaze is slightly downcast, someone who knows the chains of loneliness or poverty or maybe someone who just needs a little dignity in his or her life and is desperate for the true release found only through the combination of love and companionship and fellowship and community. We can deliver one person at a time and maybe offer an appetizer for what the true feast of freedom will look like someday.

 

And you know what? We do it for a reason, because there was once this man, who well, he actually still very much is. He’s explained it before that the type of freedom he’s selling — it is free; he paid it once and for all and he’d do it again if he had to, for me and for you, over and over if he needed to because his love is deep and wide and cavernous really. It’s as free as anything will ever get in this world and it’s all about living freely and helping others do the same, and we can deliver it and just bring it with abandon. Maybe we could all do that. Just one person at a time.

 

Now that type of freedom is worthy of a slogan.

 

j. jacobson 

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Refugee Tent Display

As a part of our advocacy efforts with the TEN Campaign, we constructed a simulated refugee camp tent complete with authentic items we received from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) in Washington, DC.  We hope in time to expand on this experience and create a simulated refugee camp experience to better acquaint people in FW with the Refugee Decade.  Anyone interested to help?

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Our Booth

Thanks to Kristie, Angie, Sarah, Josiah, Abraao, Julie, Becky, Andrew and the many others who spent the day advocating (and sweating!) for the cause of refugee awareness and integration in Fort Wayne.  A very special thanks to Francois Mikobi for his willingness to allow us to feature his story in a live interview on stage during the concert.

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TEN Campaign Launches!

Trinity MusicFest at Parkview field was the venue for the launch.  Several thousand people were introduced to the campaign.  The site is up and we are working hard to dial it in and make this advocacy tool as powerful as it can be!

Sound too crazy to believe?

Imagine a rogue military unit sweeping in from Ohio and occupying Fort Wayne (if not Fort Wayne, insert your city here). This unit seizes control of the city in every way possible. Laws are ignored. The federal government looks the other way. Soon, the leaders give instructions to start “cleansing” the area of Hoosiers and anyone who is not a native Buckeye. Men are killed, women are raped, and children witness it all.

Somehow, you make it out alive with your family.

In an utter state of confusion and desperation, you depart with others en masse (and by foot) to Canada where you’re sequestered in a camp with only the shirts on your collective backs. One week there turns into a month, and then a month into a year. You spend ten years in this camp, and only the lucky among you eventually get a ticket out.

Again, you’re blessed, because your family is intact, but all at once you’re sent to Bolivia to start a new life without fear of persecution. They explain that you’ll be safe in Bolivia, and that it will be a place of refuge for you.

But you can never return to Fort Wayne. Or America for that matter.

You try to explain to the Bolivians that you’re legal and you’re in their country for a reason but the Bolivians don’t understand people from Fort Wayne and many of them want you to leave. You don’t look like them. You don’t talk like them. You’re straining their system.

You want to scream: “But we’re all human, aren’t we?”

So, you do the best you can in a new culture and a strange land. Your college degree means nothing in this new country but you try to get a job and learn the language and customs, while still trying to preserve some of your own.

It’s not easy, but at least it’s better than what’s happening back in Fort Wayne.

Sound too crazy to believe? Try telling that to a refugee.

When an individual receives the designation of refugee, he or she is given the gift of life. This may sound a little extreme, but we’re not dealing with some casual term. Rather, to be named a refugee is to receive a title of huge significance, granted by the U.N. High Commission to a relatively small group of people who have fled an oppressive government, war, genocide or some other unrest in their country. By contrast to the potential death sentence one might be under by staying (or by being forced to return to the place from which they fled), to become a refugee is to be granted life. As wonderful as that is, though, a new life still comes at a cost - for those who receive this status can never return to the world he or she once knew. You may think that’s not so bad considering what’s being left behind, and that’s true to a certain extent. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. Most people love their homeland, despite the circumstances causing them to leave.

Somehow in the midst of all of this, they have to find their way.

I say all of this simply to point out that refugees are among us, wherever you may live. Make a friend in a refugee and offer a helping hand. Be welcoming. Before long he or she won’t be a refugee anymore, but rather, a friend.

And, if you ever wonder what it’s like to be a refugee, read the above story again, and simply insert your city.

Kristie Jacobson

Executive Director

Book Review of “Human Cargo”

If you want to remain in your comfort zone, do not read Caroline Moorehead’s Human Cargo. A harrowing compilation of stories of people stuck between a home they can never return to and a home that will not accept them, Human Cargo is painful, provoking, and absolutely eye opening. Meet Mercy, a young Liberian woman who clung to jagged rocks for four hours, watching her sister be swept away with their boat’s wreckage while trying to find refuge in Sicily. Meet Shayan, a nine year-old Iranian boy stuck in an Australian mandatory detention center for refugee seekers. In less than a decade of life, Shayan has seen brutal beatings and suicide attempts; he wets his bed, refuses to eat, cannot sleep, and barely speaks.

Aside from profiling refugees in their journey for permanency, Moorehead includes a thorough description of the history of refugees and what the world has tried (or failed) to offer them. This book is fascinating. It is necessary. Read it.

-Sarah

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."

—

 

Mother Teresa

“Near”, “Far”

I have always been a fan of Sesame Street. There are many reasons why, including the creative genious of Jim Henson and company, the warm fuzzies that the cuddly monsters give you even beyond childhood, and the way that everyone on the block seems to care about each other and help their next door neighbor. I always thought I’d like to live on Sesame Street and have neighbors just like these.

One of my favorite Grover moments from the show is when he was trying to teach the concept of Near and Far. I still find it amusing to watch him run up close to the camera to declare “near!”, and then hurriedly run away from the camera to announce “far!”. He would do this repeatedly, hopeful to convey the contrast between those distances, until at last he would collapse from exhaustion after all that running. It’s endearing to watch his sincere effort at helping little minds grasp these concepts. More recently, however, I find that my little mind has begun to grasp a deeper understanding of “near” and “far” as well.

Having now befriended and worked with many people who arrived to the US as refugees over these past few years, I have found myself grappling with issues that for so long in my life were issues held at a distance. They were “far” from me and my daily world experiences. Now, my eyes have been opened to conflicts and circumstances abroad that drive people from their homeland, unprotected and left with little hope. I have seen up close the effect these realities have on people just like you and me. And when the alien and stranger come to their new home in the US, they bring with them challenges from their past only to face new challenges in the present. Hopefully these new challenges are a better hope than what they left behind, but this has given me pause to consider. I now observe that in many ways, some of these same challenges exist among those who have been “near” to me all along. Issues of hopelessness, despair, trauma, voicelessness, and the list goes on. People around the world, including our own cities, are regularly marginalized and silenced systematically through a variety of means, whether intentional or not. What I have found is that sometimes it takes something so far removed from our reality to open our eyes to something that might actually be right next door.

The reality is that my neighborhood might not be that different than the one I admire on Sesame Street. If I make an effort to look around, it is diverse, there are problems, and life can be hard. But neighbors helping neighbors, regardless of where they are from, is what provides a source of hope and helps to restore dignity. I’m thankful for these lessons, both from that cute loveable furry old Grover, and from these new friends who once were far but are now near.

-Angie