Trail of scars
By Ann Ariyadasa
afranci8@uwo.ca
Jerry grew up without her father’s presence. Her father, a poet, left Ethiopia because he was wanted by the Ethiopian government in the 1980s for writing about the people’s suffering and the political corruption — he was a threat to the government.
“He walked for 28 days from Ethiopia to Sudan. From Sudan he made arrangements to come to Canada,” said the 18-year-old, who didn’t want her last name used.
Jerry, her mother and her older sister stayed in the country during the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Tension between the two countries always existed. But it escalated into violence in 1998 when Eritrean soldiers entered the Badme region that sits on the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Badme functions under the Ethiopian administration.
Jerry was seven then. No one was allowed on the streets after 5 p.m. and schools would be cancelled unexpectedly. Boys were forcibly taken away to fight for the Eritrean soldiers and the war drained the economy. Girls turned to prostitution to help their families. Jerry’s friend was one of them.
“I always tried to talk her out of it, saying ‘you could get AIDS.’ But she joked and said ‘AIDS doesn’t get you at night time.’ ” Her friend was 13 years old.
The war ended in 2000. But the scars of war can be still seen today through the number of prostitutes, young boys without limbs and orphaned children.
Jerry’s father sponsored his family to come to Canada in 2003, and Jerry started her school here as a Grade 8 student. Like many teenaged refugees, Jerry has faced difficulties adapting to her new home while also dealing with the challenges of growing up. But the struggles have been balanced with an appreciation for her more peaceful life in Canada.
“I did not know English, and I was quiet in class,” recalls Jerry. “People thought I had an attitude.”
In the classroom, Jerry was an active observer. It took almost a year for her to speak in sentences.
“When I started going to school, I knew that I would be fine,” she said. “The freedom that I got was amazing. I didn’t see that when I was in Ethiopia.”
Aislinn Clancy, a child and youth counsellor and co-ordinator at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT) in Toronto, said that teenage refugees adapt to their new life differently. In the beginning, they may feel isolated from their peers because of the way they dress, what they eat and, of course, not knowing the language, Clancy said. They become vulnerable to bullying.
Some of the people Clancy has helped are from Iraq, Ethiopia, Colombia, Rwanda, Burundi and Nigeria.
Age, the level of atrocities each one of them faced, language and the family and community support are significant factors in how these teens adapt, said Clancy. Some already have family and friends when they arrive in Canada, while some arrive alone.
“Sometimes their parents have died or they are living somewhere else,” Clancy said. “A lot of the times they suffer, worrying about their families who are in danger or wanting to help their families but having no resources.”
Some of the after-effects kids face include lack of sleep, nightmares, forgetfulness and paranoia, said Ezat Mossallanejed, a policy analyst and researcher at CCVT and author of Torture in the Age of Fear. These factors affect their performance in schools, causing damage to their self-esteem and confidence, Mossallanejed added.
He explained that some of his young clients are hypersensitive. “I have seen kids feeling that they were always being followed by somebody and they always look around.”
In such cases, Mossallanejed said the children need special attention. He recalled one of his clients who came from Africa. The boy got into a physical fight with his peer at school who made racist comments that were once used by the hostile forces and soldiers who used to torture him. The teenager was arrested and taken to court.
“He did not realize he should not attack her. He totally got out of control,” Mossallanejed said. The teenager was sentenced to house arrest and had to be accompanied anytime he stepped out of the house; his peer got a restraining order. “He was a very nice, non-violent boy. Unfortunately the system here did not understand him.”
Mossallanejed agrees that this is an isolated incident. “But we still need to be careful and vigilant.”
In most cases when teenagers move to Canada, the peaceful environment motivates many of them to have goals and ambitions.
Kamal Noor, 15, is one of them. He moved to Canada in December 2008 from Yemen. The Somalian-born boy lived in Aden in a refugee camp all his life with his mom and three of his siblings.
The war between the north and the south of Yemen in 1994 devastated Noor’s family. His uncle, a father to 12 children, was killed. Noor’s father disappeared. Noor’s grandmother, who was raising his younger brother and sister in a different town in Yemen, fled to Somalia with the two children.
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Photo by Ann Ariyadasa
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| Kamal Noor wants to sponsor family members in Yemen and Somalia to come to Canada. |
Noor saw people who mercy-killed their entire family because of famine, and there was a mother who lit herself on fire because she couldn’t provide food.
Despite these tragedies, Noor still has hope. “I want to find a job here to support my aunt, her family and my siblings. I want to sponsor them to come to Canada,” Noor said through a translator.
He said his 12-year-old brother in Somalia is frightened to live there because the police officers act indiscriminately.
“He says ‘I want to be with you and I want to come here and I want to sit with you. It’s not safe here,’ ” Noor said.
Noor, his mother and three of his siblings came to Canada as government-sponsored refugees. He now attends Montcalm Secondary School in London. “It’s not simple for me to forget that I haven’t seen my brother and my father for more than 10 years. How would you feel?”
Shawn Walker, a youth worker at London Cross Cultural Learner Centre, said refugees lack confidence in the beginning, and they’re not as outgoing as their peers.
“Being removed and being here for just a short time, they’re not really sure what to expect,” Walker said. “They are afraid but at the same time happy to be out of where they’re from.”
Noor agrees.
“Over there we were between life and death. I am getting comfortable here. People are nice.” Although Noor feels pressure to save his family back home, he’s still a determined student.
“God willing, I want to become a doctor,” he said.
More than 37,500 asylum seekers at the end of 2007 had pending claims, according to the World Refugee Survey. In Canada, almost 6,000 people were granted asylum in 2007, according to the latest figures available from such countries as Colombia, China and Sri Lanka.
But most of them carry the scars of their past, said Derek Oss, a refugee trauma counsellor at CCLC.
“Most people who come here have some sort of trauma just coming to this country. Just leaving one’s country and entering another is traumatic,” Oss said. “They carry as well the scars of abuse and most of them have been tortured in one form or another, either physically, mentally or economically.”
The way each person deals with problems depends on their cultural and religious values, he added.
“Most cultures tend to ignore the suffering, thinking that time will heal everything,” Oss said. “In the West we found that talking about it or sharing seems to help. For them either religious practices or cultural practices will help them do that.”
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Photo by Ann Ariyadasa
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| Kamal Noor is adjusting to life in Canada with his mother and siblings. |
Mossallanejed said that the teenagers’ future could be hopeful with the appropriate support in schools and counselling.
“If they do well in school, they cope well. They are very resilient and they learn very fast.”
In Jerry’s case, she has been able to put her traumatic past behind her and focus on her studies with the help of her family. She plans to specialize in gender studies and psychology and has received offers to attend Carleton and Laurentian universities.
“I come from a country where most women are not valued. They’re not heard. But we live here, where everything is fine,” said Jerry. “I want to go there (Ethiopia) and share what I have here and try to make change one thing at a time.”
