A Good Start

On Sunday night we and most of our fellow sponsors showed up for a fundraising dinner in the basement of a local Catholic church, hosted by the Knights of Columbus, a charitable arm of the Catholic church with volunteer efforts driven by the men of the church.

The reason I mention that it is Catholic is because it is reflective of the tolerance that we as a society in Canada (with a few notable exceptions) take for granted. To follow the convoluted path, we had the Catholic church driving fundraising (despite the fact that the Catholic church in Canada has its own registered charity raising funds to support the arrival of all refugees) to donate to a Muslim charity (our sponsoring charity that receives the funds that we raise) to give to a Catholic (that’s me) to support a Muslim family (we know who that is).

We had 190 people show up for a fine affair of mostly eating, it was after all a Catholic church in a largely Italian area. We brought Tamador’s two  boys with us and of course pasta wasn’t anything new but the meatballs were. We asked what are now the usual questions for us “Is there pork in the meatballs?” and of course they were willing to find out for allergies. Dayna got a bit of an odd look when she said it was religious, after all we were in a Catholic church in an Italian area!

No pork but of course not halal but we were good. Mohammad then asks “What is this, kebabs?”. Tamador explained later that despite the shapes, ground beef put together is always a kebab.

We had Italian kebabs.

Obviously, with a captive and sympathetic audience there was a great opportunity to ask for more, which we did. We even received a couple of leads on jobs, more to follow on that. The gentleman owned a landscape maintenance company and I know just the people for him. The good thing with these guys is that they will work like dogs and if/when the machinery breaks down they will be able to fix it.He was even flexible on hours. If we can make it work that will be a big win, the pasta dinner is fish as it’s donations, jobs are fishing rods.

There’s a bit of a pall over everything right now as we and our new friends settle in to a Canadian spring.

Over the last few months we’ve seen them take on board all kinds of new things, from English to trivial experiences like learning how to use the Walmart cashier-less check out. We’ve noticed English language skills improving dramatically and we even have a fund raiser on Sunday (more on that in the next post I’m sure) to hopefully help out the additional family members that should be arriving.

We had a gentle reminder of the hate that some people harbour when waiting in a waiting room and overhearing a conversation in one of the offices. Dayna and I could hear a toxic, hateful woman spouting garbage on Islam and the newly arrived Syrians and what was wrong with Canada now and about Donald Trump’s “lovely family”.

And then the following day an even more stark reminder that they are in fact refugees. On Thursday morning the family received news that a brother in law had been walking to work in Aleppo and had been snatched up and killed. I’m not sure, but it could well have been the same one who had shrapnel embedded in his leg as a plane crashed nearby a few weeks ago.

All of this focusses how little is actually being done and of how irrelevant the settlement of refugees is. The fact is that the real issue is the war in Syria and while many countries (hats off to Germany in particular) are doing more than their fair share of heavy lifting, the EU paying Turkey 3.4bn Euros in bribe money, the west selectively bombing targets and thinking that that is a great success and the entire world thinking that settling a few thousand refugees is a good job, ordinary people continue to get killed for no real reason.

And to continue my rant, while we think that we’re doing all that we can, we’re not. Because if we were then this wouldn’t happen.

And now Turkey has closed its borders, 3.4bn Euros in hand, the EU feels good about itself and Syrians remain stuck on the border so they’re not officially refugees.

And we call it a war because people are fighting but unlike so many wars before it, civilians seem to be a target. Ordinary people are a target. And we continue to send drones so our troops won’t get hurt, train foreign fighters and do anything to not be involved.

But now we are involved, because it is the family of one of my friends.

And I’m not one of those scary Muslim, Arabic speaking foreigners mooching off the Canadian government, I’m about as white bread as they come.

English language lessons are really starting to show. We’re still a bit hamstrung by certain parts of it as the one school is about 90 minutes on the bus from home for the one family but they’re battling through.

With English strengthening we’ve managed to secure part time jobs for four people. A lady at a mosque nearby reached out to get some part time help for her catering company so Dayna upsold her into taking three people. We’ve also managed to get one of the guys in to the kitchen at a local fast food joint, it’s a halal restaurant but I was reading that that doesn’t matter anyway.

It’s ironic that it’s all food related as I’m currently wearing an extra 10lbs thanks to Syrian cooking.

I’m not sure that any of them recognize the significance of it or if the sponsor group is overly impressed with the feat. Either way, to me it’s a big deal. It’s not life changing as it’s a few hours a week but it can be life changing as it’s a gentle introduction to real life in Canada.

That, and the dumping of snow this morning.

Sure, it’s menial, minimum wage work but as the saying goes, all work is honourable. I’m reminded of my first job in Canada cleaning the changing rooms at the Y.

The reality is that this is truly a gateway to bigger and better things. It also starts to add meaning and context to a loaf of bread for $2 or whatever.

I’m sure to the relief of both the people who read this blog, this isn’t a political post. Neither is it a commentary on the events, we’ll get enough of that from people needing to vent or get blustery.

Or maybe we won’t.

As CNN aired interviews and images from Brussels and the latest atrocities we had the usual slew of children getting ready for school.

Just over 3 months ago, five of those children were Syrian refugees who had schlepped across the border from northern Syria into Southern Turkey, maybe still not a safe haven but certainly safer than Aleppo, their home town.

Just over a year prior to that they were in the middle of it all.

This morning, as CNN’s newsfeed developed all they were concerned with was where their lunchbags had gone. They just walked by the television with zero interest in it.

They weren’t alone. Our three who hadn’t left for school yet were also completely oblivious.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just an observation.

Dayna and I were talking about how we saw some of the horrors on tv growing up. For me it was the Falklands and in particular the sinking of the Sir Galahad, for Dayna it was Iraq 1.

Yep, every last Syrian Canadian. After all, why do we want them learning English?

A language that took two millenniums to evolve, with the richness of language given to us by Chaucer, by Shakespeare, by Dickens, by Dylan Thomas and every other person who has spoken and written English before, during and after, whether it be a note, a love letter, a speech, a sonnet or even a blog.

It used to be that we valued our freedom of speech so much that we valued what we said and how we said it. Political discourse and differences of opinions were argued thoughtfully and respectfully.

That freedom of speech brings responsibilities to express fully and thoughtfully and to enjoy the thrust and parry, a thoughtful fencing match as it were.

Now we have Donald Trump.

As Canadians we blithely joke about him because we're so smart.

But we're not.

I happened upon John McCallum's Facebook page today and had the misfortune to read a slew of xenophobic, toxic vitriole regarding the recent arrivals from Canadians who seem to have forgotten that he and his party were elected democratically. I've seen countless "funny" posts about our Prime Minister, the latest was something about him being named after some Native bird that's full of #>{##%.

The language of Shakespeare.

Do we really need all these newcomers learning what we've done to the language. Maybe they are better off speaking Arabic. Maybe we should all speak Arabic.

I’m playing catch up, the day job got in the way.

Last Saturday we were invited to an event put on by the Richmond Hill MP Majid Jowhari. The intent was to have a meeting with other sponsor groups as well as potential sponsor groups in order to share resources, getting away from the drum banging to more practical advice and resources for those about to take the leap.

I think about 60 people showed up, it was great to see how many people are invested in this effort, our little subculture. And until last Saturday they were invisible to us, but they are out there!

Ted in Majid’s office has been instrumental in collecting information and resources for many groups all through York Region, I’ve spoken to him many times and at long last we met.

The meeting allowed everybody to humanize the process, the benefactors and the beneficiaries. It allowed Dayna and I to ask for help and money and it allowed us the opportunity to say “You too can do it!!!”. As Majid said, the key to the program’s success has been the “engagement of community”.

The irony is that just as we appear to be getting more organized in settling new Canadians the government then went and put the brakes on. They’ve closed down the processing centre at Pearson and released 400 staff overseas who were processing new applications. There are still 25,000 to go this year but it won’t proceed at the same breakneck pace that it has.

It’s a shame really because judging by the Facebook posts as well as the community support that I saw last Saturday we have the capability to continue at the same breakneck pace, we’re just getting started. My concern is that many groups have raised funds or partially raised funds but they may be waiting forever to land a family and then the ambition may be waning.

It makes you want to increase the quota, after all, 50,000 is a drop in the ocean.

And now let’s see how we closed the meeting. We were kicked out because a group had the gym for basketball and I think these two photos really humanize the day, the meeting and of course the settlement effort. Here’s a 61 year old man with children in Canada, Turkey and Syria who has seen so many horrors but is so young at heart will a real joy for life. He sneaked back in to the gym when we were outside chatting and threw the ball around a bit.

A friend of mine sent this to me yesterday. Decidedly black humour and as with any black humour, you can look as deep as you like to find the blackness.

Timing was also quite prophetic as it turned out.

Yesterday was pretty much like any other February 24th here and in Syria. We complain about the weather and the non-event ice storm, they just go about their business during yet another inevitable firestorm of bombing.

Our guys still have family approved for immigration in Turkey but they also have family in Syria that tried to escape Aleppo a few weeks ago only to be turned away at the border as it was closed, I have read two different accounts here. Some accounts say the Turks closed it to prevent a massive influx of up to 800,000 people and other accounts say the Syrian government closed it to stop ISIS members getting in to Turkey with the crowds.

Who knows. And if you’re one of the 800,000 who cares.

One of the refugees was the kids’ uncle Abdullah. He spent 3-4 days at the border trying to escape to Turkey. And eventually gave up and returned to Aleppo.

The mess you see photographed above.

When Tamador’s parents escaped Syria they were also turned away at the border despite having documentation from the Canadian government saying that their refugee status application was in process and essentially that they weren’t staying in Turkey.

They ended up walking through dense bush one night away from Turkish border security to get out of Syria.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming, another day as usual yesterday. Dayna was sat at the table with Tamador and a settlement worker working through some stuff and Tamador received a text from her father who was in English classes in Richmond Hill.

He’d just received a text on WhatsApp that Abdullah had managed to get out of Syria and was in Turkey. No details yet. I don’t even know if he walked through a border gate or through the countryside.

He’s definitely not going back to where he came from. Soon enough, we hope, he’ll come from Canada.

Now that Dayna is taking five kids and mum to yoga on Thursday evenings we have started to gradually kit them out with yoga mats. There is no way we would get the expense of a yoga mat approved by the SAH so every time somebody has a birthday they get a yoga mat.

Last Thursday was Rasha’s turn. And with all these birthdays it was inevitable, we forgot! We quickly made up and back tracked when she got home from school so no permanent damage done.

It was quite funny really, if it had been one of our kids I’m sure that they would have to spend months in therapy as an adult because of abandonment issues. Rasha was raving about the cake that had strawberries on top of it three days later to her grandparents. Then again, if you’ve seen what this 16 year old has then you’re probably grateful just to make it to your 16th.

The Arabic word for strawberries is very similar to the French word.

We saw the grandparents on Sunday and Yasin shared photos from Rasha’s 13th birthday, 3 years ago but it really was a lifetime. Pictures of a happy family in Aleppo. It was a stark contrast to the photos from Aleppo that I have been seeing on the news lately as the peace talks marry up with another set of attacks on the city.

Here’s the thing, it wasn’t Rasha’s birthday.

Rasha’s birth mother died and her father didn’t know the exact date that she was born, they thought it was likely the end of December but they weren’t really sure. And of course, now her father has passed.

This entire post is about a world that we have no concept of in so many ways. If I understand correctly, Islam doesn’t place the same importance on birthdays that Christianity does so that partially explains the lost date I guess.

I’m sure that three years ago she would never have guessed in her wildest dreams that she would be going to yoga with her siblings and mother halfway across the world on her 16th birthday.

Bit of a catch all.

We had planned over the weekend just gone to meet up with the Richmond Hill guys to go over their budget as we were feeling a bit like we were treating them like children; here’s your pocket money, here’s your groceries, let me get that for you.

Of course the other part of it is that the numbers after the dollar sign don’t mean anything. $1650 in rent sounds cheap to us but massively expensive to a newly arrived Syrian as typical rents in southern Turkey are a quarter of that and that is probably higher than it used to be as the influx of Syrians would have pushed demand through the roof (pun intended).  Before the war $40 would rent you a house in Aleppo, I’m guessing that they’re a lot cheaper now.

That done we get to the any other business part of the meeting. It was astounding after the fact how long we spent talking about garbage, blue green, pick up dates, where not to store it. Then our translator forces us to digress into Germany’s garbage collection standards, which are far more stringent than ours, but anyway, now I digress.

That budget in the garbage in the photo is blank but there are a few under there that didn’t work, money is really scarce.

And finally, to brothers. Or more specifically, a brother. Ahmed. Single, mid 20′s, got left behind when the rest of the family came to Canada in the middle of January. I’m not entirely certain why but the long and the short is that he should be here soon, maybe a month or so.

We only found out about his predicament when his father asked us during the budget conversation how he could send money to Turkey to help him out. “You can’t, you’re poor”. Not really what a father wants to hear when he’s got this nice house in Richmond Hill and his son literally doesn’t have the money to feed himself.

Many refugees pick up casual work where they can like picking olives but obviously, there are a lot of them and not many jobs and obviously, the pay is appallingly low.

Anyway, Dayna and I managed to take part in our own “adopt a kid overseas” program like you see advertised on tv at Christmas. You can’t really say no. I just wish Yasin didn’t have 11 kids!!!

Anyway, I’m sure it won’t be long before he arrives, no idea what we’re going to do with him or even if we are but if we can find a sponsor group in Richmond Hill then we can keep him local I’m sure. Hopefully he’ll be on the same flight as Maimoona and her family.

Insha’Allah

It’s an interesting concept. If you had to leave your home forever, what would you bring with you with limited space to carry?

Yasin had that challenge. He chose a hard drive from his computer at home in Syria. He told Dayna that it had been in his suitcase for 4 years. My job was to see if it worked. Off I go to the store, buy an enclosure, power it up, plug in the USB. The what followed can best be described as a groan. I guess if you had had a 4 year nap, you would groan. Lights on, it was readable.

Next job, I backed it up to the Cloud and scanned for viruses, of which there were many. If the war in Syria ever ends, I’m opening up a distributorship for anti-virus software because it appears that every Trojan known to mankind was on that hard drive. I’m not sure why I’m worrying about IT security though, clearly he wasn’t, as the photo shows, his idea of IT security was a hanky and a shopping bag!

It’s ironic that in one of the safest countries in the world, I back up religiously on an ongoing basis and when I don’t have an online connection to back up then I’ll plug in two hard drives to back up. He had a bomb dropped on his house (literally) and he pulls the hard drive from his computer to bring with him from Syria to Turkey to Canada. And carries it in a shopping bag!

A few nights ago Tamador and Dayna were looking at photos in a photo album (remember them, books that you stuck photos in and passed around) so it seems for all our riches we all enjoy having and sharing our memories.

And how appropriate that, quite accidentally, the key on the edge of the keyboard makes its way into the shot.

Never a truer word was spoken.

It’s been interesting to me how many people want the new Syrian Canadians to get out and get a job as quickly as possible so that they can repay the gift that the government of Canada has given them.

If you have to repay it, it’s not a gift.

Dayna and I have advocated to anybody who will listen for all new arrivals to learn the language first in order to avoid the trap of under employment.

Refugees, like all immigrants, are motivated people. There is a massive amount of motivation required to leave your home country and take your chances elsewhere, however you got here.

The worst thing that we can do is to tell them to get to work as soon as possible to start earning a wage, any wage. We need to give them as good a start as possible (notice the pun on the blog title? Clever eh?) and get  them fluent enough in English that they can earn the highest wage possible to pay the most amount of taxes possible and avoid the trap of under employment that will become impossible to escape.

It’s been shown that non English speaking immigrants who do not learn the language on arrival become increasingly unlikely to learn English as time goes on, presumably as their coping skills strengthen.

Right now it feels as if we’re holding back a tide as all the adults want to get jobs and our response has been “learning English is your job”. That said, fingers crossed for Tamador as she goes for a part time job interview next week that will allow her to continue with her English lessons.

There are all kinds of positive repercussions here, all the way from learning more English out in the world, to positive self image to earning actual money. As time has gone on, it seems as if a part time job is a great way to integrate gradually into Canada.

So last night I had a big surprise when Tamador suggested that the next time I visit the mosque, I should wear a hijab. 

Is this done? I'm not Muslim. Would people think I was making fun? Would people think I had converted? So many questions, and I'm not sure I can get them answered from Tamador with her nascent English skills and iTranslate. She assures me this is done -- often in Syria. 

I should give some more context. I'm not attending Friday prayers, but often I find myself at dinners at the mosque, or at meetings at the mosque... Tamador says I could do it as a sign of respect -- it doesn’t mean that I’m trying to be Muslim.

 What do you think?

It’s ironic that during their first week in Canada, the one brother noted that he hadn’t been able to freely practice his religion in Syria, a key part of many people’s cultural identity and yet at the same time we’re urging the entire family to adopt Canadian culture and practices as soon as possible.

54 degrees is, apparently, the shortest route to Mecca so we had to keep those walls clear of pictures of animate objects. Canadians’ tolerance for other people’s religions is more ignorance of it than tolerance of it I think but that’s not a bad thing, we just don’t care what our neighbour’s spiritual beliefs are. A few weeks ago I recalled the different faiths that I had mentioned in the resettlement effort in Canada. Shia, Suni, Ahmadiyya (that’s the Muslim side) and Catholic, Mennonite, Anglican, United (Christian side). Everybody working together to the same end.

Tomorrow we have four starting English language lessons as well as a 10 year old getting her first day in school.

Right now, Dayna is out shopping with the family to get shoes for school as well as a few spices to get those good ole tastes of home!

Baba sent me a Whatsapp invite and his profile picture was the Canadian flag.  On Friday he said in his broken English “Syria no more, I AM CANADIAN”. I was tempted to ask if those beer commercials had found their way to Aleppo. After just over two weeks he’s as big a patriot as anybody.

I’m on an email list that sends me an inspirational quote every morning. For the most part, they don’t strike a chord but every now and again, one does. This one did.  This was first written by a poet and theologian called Rumi in the 13th century, a little bit before the interweb, a little bit before Syria for that matter.

Today was a red letter day all round. Tamador’s father and his family and sister and her family were introduced to their new home. Dayna and I have almost been living at the house for the last four days and got some help on Monday and Tuesday from people who showed up on the weekend as well and got it ready just in time for today’s move in. Dayna absolutely killed it on the interior design with the help of Bungalow 180 for a 10 year old’s room. One of the kids was jumping up and down on his bed, the daughter saw her room and then ran back around the corner to grab her parents to come and see and Yasin gave me another big hug.

About now you’re thinking the title of today’s post is about their gratitude. It’s not, it’s about ours. Not just our gratitude for not having suffered the hardships that they did, or for our lives in general but also gratitude for being given the opportunity to help. And the richness of Rumi’s quote and his language really captures the richness of the experience.

Of course, after the handing over of keys, the bringing in of luggage came a reality check. Budgets. We’re on an incredibly tight budget for the year, one that requires some smart shopping but also one that will require a couple of part time jobs in the household to balance the books a bit but it’s unbelievable to see how the entire family just continues to embrace the challenge.

Talking of embracing the challenge, after the initial frustrations of trying to get a free phone from Wind Mobile for their Syrian refugee/new Canadian program, they arrived today and are working so everybody is connected, an absolute essential in today’s world. The two phones alone saved us close to $1,000 for the year.

Tonight, two families will sleep in their own beds in their own home for the first time in one and a half years.

We’ll put today in the win column.

A couple of before and afters:

We’re getting close to the Big Reveal of the new home of Tamador’s parents and her sister and her family. Extreme Makeover has fallen a bit behind schedule despite the best efforts of a group of friends.

We got the keys to the new house on Wednesday afternoon and spent Thursday and Friday drywalling, sanding and removing a rather groovy feature, an in-wall fish tank. Starting Saturday morning we had a group of guys painting the house right through and then on Sunday the big move started as we emptied our garage and house, picked up furniture across York Region and cleaned the house right thorough.

We had the privilege of the help of a group of friends who quite honestly, worked like dogs the entire weekend. It was astounding to see the effort, a bunch of pen pushers helping out a couple of families from halfway around the world because their friends Gareth and Dayna needed their help. It was funny comparing the painters who knew what they were doing to those of us who didn’t. Mark and Ronaldo buzzing through a room while Byron painted everything and everybody in sight. On the flip side, I looked at one of those on-door garbage cans and quickly called “Byron”.

Electrical challenges abounded. Mohialdin and I put up two new ceiling fixtures......eventually. There was a reason that they were the cheapest ceiling fixtures on the shelf. Mohialdin couldn’t read the instructions, I wouldn’t. Meanwhile, across the hall, Byron had found a circuit tester and was determined to get the last 3 lights in the basement bathroom working. Lightbulbs changed, GFI’s tested, check of the panel, much gnashing of teeth. Alan shows up, “what’s this?”. It’s a mysterious light switch outside the door. You can guess the rest.

I think at some point in the day on Sunday pretty much everybody had a go at getting a sofa downstairs, Toby drove around picking up sofas that wouldn’t turn the corner to the basement. The rest of us took off doors, twisted furniture, kicked it, nudged it and then ultimately put it back in the truck for Toby to drive off into the sunset to get another one.

There’s still no sofa in the basement. Nor queen size box spring. We’re not beat yet though. If 18 people can escape a war zone, we can get a sofa in the basement.

And one more positive, following on from my rant on the 26th. I saw one of the neighbours outside in the back yard on Thursday and thought I should let him know what was happening just so that there wasn’t going to be ill will. Quite the contrary. He himself had lived through conflict in another part of the world. By Sunday, he came looking for me to find out when his new neighbours were moving in because his 7 year old daughter was excited to meet her new friends.

Friends everywhere.