This is what a recent refugee to the United States looks like:
A man gets off the bus in downtown Portland. He’s 22. He passes men about his age. They sit on the sidewalk and ask strangers for spare change. The man has been up since early morning, going to school all day at Portland Community College before working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift at a hotel where he takes away dirty room service dishes. He arrives home by bus at about 1 a.m. Then he does it again the next day.
“Yes, I am tired,” said Eric Nzayiramya said, resting in the hotel lobby before his shift. “But I have learned that no matter what the circumstance, a person should never quit.”
Born in the Congo, he was given the first name Eric because it’s a French name and French is the country’s official language. When he was 2, his parents were killed during a civil war. His aunt and uncle took him in and then fled with the family to a refugee camp in Rwanda. He spent 19 years in the camp. He had one meal a day, and lived in a structure measuring 13 by 14 feet.
“We were 11 in total,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine how we lived in that house. It was very hard and bad when it rains because our houses were not strong. The water enters the house, and it becomes dangerous. There was no sleep during the rain.”
In 2015, his family was selected to be resettled in the United States. The process, vetting and screening, took a year. The family arrived in Tennessee in the summer of 2016. He then decided to move to Portland to draw on the resources of These Numbers Have Faces, a Portland nonprofit that works with students in two refugee camps in Rwanda.
“Eric comes from a community that lives on a hilltop in a place that most people have never heard of, and never will,” said Taylor Smith, the organization’s developmental and community director. “He applied to be part of our leadership program when he was in the camp. “He’s a very smart young man.”
When he arrived in Portland, he enrolled in fall term at PCC with the help of a caseworker. Among his classes was one designed to help students needing remedial help with writing and reading. Most students in the class read at a seventh-grade level.
On the first day, he met his teacher, Sonja Grove. She has two master’s degrees in education and learning disabilities, and a doctorate in education. She’d previously taught at Lewis & Clark and at the University of Portland. This was a new teaching experience.
“I felt like I was teaching a high school class,” she said. “How you treat the teacher, how you treat your classmates. The students in the class need support. This is their first time in college. Many are there for a second chance in life. This is the hardest teaching I’ve ever done.”
She noticed Nzayiramya right away. He consistently scored high marks on his tests.
“He came with real skills,” she said. “His intellectual ability was quite high.”
He struggled with his English and apologized to his classmates when he had to stand in front of the class and speak.
“I was having some trouble,” Nzayiramya said. “Making friends with my classmates. I have a different skin color. I have a distinct accent. I wanted them to accept me in America.
“I was an outsider,” he said. “I wanted to be welcomed.”
Grove was intrigued by this student.
“He was intellectually superior,” she said. “But I didn’t know anything about him. He was so vague about his life.”
As an exercise, Grove had her students write a memoir. Write about something that happened in their life and how it impacted them.
Grove said Nzayiramya wrote about his 19 years in a refugee camp. He explained how his parents were killed because of politics. His father had been a truck driver. He wanted to go to high school, but the United Nations Refugee Agency only paid for him attend school through eighth grade. He found a sponsor, but because he was a refugee could not attend a university in Rwanda. The Portland nonprofit, he said, changed his life when they tested him in the camp and said he was one of the top students they’d ever encountered.
“I gave him an A,” Grove said. “I’m a hard grader. I was so taken by his story. I sent the dean a note and told him he had to read this paper.”
Nzayiramya believes he’s on his way to a better life.
“I want to work hard,” he said. “I want to one day transfer to a big university and study to be an electrical engineer. I was raised in a community with no electrical power. One day, I would like to go back to the camp and produce power to help children like I was.”
He stood up.
He walked through a hotel lobby and back to an employee room to change into his uniform.
It was time to go work.
–Tom Hallman Jr.
thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224
@thallmanjr
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