My dearest friends and family,

A few notes to my previous email. Brent told me that the lactate dehydrogenase tests I received in the hospital were likely related to a search for leukemia indicators. Also, I failed to mention that I had COVID in the hospital. It was mild. Now to the theme of work.

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My primary work focus since July has been refugee resettlement. This work has been all-consuming, often unpredictable and frustrating, but always rewarding. To better understand the work, let us follow one family of four we resettled. Originally from Venezuela, they spent five years in Colombia through the process of resettlement. Lauren (the CEO of GGIC and the only other employee) and I met this family at the airport after they were delayed a few days by a hurricane. We brought them to a temporary housing arrangement and a donated hot meal.

Over the next weeks, we helped the family apply for public benefits, enroll in school/classes, and look for work. Most of this involved sitting for long stretches with the family on a computer, translating applications and documents both directly and culturally. The rest of the time involved office visits and interviews where I served as the primary interpreter. With this family, as well as with the others, I thought it extremely important to include some leisure activities and a feeling of a welcoming community — for example, QQ and I took them to the Harn Museum of Art for Museum nights. Another family did some pumpkin carving on Halloween.

Each of the short sentences above belies the hours and hours spent on our part and on theirs. For instance, we spent at least 50 hours (to date) just to try and rectify issues arising from a single clerical error on the part of the public benefits office.

With GGIC and the IRC, I had the privilege to serve five families in their resettlement in Gainesville. Due to the slew of executive orders issued by the current administration, this work ends for me at the end of this week. Or, well, I don’t know anymore. Things seem to change daily — today a judge theoretically blocked the refugee program cancellation. I don’t know what that means.

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When QQ and I arrived in Costa Rica, we were unable to rent the car we had reserved, so we decided to take an Uber instead. Those who have been in transit with me will be familiar with my fondness for chatting up drivers or seatmates. It’s a brilliant opportunity for language practice, for cultural inquiry/immersion, and a window of understanding into other worldviews. By providence, our driver, Kevin, was a Venezuelan refugee then at what he expected to be the end of a long process to resettlement in the USA. We talked for six hours. I learned a lot from him about the process refugee resettlement in the USA before arrival — the years-long process that led him to separate from his wife and children, the cultural orientation classes held in the local IOM (International Organization for Migration) office, and the extensive checks and documents required of him across those years of waiting.

At the end of our journey, Kevin took QQ and I back to the airport from our hotel in San Mateo Orotina. I remember that our conversation felt extremely tense, with both of us worrying about the looming changes with the change in US administration. He told me about the comments about the Panama Canal and the goings-on in Venezuela. Then, in early January, Kevin messaged me with great news — he had received the final go-ahead from IOM and would be flying to Jacksonville airport in a few weeks. He said he’d been told he’d resettle somewhere in Florida about an hour and a half away from Jacksonville. I told him it had to be Gainesville. It was fate that we met. 

But Kevin isn’t here. His flight was canceled, indeed the entire status of his case is in indefinite limbo. The IOM office in Costa Rica was forced to close, and he had nobody but me to ask about what happens next. I couldn’t answer him, either. All I could write to him was “I’m sorry”.

As refugee resettlement ends across the United States, it also ends for me. I found the work gave me purpose. I loved the opportunity to utilize Spanish daily, to help others navigate our bureaucracies, and to get practical use out of my general love of spreadsheets. My conversations with the IRC last year promised the opportunity to utilize more languages in the future, too.

I also find value in my work with Friendship Force and Sister Cities, which I will be able to attend to much more now that the craziness of the last few weeks in refugee resettlement calms down as it disappears. I strongly believe in the citizen diplomat ethos of Friendship Force and Sister Cities, especially as our government shuts the official avenues for citizen diplomacy and cultural exchange. I am looking for private grants for an international art exchange and for global citizenship curriculum development with Friendship Force (if you can recommend some, please tell me). And with GGIC we are hoping to exhibit my drawings of resettlement. I want to make them into a book, too.

But what I really, really want is to return to teaching. My doomed foray to Costa Rica and subsequent hospitalization seem to tell me that this would be unwise. So for now, my future in this regard is like my health — uncertain, marked by periods of intensity, with a yearning for how things were but deep gratitude for the last two years nonetheless.

*More on how I arrived at such an exact tally in a future post