Catching up to 2019
(link to text with photos)
So much has happened since our last update…
Roshan and Isa had graduated high school in 2017, attended Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) for a time, and dropped out of school for different reasons and are now full-time long haul truck drivers.
Ghani graduated from Allen in 2018 and attended LCCC for a year, then left for Michigan where he has been living with his friends and working at a factory. Hedayat graduated from high school in 2019 and is attending LCCC and playing soccer.
All of the leaving has been heartbreaking. The boys know that this is always their home and we are always their family… and I wish we had more time. They can come home to visit, but it will not ever be quite the same. I assume that for normal families, by the time the kids leave home most parents are ready. We only had 3 years and were definitely not ready. But we have had to keep moving through our grieving. For sure it has also been hard on Hedayat, and we have to make sure that we are supporting him. And we have the new guys!
A new foster son from Ghana joined our house in May! His name is Abu-Bakar. And Hedayat’s friend, Jean Claude, from Congo, also joined us. More on these guys soon…
We skipped updates for all of 2018 – and a lot happened, but so much has happened since then, it is hard to remember. We did a lot of fun stuff in 2018 – snow skiing, bowling, and a week at the beach with 12 Hazara boys! Mostly it was life as usual… and then it wasn’t.
Last November, the Taliban attacked the boys’ home district. The kids were on their phones, getting updates, and hearing a lot of tragic news about their friends and neighbors for days which turned into weeks. Fortunately, Roshan’s family made it safely to Kabul. It was so hard for them to be here and not be able to do anything. It is hard for us to imagine what that is like.
This pushed Roshan to step up his plans. He quit LCCC and within one month had his commercial driver’s license and a trucking job driving long-haul. He left home after the holidays (on my birthday) and began driving an 18-wheeler across the country with his friend from the Indonesian refugee shelters, Ali-Jan. Roshan felt he needed to do this to make money so that he could visit his family and help provide for them. He also really wanted to get married – but I will cover that one on a different update.
Isa left LCCC, as his heart just hadn’t been into college. He started doing full-time construction for a general contractor who was very distrustful of Muslims, or anyone not from America, but Isa was able to break through some of the stereotyping. Isa learned a great deal from Mike, too and was enjoying the work.
Unfortunately, Mike also intentionally underpaid Isa, giving him various obfuscating stories. Initially, when Isa asked about his pay being lower than expected, Mike claimed to Isa that he was taking taxes out. Only after Isa repeatedly asked for his W2 did Mike say that he had NOT been taking out taxes, that he considered Isa to be a subcontractor, and Isa was supposed to have been taking out his own taxes. Since he said he was taking out taxes, of course, this was really underhanded and deceitful.
Isa understandably felt betrayed, and when we attempted to obtain a lawyer to help him recover his lost pay, it took several weeks. By the time anyone could be engaged, Isa had moved on. He didn’t want another construction job. He and our friend, Rohullah, attended the same Miami-based truck driving school as Roshan had, and started team driving across the country for a Russian/American company based out of Rochester, New York. Isa and Rohullah are enjoying driving the truck across the country and are stopping in at home every couple of weeks. We are so happy that they are visiting regularly.
Once Ghani finished his second semester at LCCC, he only had a few more months in the Bethany Unaccompanied Refugee Minor (URM) program, which would end when he turned 21 in August. He had been keenly looking forward to visiting his family in Australia with Nolan, but those plans fell through when the Australian consulate rejected his travel visa saying that his US travel document had been stolen.
Stolen?! It was in the desk drawer in my office! When we followed up on this claim with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) they told us that the document was in good standing, they would not provide the consulate with any sort of document correcting the Australian consulate’s error. So the US says, there is nothing wrong, we just send that document and Australia says it is marked stolen, and neither side would do anything about it. He was stuck.
In disappointment, Ghani decided he would, instead, visit his best friends (from the Indonesian shelters) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. his came up really out of the blue and hit us all hard. I was leaving for a brief respite trip to visit my Aunt and Uncle in France, and Ghani was going to take me to the airport. But since he was leaving for MI, he would not be there to pick me up the following week… so I drove myself and he left for Michigan. After a few weeks, Ghani got a job as a machinist.
Having lost three of our family members in so short time period, Hedayat, Nolan and I were all feeling a lot of loss.
Hedayat spent most of the summer visiting friends and playing soccer. In early August, Nolan and Hedayat drove to Detroit, Michigan, to attend the Umoja Games, the Shia soccer tournament that they have attended for the last four years. The tournament is run by the Khoja people, a Tanzanian people who are ethnically Indian. Appropriately, “Umoja” is the word for “unity” in the Swahili language.
The (Michigan boys) team we sponsored last year, the Hazara Hurricanes, again played at Umoja. The team did well, though they did not quite make it to the semi-final games. Nolan captured video footage of the games and created a YouTube channel for the team at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4GCcqNw5eUhghET6AE8bZg.
Isa and Rohullah were able to route themselves via the tournament as they were taking a truck load to take to California. Isa managed to park the truck at Nolan’s hotel, (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOOWqQtTEmE) and they got to stay for a while and watch the games and spend some time with the boys.
Adjusting to the boys being not here has been hard. Hedayat has also missed them and we have all been adjusting to a cultural shift in our household. He doesn’t say much to us, but we know that it is difficult for him. Nolan has also had to do a big shift in his grocery buying and cooking. The African boys have a slightly different palate I guess you could say.
The timing of Abu’s arrival was serendipitous. He came to us just as Ghani was leaving, and then Jean Claude came shortly after that. So while we were grieving the loss of our original family, we also had to celebrate the new members of our family, and that helped to fill the space for us. It was also fortunate that JC was here for the summer, as Hedayat was mostly away, and Abu was happy for JCs company.
And Abu is delightful. He is quiet and has a lovely accent. His first language is English and while he plays soccer, he seems a bit more intellectual and tech-savvy and plans to study computer networking and cybersecurity. He is very helpful around the house, which is super awesome. He is rather devout and goes to the Mosque whenever he is off on a Friday afternoon. When we ask him if he is up for going somewhere or doing something, his response is often, “yes, after I pray I can go”. When Abu smiles, (which he does quite a lot) his whole face crinkles up and he starts giggling. It is very sweet.
This more or less gets us caught up to the Summer of 2019… more updates are coming – there is a lot to tell you!
——–