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Refugee resettlement "like coming from nowhere to somewhere"
Patient Katabana Marandura with his daughter Rita, a "straight A" high school student who plans to become a doctor.
Photo: Elizabeth Smith/PARA Refugee Services
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Grand Rapids, Michigan - Refugee newcomers face enormous challenges during their first months in the United States. With congregational cosponsors' help, they acculturate and become self-sufficient more quickly.
"I thank God, because we had a church," said Patient Katabana Marandura, a refugee from war and persecution in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He and his family escaped rebel soldiers who had targeted him for refusing to help them. After several difficult years in Uganda, Marandura, his wife, and their three children were approved for U.S. resettlement.
Church World Service took their case and enlisted PARA Refugee Services in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to provide resettlement services. In short order, the family was boarding a U.S.-bound flight.
"We didn't even know the address of where we were going," Marandura recalled. "To arrive at the airport was like a dream. We did not know how it was going to happen and what it would look like."
Members of Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the family's cosponsoring congregation, were waiting at the airport with a warm welcome. "It was like coming from nowhere to somewhere," Marandura said. "We said, wow, we have people who knew our names before we came here."
Members' ongoing social support has provided comfort and hope following years of fear, trauma, and loss, he said. There also was much to learn about how things work in the United States: "how to fill the application form, go to the appointment, get a driver's license, find a job, use the ATM, rent a house."
Marandura's first U.S. job was in a factory. He went on to work caring for elderly, ill, and mentally disabled persons before undertaking full-time studies toward a master of social work/public administration.
"To make the resettlement really very smooth, you need people around," Marandura affirmed. "The church was there and knew how to help me. That’s how I came today to be a strong man in America."
Central Christian Church also has cosponsored refugees from Bosnia, Iran, Russia, and Sudan. Pastor Kris Branaman commented, "It has really transformed our way of looking at the world. We don’t listen to the news the same way we would, because our families have families in these situations," in Congo, for example, where an estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998 as a result of a war that continues in the country’s east, and in Sudan, where the genocide continues in Darfur.
Patient and Rita Marandura and Rev. Kris Branaman are among refugees and cosponsors featured in a new CWS DVD, A Future with Hope: Welcoming Refugees. Available free. You can order this video online, or by calling 1-800-297-1516.
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