Raissa and her refugee family find a haven in Cleveland, but how to make it a home? Andrea Simakis

CLEVELAND, Ohio - In December, Raissa Walubila will see a Christmas show in Playhouse Square, like countless local kids do every holiday season.

Dressed in a cropped bomber jacket, her long legs in skinny jeans and a smart phone perpetually in hand, Raissa looks like a typical American 17-year-old. Her most pronounced features are her big, expressive eyes and cascading red braids -- "rouge" she says, in low, melodic French -- a subtle giveaway that she isn't from around here.

This is Cleveland, after all, not the Democratic Republic of Congo, where her parents are from and where French and Swahili, her primary tongue, are widely spoken.

This is Cleveland, not Kigali, the capital of Rwanda where her mother's family fled before she was born to escape the blood and violence that has stained the soil of the Congo for decades. Conflict in Congo is as abundant as its rich deposits of copper, diamonds and gold.

This is Cleveland, where Raissa is struggling to master English, her passport to a world as foreign to her as snow.

She arrived with her mother, aunt, grandmother and a quartet of younger brothers and cousins in August 2016, part of an unprecedented wave of Congolese refugees. Their numbers have skyrocketed in Cleveland the last two years, from 24 in 2014 and 74 in 2015 to 230 in 2016, mirroring state and national trends. (Her father? He disappeared into Africa: "My Dad, he just left," she says.)

Raissa was 16 when her family settled in a small house on Cleveland's West side, and the challenges facing students who come to the U.S. at a later age are significant, explains Naila Paul, director of education for Refugee Response, the nonprofit formed in 2009 to help refugee families adjust to life in Northeast, Ohio. 

High schoolers like Raissa must learn English while also fulfilling graduation requirements, their lives on fast forward. Her brother, Yannick, a polite 12-year-old who solemnly offers his hand to visitors, is already more comfortable with the strange nouns and verb forms.

But education isn't enough. "We wanted to look at how they're engaging with their new culture," says executive director Patrick Kearns. Raissa has been paired with Christine Jurcsisn, an outgoing Kent State University grad, in Refugee Response's youth mentoring program, an initiative to make her uphill climb a little easier.

She's making some headway. Her favorite basketball player? "LeBron James!" she says. Her first "movie show" was a 3D vampire flick, which is why her first bag of popcorn went flying. She tasted her first bite of Chinese food last Friday and survived her first snowstorm last winter, wading through freezing drifts "up to here!" she says, karate chopping her leg just above the knee. "It was all over everything." 

Raissa trudged to the bus stop, brother Yannick in tow, and waited 30 minutes, teeth chattering, only to realize there was no school. Though they'd received word of the snow day in a robocall that morning, "it was in English," she says. 

No matter the weather, she'll be downtown Dec. 6 to see "A Very Electric Christmas," a production that uses puppetry and electroluminescent wire to create a neon wonderland. She'll be one of 13 student attendees, age 6 to 18, thanks to partnership between Playhouse Square and Refugee Response. Tickets are free. 

Raissa never saw a play in Rwanda. Money was so tight. In Kigali, she had friends and sunny days, but food was hard to come by, she says, her eyes filling with tears. So were clothes. School cost money too and the earnings mama and Auntie Tantine pulled in braiding hair weren't enough. 

In America, they heard that if you worked hard you could have a good life, although a recent knee surgery has sidelined Raissa's mother. So it's up Tantine, 28, to support the family. (This month, Tantine will graduate from the Refugee Response REAP program, where she is paid to work at an urban farm near the West Side Market and attend ESL and life skills classes. Then, with the agency's help, she'll land a fulltime job.)

But can Cleveland ever feel like home? Maybe. One play at a time. 

Next time: Raissa goes to Playhouse Square.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/11/raissa_and_her_refugee_family.html