All on a Saturday

This past Saturday was the annual picnic for FIRE (Foundation for Immigrant and Refugee Education), where I teach beginning ESL once a week. So I picked up one of my students in St. Paul beforehand… a refugee woman named Zehainesh from Eritrea. She rides the bus most places, but wanted to make us some Tigrinyan food (which would have been difficult on the bus), so I picked her up. She’s been in the states for 3 years, but still speaks very little English.

When I got to her apartment, I called her extension so she could buzz me in. It took me a while to explain where I was, just to give you an idea of the language barrier here. She finally said, “Door?” and I replied “Yes, door”, and we had overcome the first hurdle. When I got to the inside door to her apartment, she opened the door in a nightgown, let me in, and said, “Coffee?”. Now I was already 20 minutes late (yeah… haven’t quite figured out St. Paul yet). It was not a big deal that we be at the picnic right on time, but this still caught be a bit off guard, and I began to wonder if she really understood that we were going to a picnic. I was somewhat relieved when she started getting out the food and telling me the name of each thing, after which she would say more in Tigrinyan (sometimes she thinks if she speaks it slowly enough I’ll understand =)… makes sense in a way, don’t we sometimes do that in English… speak slower and louder even to those w/ no background in the language, as if they’ll somehow understand what we’re saying?), at which point I began to worry that she perhaps wasn’t planning on coming to the picnic with me, but just giving me the food to take. Well, eventually she did go back to her room, get dressed, and we made it to the picnic.

When I dropped her off, the Tues. evening FIRE facilitator Rachel was with us, and when we pulled up, she said again, “Coffee”. Rachel had to be home to meet someone in 30 min, and I had to be at work in Minneapolis in an hour, but we weren’t really sure it would be at all acceptable to turn down her offer. So we went in, vowing to keep it short =). Oh, dear. I know enough about a few African cultures to know that “keeping it short” is probably a ridiculous concept, but that surely wouldn’t carry over to an exchange in St. Paul, MN right? Well, once we came in and sat down, she got out a miniature tin skillet, and began roasting the coffee beans. After that came a small-mouthed clay jar which sat directly on a single portable burner which sat in the center of the living room. A while later, the beans and the water were both sufficiently ready, and she added the beans to the clay jar (for lack of the correct term). She stuffed something that looked like steel wool in the mouth to act as a filter, and I had perhaps the first cup (cup meaning about 3 oz… the cups were very similar to those in France) of coffee that I’ve actually enjoyed. It was really very good.

I knew it must be getting late by this time, but next came an old envelope filled w/ pictures. She pulled the first one out and said emphatically, “Zehainesh”. Indeed, it was her. So was the next one. And most of the pictures in the envelope really were of her. A few, though, were of other people. She pulled out a picture of a handsome young man, probably 24 or so and said, “Zehainesh. Family. Boy. Eritrea.” …a picture of her son. Then there was a young girl that she told us was 15, but looked only about 9. Very pretty, and very much Zehainesh. Two kids, both still in Eritrea. I’m excited to teach this woman English so she can get along better here in the states, but an exciting moment will be the day when she has accumulated enough vocabulary to tell us her story, b/c I know there is a very very interesting Zehainesh story that has yet to be unleashed. A woman so shy she would not even repeat words after me until our third lesson together, with two kids halfway across the world, living on her own in an apartment in St. Paul. I can’t even imagine what she’s been through, but I know that she is absolutely precious.

We left her apartment right as I was supposed to be clocking in at work, but it was worth it to have spent a day with Zehainesh, and learned so much more about her. Her hugs when we left said it all =).

There was more but again it’ll have to wait for later…