How many of you have ever sat around a campfire American-style? the woman asks.
She is standing in the center of a circle whose perimeter is filled with dark faces. In response to her question — a question layered with images of marshmallows and ghost stories and camp songs — the faces smile at her blankly.
Most of the people in this circle are refugees, many of them recent Utah arrivals from the world's unlucky places: Sudan, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq. Camps? Yes, they've lived in those. After fleeing Sudan but before being relocated to Salt Lake City, Nyibol Dhgal and her eight children spent time in a refugee camp in Egypt. Muna Ali and her mother spent five years in a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing Somalia. But camping? That's a luxury for people who are free enough to have free time.
On a recent moonlit night though, 40 refugees sit in a circle at Pine Cliff, a camp in Chalk Creek canyon east of Coalville, a camp that smells like the American West. The official name of the gathering is Multicultural Family Conference, the brainchild of Ming Wang from the state Division of Mental Health.
Wang has been working with refugee families for the past two years, as part of a grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The goal has been to look at the issues facing young refugees and their parents, with the hope that the young people will steer away from drugs and gangs and maybe even depression. The hope is that the young refugees will feel like they belong in America while at the same time not turning away from the values of their parents.
Traditionally, at the end of a two-year grant, there would be a wrap-up conference, says Wang. But she and colleague Ahmed Mudhir opted instead for a camping excursion, where various refugee families could come together to share experiences both old and new.
Refugee parents often don't have time for fun, says Wang. "The parents work two jobs. The kids say they come home and don't do the teenage stuff that Americans do." So a two-day camping trip, complete with fishing and and hiking and a campfire, was arranged for Labor Day weekend. The goal was to have fun and at the same time to realize that, although they may feel alone and confused and overwhelmed, there are other families that feel that way, too.
So, on the first night, the families have dinner together and then move their chairs into a big circle. Wang stands in the center, encouraging them to talk about their lives. At first there is an awkward moment when no one says anything at all. And then 12-year-old Abouk Deng saunters to the center of the circle.
"The last time I was with my dad it was 1995, and after that I couldn't see him," Abouk begins.
Abouk, lanky and amiable, has broken the ice. One by one other young people stand. "When I was 5 the war broke out. I lost my parents," says Jeremiah Atem. He is one of Sudan's "lost boys" — young men in their 20s now who were sent away from their villages as children to escape Sudan's brutal civil war, and who have never been reunited with their families.
Atem tells the circle about the morning that soldiers first entered his village. "On the way, my father got shot," he says. "At that juncture, someone took my hand. . . . Thereby I went to the bush." Atem learned his beautiful English in a refugee camp in Kenya, where nearby villagers often shot at them and tried to steal their shoes.
The stories continue, stories of loss and adjustment, told haltingly and quickly. "War broke out and we had to go through water and all that stuff, and we had to drink poison water and all that stuff," says Muna Ali, 15.
They are happy to be in America, the refugees say, but also not happy, because they have left so much and so many behind. "Tragical stories," as 17-year-old Yevgeniya Yushkova, a Russian Jewish refugee says, each story different but the same.
In other settings, says Wang, most refugee students will not always open up. "They carry so much burden," she says of the teens. They may seem fine, "but they have inner thoughts that bother them. My hope is that here we are a step closer to sharing these thoughts. We want them to see it's OK to say what bothers you, and that you won't hurt your parents."
In a camping situation, Wang hopes, the families will begin to mingle. "If you're only with your own group you don't feel so much like an American," she explains. "They need a sense of belonging to the rest of the community."
And by the end of the two-day trip this is what happens: The Somalis and Iraqis and Sudanese play baseball together; on a hike, 16-year-old Athian Deng from Sudan holds the hand of 9-year-old Dania Al-Sawafi from Somalia; and later all the refugee mothers take turns whacking at a pinata, blindfolds wrapped around their traditional head scarves.
At the end of the first evening the families gather around a campfire. Someone brings out the coat hangers. "I know how to do it!" shouts a young boy as he figures out how to unwind the metal into a stick. Marshmallows are passed around, viewed suspiciously, roasted, bitten into tentatively. The night is filled with sparks and laughter.
As the fire turns into coals, someone begins the ghost stories. These are stories about strange noises and animals that teach lessons, stories that pale in comparison to the real horrors that haunt these lives.
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com