Reunited

Part of my job as an ESL Coordinator is to assess new students when they come in from other schools or other countries. This is one of my favorite jobs because I get to meet the families and see what they're like, learn about their customs and their travel and see how they function.

Every so often I have to get students to help moms carry baby strollers up the stairs to my office or see which order children walk in, in front of or behind parents, or where moms stand, if they speak, what they wear, whether they work or what have you.

Today I met Amina, a teenager from Somalia who has recently come to the UK. She came in, quietly confident like so many Islamic women, walking tall and not quite blending into the background. You can sense that there's more than what meets the eye and it makes you want to be a fly on the wall when she's on her own to see what she does when no one else is watching, or be able to read her thoughts and see what she's really thinking behind the veil and that twinkle in her eye.

Her dad came with her, a quiet and gentle-seeming man.

Amina was born in Somalia but moved to Kenya when she was really young. Somehow between Kenya and now, all her other family died and dad ended up in the UK, not knowing what had become of his daughter.

Amina had been moved to a "camp" in Tansania where she went to school for many years (she says 13 years, but she's 14 and her dad says not that much, but he doesn't remember).

In 2008 a friend of her fathers found her in the camp and got word to her father that she was alive and her story since then has been a legal struggle to get her into the UK with her dad, who works the night shift at a factory down the road from our school.

As I listen to their story, there is a wistfulness in his eyes and his voice and, I admit, in the manner of Oprah, I asked "Are you happy now?"

With the tiniest glimmer of a tear in his eye as she pauses from doing her math test, he answers, "Oh yes. I am happy now that I have my family back."

I can't help but think of the family members who aren't there... a mother, possible other brothers and sisters who didn't make it to the camp, who didn't make it at all...

What am I willing to do to help Amina feel safe and accepted and help her learn?

What am I willing to do to help her have a future when so much of her past has been full of terror?

She is one of the few lucky ones who has a second chance.

I don't really know what I am willing to do... I can't measure it, but I know it is a lot.