Transitions

Down the street from the Life Skills Clinic is a medicinal garden. I stumbled across it the day before my first day of work here in Salt Lake City’s Immigrant & Refugee Resettlement Program. The garden is sleepy and covered in snow and is set in a background of mountains and fields (much different from the North Philly street corner that I am used to). I put my hand through the icy cold to find there were still remnants of lavender and sage that will make their comeback in early spring.  It was a small comfort, something so familiar in a place that in many ways is so different from what I know.

                        

I am experiencing my own form of culture shock, having just moved to Utah five days ago, where the woman sitting next to me on the airplane was shocked to meet a Jewish vegetarian. She explained to me some of the intricacies of the culture of Latter-Day Saints (I was surprised to learn people of the Mormon faith will not drink coffee) and warned me not to expect men here to treat me as an equal. I am unpacking and resettling in my own small way, thinking about how this is just a small fraction of what the people I will be working with must be experiencing in their own lives, having fled from their home countries because they were not safe places for them to live.

M., a Somali woman who moved to Salt Lake City eleven months ago, used to store her clothes in the oven. She didn’t know what it was supposed to be used for until her occupational therapist showed her. When we visited her house yesterday, her daughter told us how she had baked a chicken last night. M. has also learned to write her name, and proudly showed us her notebook where she had been practicing.

M. was referred to occupational therapy from Utah Health & Human Rights (UHHR), an organization which works with people who have been victims of torture. These people have experienced trauma so severe that their symptoms manifest in everything from depression and anxiety to OCD, PTSD, and whole body pain. But the remarkable thing about these people is that they are resilient, the director of the UHHR told us yesterday.

At the Life Skills Clinic, there is a basket-weaving program started by group of women from a tribe in Thailand. They meet every Saturday to weave and are in the process of starting their own non-profit organization, so they will be able to sell the products that they produce. The Karen people, my supervisor told us, rarely present with mental health issues because they have formed such a tight community to love and support one another. 

It’s hard to turn my brain off here because I am always thinking about the stories I am hearing from the people I work with. When I’m not paying attention, I find that I tend to focus on the struggles they have gone through and continue to face. And I have to keep reminding myself that they are finding the things that remind them of home, the pieces of culture that are familiar and make them human, to hold them together. And even if I am the only insane person digging for lavender in the snow, I know that I can do the same.