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2008-01-22 issue:

Volunteer is ‘keeper’ of refugee stories

Voluntary Service participant uses humor, baseball to connect to families.

by Hannah Heinzekehr

Print Article

Hannah Klaassen helps the refugee families that enter her door at Jewish Vocational Services and Catholic Charities navigate their new society. But not only that. Klaassen hopes that listening to their stories might help them develop a more personal connection.



It turned out that baseball, a few Kirundi words and laughter was all she needed to form a bond.

Klaassen, a Mission Network Mennonite Voluntary Service participant, is serving as a job placement specialist and assistant for many clients, including a family from Burundi with two young boys who speak only Kirundi. With the help of a 17-year-old interpreter (a recent refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo), who speaks Kinyarwanda, a language similar to Kirundi, Klaassen has helped the family negotiate the U.S. health-care and school systems, find access to transportation and accompany the boys to the park for soccer games.

Klaassen, a member of Grace Hill Mennonite Church, Whitewater, Kan., is spending her second year serving at Jewish Vocational Services (JVS) in Kansas City, Mo., and Catholic Charities in Kansas City, Kan., the only agencies involved in refugee resettlement work in Kansas City.

To spark conversation, Klaassen printed off a page of Kirundi words from the Internet and spent an evening with the family testing the words, learning the language from the oldest son and playing baseball with the two boys.

The goal of JVS is to help individuals become self-sufficient by providing transportation to health appointments and job interviews, getting children enrolled for school and providing interpreters.

 Abdul Bakar, Klaassen’s supervisor and a former Somalian refugee, says for many, arriving in the United States often brings an initial sense of relief. But this bliss is often short-lived, as refugees are often faced with a barrage of barriers that limit what they can do.

“To be a refugee is to be stateless and not to have a country while still the refugee is living in a country,” says Bakar. “You have a document that will not permit you to do what other people are doing because you are a refugee. You don’t see it, but psychologically it has an impact.”

Abdihakim Mohamed knows well the difficulties of navigating a new country and unfamiliar systems. Born in Somalia, Mohamed was 12 when civil war began. In 1991, he fled with his mother to Kenya after fighting in his hometown claimed the lives of his father and a brother and left two other brothers missing.

In April 2007, Mohamed and his mother arrived in the United States as refugees and clients of Klaassen and others at JVS. They helped Mohamed negotiate the unfamiliar systems in the United States and provided basic supplies that Mohamed and his mother would need to start a new, self-sufficient life. Mohamed now works full-time at a hotel.

These stories inspire Klaassen to continue her work. “It is so valuable to me that people are willing to share. It’s moving that right now I’m sort of one keeper of their stories,” she says.—Hannah Heinzekehr of Mennonite Mission Network

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