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Here I am in the World Relief office with our first Karenni Burmese families as we help them to apply for programs and classes. These programs will help them as they ready themselves to find jobs of their own. Still a bit frightened of their new environment, two Karen children pose in their family's bedroom. As can be seen, the family had moved all of their beds into one room, an arrangement more comfortable and familiar to them. In their home villages in Burma and Thailand, the families live in simple one room bamboo homes. Here you see a Karen child with a Burmese and Sudanese friend. I have been impressed how quickly the Karen kids have made friends with children from other ethnicities in their community. Some of the boys had only been in school a day before found them already playing soccer with a Somali neighbor they had met, exchanging no words but plenty of smiles. A group of Chin and Karen children happily color and create for us at the office. Life goes on even after fleeing from one's country to a refugee camp to America. Here you see one of the Karen Burmese men proudly holding his newborn daughter, the first American citizen in the family. For the mother, the experience of giving birth in an American hospital was scarier than the birth itself. I don't know how kids from a country that never has snow manage to know to build a snowman complete with a carrot nose following a rare Atlanta snowfall, but these Burmese and Rakhine kids are quite proud to show off their creation. | |||
