Giving back: After winning asylum himself, he helps new refugees get settled
George doesn’t drive like a man who fled for his life.
He pilots his modest sedan at 30 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone, passing stone walls, baseball fields, and a shuttered consignment shop surrounded by weeds en route to Lowell, Mass. There, a newly arrived family of Guatemalan refugees awaits his help.
His phone rings. It is always ringing.
“Hallo?” he says, softly.
It’s about a Congolese family that has had a bumpy first week.
They need food stamps, the caller says. Are you coming today?
“Yes, I’m coming,” George assures him. “I’ll be coming anytime.”
A Ugandan political asylee who has made a new life for himself in the US, George is now on the front lines of a daily battle to find newly arrived refugees housing, furniture, and cookware on a shoestring budget. He is one of hundreds of caseworkers across the country helping them navigate US bureaucracy at a time when many resettlement agencies have had to scale
Bullets and a kidnapping Money from his own pocket Patience requiredLate-night lunch, then homework