Another Day, Another Story

​After our first Coffee and Tea, back at Trinity, Homework Help kids were starting to come.  This time a Homework Help mom stopped in.  I asked her how she’s doing, especially with all of this immigrant and refugee stuff happening after President Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.  We talked a bit.   She talked about a woman where she works who has come up to her more than once and told her to go home, that she hates Somalis and they don’t belong here.  (This mom is not Somali, but rather Oromo.)  Some of the other employees have told our Homework Help mom that this woman is not right in the head.  But it is still hard to hear.  And she never knows quite what to do. 
 
We talked some more and I told her that what that woman says is wrong and that I’m sorry she has to hear it.   But then came the question that tore at my heart.  Our mom wanted to know if ‘they’ were going to round them (Muslims) up and burn them.  I was stunned. 
 
I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with that seeming like a real possibility. 
 
I told her that it couldn’t happen here.  That too many people would fight against something like that. 
 
The thing is – I wasn’t really sure that if it came right down to it that I could do that if it happened here.  As she left my office I could only hope and pray that I would never have to find out.      
 
 
 
 
Original Journal entry date:  2/6/17
 
©Jane Buckley-Farlee    All rights reserved.

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