Jeff Thaler, Assistant University Counsel & U.Maine Visiting Professor of Energy Law, Policy & Ethics
Resettling Refugees and Immigrants, Portland, Maine
January 2016
JP197 Resettling Refugees and Immigrants in Portland course description: Explores 30 years of refugee resettlement in Portland, Maine. Students live with a refugee or immigrant family, work in a public school or health facility, and encounter issues confronting immigrants from Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Students write two short reflective essays, keep a journal, meet regularly with the instructor, and attend arranged events. Learning goals include strengthening skills of written and oral reflection, and active listening and questioning; increasing self-confidence and self-awareness; learning more about international cultures embedded in American culture; and gaining firsthand knowledge of public education and health issue demands and challenges.
Blog Post #1: This is a new course for Colby, but has been run for 7 years by Jeff Thaler with Williams College students. Each Colby student lives with a host refugee or asylee family, and works either in a public school classroom with immigrant children, or in the community health center. This year, host families are from Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Congo; and students are placed in Portland and Westbrook.
Students arrived at Jeff’s house in Yarmouth on Sunday afternoon the 3rd. After some icebreaking exercises and dinner, we watched an excellent documentary film called “Rain in a Dry Land” by Anne Makepeace. The film follows two Somali Bantu families for two years, from while they are living in a large Kenyan refugee camp to resettlement in the U.S.—one family to life to Springfield, Mass. and the other to and Atlanta, Ga. As the parents and children cope with severe language challenges, they also confront racism, poverty and 21st-century culture shock. We then had a discussion about the film, and how it might relate to the people the students will encounter during their weeks in the program.
On Monday we stopped to take a look at the world close-up—Eartha, the largest to-scale revolving globe in the world, a mile from Jeff’s house.
We then drove around Portland to see where people would be living and working, and had lunch at Babylon, an Iraqi restaurant run by Nagham and her brothers, where we had a delicious meal and an extended discussion with Nagham about her family’s experiences in Iraq, Alabama, and then Maine.
After lunch we toured Westbrook, and then began to leave each student with his or her host family.
Jeff met up with the students Saturday morning to discuss and reflect upon their week of experiences at work and home. He and one student, Nellie, will be attending Saturday night the Rwandan Community’s New Year’s celebration, so more photos to follow!
Blog Post #2: Last night some of us attended the Rwandan Community of Maine’s New Year’s Celebration, in Westbrook. Over 150 Rwandans were present, as well as many guests, including the Rwandan Ambassador to the United States. There were several different dance presentations: 
Then there was plenty of time for conversations and photographs with friends and family; here is Nellie with her host siblings: 
And here is Nellie surrounded by her host siblings, part of a 2nd host family (related to the first), and Jeff:
Another favored activity was—what can we find on a Colby student’s smart phone?
That is all for last week; this will be the students’ first full week at work and home, and there will be plenty of events and discussions heading into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend. See you soon!
Blog Post #3: A surprise snowstorm wiped out our meeting and MLK Youth Summit plans for the 16th, so on the 18th we met for breakfast at Becky’s Diner on the Portland waterfront, in the midst of a 2nd snowstorm. Despite multiple forecasts that the snow was to stop by noon, instead it intensified, but being hardy Mainers we pressed onward to explore parts of Maine unfamiliar to most of the students.
First we went to visit Lenny, the world’s only life-sized chocolate moose—weighing in at a svelte 1700 pounds—in Scarborough, at Len Libby. The unanimous student reaction upon first sight of Lenny was “Oh my God…..” 
The wind then picked up, so we did not spend long at our various beach and lighthouse stops. We checked out the powerful waves and iced-over rocks near Two Lights: 
And turning around, everyone promised to come again—in July: 
Before heading back to Portland to warm up with coffee and chocolate, we stopped at the most photographed spot in Maine, Portland Headlight. But again, other than a brave couple we were the only photographers on this windy day: 
Blog Post #4, January 22, 2016:
A busy day today for the group. First the students and I met at Dobra Tea House in Portland, which has a menu of over 80 pages of teas and their sources from around the world. The students studied it with great care:
They made some exotic choices. For example, from Prague, Morocco and Kashmir came:
Then we have the tea Marcques ordered, in a real gourd:
Then we went across town to Rivalries, for an event with Colby alumni and guests to hear about the program. There was a very good turnout, with alumni from Classes ranging between 1957 and 2031 (Sophia Gavin, daughter of Chip’90 and Andrea Krasker Gavin’93…Sophia told me she was hooked on Colby when she once was served ice cream for breakfast). Also present were some host family siblings, workers from school and health center placements, and 2 of my former Williams students—one of whom, Lindsey Vandergrift’16, had just stayed with a Colby senior she had met last spring semester in the International Honors Program…and coincidentally, Abukar Adan’17 was to leave Sunday morning (storm in NYC permitting) on an IHP as well:
Each of the program students described what the home and work placement experiences have meant to them, and what they have learned about issues of public education and healthcare, multiculturalism, themselves and others. Katie’s host sister Judith (whose family previously hosted 3 Williams students) described how much she and her family have learned from Katie and the others. We then made sure to get the required Colby photo:
I told the audience about how I had originally conceived, over 10 years ago, of the resettling refugee and immigrant home and work stay program, which was (and I think still is) nationally unique. And though it is hard to tell in the previous picture, in honor of all the folks at Colby who have helped me get this off the ground for these students I, for the first time, donned a hat from Colby (I hope I am not kicked out of the Williams community….):