Dozens of refugees have found shelter through Guilford College since 2015, when the liberal-arts college started Every Campus a Refuge. Founded by Diya Abdo, an associate professor of English, the program works with the city of Greensboro to provide newly arrived immigrants with places to live as they begin their assimilation into the American way of life. Diya, as everyone calls her, has also started a refugee-studies minor for Guilford students. The refuge idea has spread to six other colleges across the United States.
Here is the story of one family’s experience at Guilford, and the students and alumni who helped them along the way.
Tree of life
A tulip poplar on the Guilford campus provides a place to pause and reflect for Diya, who was inspired to start Every Campus a Refuge in 2015, when the pope encouraged countries to embrace refugees. Born to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Diya came to America for graduate school but returned home in the wake of anti-Muslim sentiment after September 11. She completed her graduate work and dissertation on Arab women writers, then returned to the U.S. in 2008 to teach at Guilford.
Diya, whose name means “light” in Arabic, was named for a Quaker family friend. Her core values are consistent with those of the Quakers who established Guilford in 1837, where they offered sanctuary to slaves fleeing the South along the Underground Railroad. The towering tulip poplar is believed to have marked the southernmost tip of the route to freedom. Today it stands witness to the college’s emphasis on diversity and inclusivity — and to Diya’s belief in “stewardship: using resources in ways that are good, just, and right. Using the campus space to bring refugees and immigrants, it forces us to reimagine what and who campus spaces are for.”
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Campus-city connections
Rubuguza Habarurema (left) and Afia Nyiransabimana wait for assistance in their job search at Church World Service, a resettlement agency. The organization is one of many community groups that serve Greensboro, a resettlement city since the 1970s, when it accepted refugees arriving from Vietnam.
Rubuguza and Afia arrived at Guilford in late 2017 from Uganda. They had spent the last two decades in refugee camps after fleeing their home country, today called the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Afia, “In Congo, we were hungry. It was hard to find food. For work, we farmed corn, beans, sweet potatoes. It would take us six months to grow the food, and while we waited, we starved,” she says.
They started as a family with nine children. Three of their children died of cold and fever in a Ugandan refugee camp. Two were left behind in Congo and Uganda. Four made it to the U.S.: Two came to Greensboro with their parents, and two arrived earlier. “We like living in the U.S. because we can eat, we can live,” Afia says.
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Temporary shelter
This residence is home to Rubuguza, Afia, and two of their children during their first six months in America. Located on the Guilford campus, it offers easy access to local agencies serving refugees. The modest brick dwelling has sheltered more than 30 refugees through the ECAR program. Funds to support the families come from the resttlement agency and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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Lowering the language barrier
Jennifer (left), daughter of Rubuguza and Afia, gets an English lesson from Amelia Wellman, a junior at Guilford who is majoring in peace and conflict studies. She is working toward a minor in refugee studies via her work with ECAR. “This was my first semester as an ECAR volunteer. I absolutely love it,” Amelia says. Jennifer, 18, knew only life in the Ugandan camps before coming to Guilford. She is now a ninth grader at the Doris Henderson Newcomers School for immigrants, in Greensboro. “In Uganda, I used to sit on the floor during class,” she says. “The teaching styles, and the way students sit, it’s not as good as American education.”
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American roots
Jacob, Jennifer’s brother, is 15 and also a student at the immigrant school. Here, he learns about American Indian history by constructing a model tepee. Unlike Jennifer, he had an educational advantage before he came to America. “In Uganda, I attended a private school. I was very lucky,” Jacob says. “One day when I was little, a white woman came to the camp from the charity Theatre Versus Oppression. Whenever there were visitors in the camp, many children would follow them. Before she left, she told me she would sponsor my education in the private school.”
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Navigating a sea of paperwork
Kathleen Herbst, a junior double-majoring in English and justice and policy studies, helps Afia prepare a dental history as Jacob translates. Kathleen transferred to Guilford from Albright College in part because of Every Campus a Refuge, which she learned about from NPR. “I love the hands-on learning,” Kathleen says. “The number of processes people have to go through even after coming here as legal refugees is unbelievable. Being able to do what I can is great.” It typically falls to Kathleen and other volunteers to help refugees navigate complex federal and state systems.
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Welcome from across campus
The reach of ECAR at Guilford can be unexpected. The women’s soccer team read about the Habarurema family in the school newspaper and decided to host them for a homemade taco dinner. Corby Brooke (third from left), says, “I’m a freshman here, and I had never been a part of ECAR until my team wanted to be a part of it and make the family more welcome. We mainly communicated with the parents via body language. I hugged them, and I’m not sure they were used to that. It was a cultural thing. But a girl on our team is from Uganda, and so we could talk about that with Jacob and Jennifer.”
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At the free market
Students, faculty, and administrators at Guilford donated clothing and household items for a “free market,” organized by Diya, to benefit the family, who arrived on campus with few possessions. Other community members gave, too. There’s more here than they need; Rubuguza, Afia, and Jacob consider the task of sorting through the goods they’ve selected. Some items they will share with immigrant friends and families in Greensboro.
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Putting a foot forward
At the free market, Afia tries on shoes. She recalls the day in 1996 when the family left Zaire, as their country was called then: “When we heard gunshots nearby, we decided to flee to Uganda. We crossed a mountain and within minutes were in Uganda, so it was easy for us to go. So many who lived further in the country were killed.”
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Handbags or iPhone cases?
Thanks to the generosity of a donor, Jennifer has a $50 gift card to spend at Forever 21. She shops with the help of Hali Rose Kohls, a 2014 Guilford alumna and volunteer program coordinator for Every Campus a Refuge. “I had Diya as a professor in an Arab- and Islamic-feminism class during my last semester at Guilford. The fall after I graduated I started volunteering for ECAR,” Hali says. “I am so impressed by what these refugees are able to do. They are resourceful without knowing the language or any people. In the ECAR training for volunteers, we teach students about the self-sufficiency model. Incoming refugees have three to four months to learn to live on their own, work, and survive. It’s an impossible goal. If you can’t Google things, you don’t have Wi-Fi, you don’t have a cellphone or a laptop, or don’t speak the language, that makes it that much more difficult.”
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New arrival
Jacob chats with friends in Uganda in the ECAR house. Cris Nkoyoyo (right), the newest refugee in the program, sits beside him. Cris will move into the Guilford house after Jacob and his family move into an apartment in Greensboro. Cris fled Uganda by himself in 2014, when he was 19, and has spent the last four years in Kenya at Dadaab, a U.N.-hosted camp. “It was a four-year process to get here,” he says. “If you are a refugee, there are interviews with the U.N. and the Kenyan government. If you pass, they give you an alien card, and that starts the resettlement process. They take your picture and send it to many countries to see who will accept you. The U.S. accepted me. The U.S. Embassy gave me an interview, and I passed. I had no idea I would be coming to Guilford until I arrived at the airport in Greensboro.”
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Farewell tour
Jacob plays in one last pick-up soccer game with the Guilford soccer club before he and his family move out of the ECAR house. “I will miss Guilford once we leave because I have become used to the environment and the soccer players,” Jacob says. “They are very caring.”
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Isolation
Rubuguza Habarurema takes a break from his English-language studies. “No one speaks our language. In Congo, we speak Swahili, Kinyarwandan, French.”
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The next step
The family strolls across the campus, awaiting the next leg of their American experience. Thanks to Every Campus a Refuge, they’ll move into an apartment about 15 minutes away. Jacob and Jennifer will continue their studies in the Newcomers School; Rubuguza and Afia have gotten jobs at the local Del Monte food-processing plant. Diya and her colleagues at Guilford will continue to observe the family’s progress.
Rose Engelland, senior photo editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, also contributed to this photo essay.
