7 Haylee Donovan
Narrative Summary
I had been waiting eagerly at the main entrance of the University Hospital. People walked busily in and out of the front doors, voices reverberated off of the walls, and the gentle chaos mirrored my nervousness about conducting the interview. When Veve first noticed me, she smiled gently and had a warm and welcoming aura about her. Immediately, much of my anxiety dissipated as I took in the woman in front of me, energized and bundled up in winter gear. We introduced ourselves and settled into our corner at the quiet end of a hallway before beginning. Having never met before, I wasn’t sure how she would respond to the questions. Would she be uncomfortable? Would anything I ask offend her? Or make her upset? Many apprehensive feelings popped into my head before we formally began the interview. However, Veve was an open book and she answered each question freely with more emotion than I could ever accurately convey. The story was raw, powerful, and absolutely fascinating.
The start of our interview emitted feelings of nostalgia and true peace. She described her childhood as one that was nice, grateful, stress-free, worry-free, concern-free, a poor life but an incredibly happy one. She recalls looking back at her childhood village and being grateful that, despite being small and rural, they would not call themselves poor because they had everything they needed. The faint sad smile on her face made me feel she meant everyone’s emotional needs were always met when they were together. Jomba was the name of her hometown in the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, she lived with what she describes as many siblings, her mom, dad, stepmothers, and stepfathers. The whole village was her family and she lived with them all. There was no winter and she described the DRC as being a wonderland of endless summer and fun year-round. She fondly recalled her favorite memories being those that took place during harvesting time when everyone gathered up their cloves and beans. I felt her return to her former youth as she giggled thinking about after harvest when all the children would return to collect what was remaining in the field. Excitedly, she described how each child got to keep what they earned and sell it at the market for goodies like sugar cane and candies. At this point her smile was large and her laugh uncontainable thinking of how great it felt to buy those candies. It was a wonderful way to end the discussion of her fond memories in the DRC.
Afterward, for the duration of the interview, Veve displayed a wide range of emotionsand became increasingly somber as she dove deeper in the memories of her past. She seemed lost and frustrated when explaining how the conflict came to be in the first place. She refrained from answering altogether simply because she felt she would never truly know why. She explained that such conflicts like this are too incredibly political, too intense, and too complex for a refugee like her to understand. She seemed far away, lost in thought as she described how she always comes back to that question but never seems to be knowledgeable enough at both the local and international levels to understand. A victim like her, she asserted, simply could not talk about it without knowing more. The truth is often hidden, and when it comes out, it must be entirely rewritten to reflect all sides.
Veve also explained that her confusion was exacerbated by the fact that she was not in the DRC when the violence broke out. She was working at an embassy in Tanzania as a diplomat. She recalled her desperation and helplessness when she realized she could never go back home and would never know the real reason for the conflict. Everything she had ever earned and her entire family remained in the DRC. Family, she emphasized, meaning all of her family which included nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. In Africa, family means the extended family as well she noted. She was forced to come alone. I could tell from her voice she felt incredibly lonely, and that, despite being here for years the loneliness still hit her from all sides. I asked why her family couldn’t come, and to my surprise, she simply laughed sardonically. The complicated and intricate web of processes that made up the United State’s migration system was to blame. As much as she wished her family could simply join, it was simply not possible. She shrugged definitively and pointedly, it was a government thing and she had nothing to say about it and could only follow along. In her words, life evolves, situations evolve, and there are changes.
I asked when it came time to come to the U.S. what feelings were running through her head. Her eyes would widen slightly as she’d think briefly before answering that she was at a total loss for feelings. Or maybe, based on what she recounted, it seemed that she felt so many things it was like feeling absolutely nothing at all. One part of her felt a sense of tragic loss for all of the things that she had to so suddenly relinquish. She became astonishingly poor in a matter of seconds as she traveled with nothing but a single suitcase of clothes. The other part of her was giddy with excitement imagining a new life in the powerful country. She smiled briefly and it faded as quickly as it came as she said that the excitement would be short-lived until she faced reality. The true reality, she revealed would be a life of working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet. It was a life where she thought her experiences and uniqueness could get her a better job. She looked down, her hands folded in her lap as she plainly stated that she realized she was nothing but a refugee here. Her place was in a factory, or being a janitor, or living alone on the streets. Her knowledge, her life experience, none of that accounted for anything and it drained her. The loneliness in her voice returned as she described her vibrancy being sucked out of her as she was dropped to the floor in the U.S. She ended her point strongly, confidently stating that being different doesn’t pull you back up here. It pushes you back onto the floor.
There were many challenges for her when integrating into American society. Winter, she giggled slightly, individualism, and personal space were the main obstacles she had to overcome. Slightly confused, I probed her a bit more on the idea of individualism and personal space. Well, both were connected she explained, and from what I gathered, her individual appearance affected how people treated her and how they placed themselves within her space. She found herself having to go back to school, and there, she encountered prejudice, unlike anything she had experienced before. These kids, she said desperately, they had never seen a black woman before so they ran away from her. They refused to sit by her or talk with her and isolated her entirely. She sounded sad once again as she described being acutely aware of the fact that she was the reason people couldn’t focus in lecture. Despite this, however, she was surprised to learn that people could be incredibly understanding. She smiled hopefully. Americans are very forgiving and open to helping. They can be generous, sometimes without even asking questions. This, she finished, was one of the best things that surprised her about being in the United States.
One of my final questions was what, if anything, she would do differently looking back on her life now. She looked at me without a second of hesitation and said, becoming a refugee. Really? What would you have done instead? She hummed slightly, maybe go back home and die with others. The guilt she said, as her eyes and voice filled with so much pain, was so much and would always be so much. She felt guilt over having too much, living a better life with a home, a car, a washing machine, a microwave, while her own people couldn’t even get one meal a day. She continued, we do better together rather than running away. This is why she explained, it would be okay if she got killed or if she died because then her people could sit and cry over her body and bury her. She wondered aloud, how many people have to run away because there is a war, and how many don’t have a sense of it? Politicians get to sit on their butts and control what happens, while me, she emphasized, an innocent person has to live millions of miles away from home. Away from her people who know her pain, her pain when she cries she means it, when she dances she means it, and when she’s mad she means it. There is no need for justification and there is no judgement. She smiles so sadly and simply states, I miss that.
I asked my final question to her with a heavy heart wondering if there was anything else she wanted people to know. All she asked for was that Americans be more aware of what’s happening outside because all is not good. She pleaded for people to stop intervening, to leave people alone, and let them suffer and create their own destiny. They can keep their help and their money, just let them live their own life. They can succeed if you give them the chance. She ended with a bittersweet smile and a single hope. Hopefully, then, fewer refugees will have to live miserably the rest of their lives with an abundance of material wealth but no family to share it with.