FACING FACTS
Ellis Cose
Opening Doors for Fellow Refugees
Lorna Solis fled Nicaragua. Now she's forming a foundation to help other refugees come to U.S. universities.
Lorna Solis was 10 when she fled the violence in Nicaragua, the same age Abass Hassan Mohamed was when he and his family escaped war-ravaged Somalia. "We're different, but we're alike," said Solis, which is one reason she relates so strongly to Abass's story. It is also why Solis, director of Latin America and Africa for Institutional Investor, is working with Abass to form a foundation to bring other refugee camp residents to American universities.
As a child Solis lived in Nicaragua, where her father owned a chain of pharmacies in Managua. But during the late 1970s the climate in her homeland radically changed. She recalls going to sleep to the sounds of gunshots and explosions as the Sandinista National Liberation Front fought for control of the government. When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, the family fled. With the help of a high-ranking American diplomat who was also a close friend, the family made its way to San Francisco. There they joined Solis's maternal grandmother, who had immigrated some years earlier. Solis had no idea she was embarking on a totally new life path. "I thought I was coming back," she recalled. "I didn't take my dolls." Indeed, the family took virtually nothing.
The Sandinistas seized her father's pharmacies and his other assets. He eventually took a job working as a mail clerk in an American university and later returned to Nicaragua to retire, never having regained his former wealth. He did recover a refrigerator with a bullet hole in it that the family keeps as a memento. Solis, who attended a Catholic school in San Francisco, earned a master's degree in tropical conservation and development from the University of Florida, in Gainesville. She met Abass through a mutual friend—a staffer in the Dadaab, Kenya, office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who had bought Abass's plane ticket to America. Like many others who have met him, Solis was impressed with Abass's warmth, his dignity and his determination. She bought him his first set of soccer cleats and has played the role of an older sister, watching with pride as he has excelled in his studies.
When we spoke the week before Thanksgiving, Solis was preparing for a two-week visit to the Dadaab refugee camp, during which she would meet with Abass's family, camp residents and camp officials to work out some of the details of her new project, which aspires to emulate the work of the World University Services of Canada (WUSC). Every year WUSC, based in Ottawa, offers refugees from camps around the world—including Dadaab—the opportunity to attend Canadian universities. Solis hopes her Rose Trust Foundation, which is named for her maternal grandmother and for which she has already lined up several potential donors, will open doors in the United States.
The lesson Solis has learned from her current work, which involves visiting and writing reports on many Latin American and African countries, is that the governments in far too many cases are undemocratic and corrupt. She would like to see many beneficiaries of her program return home and play a role in improving their governments. She believes, in other words, that education can turn refugees into change agents. One can only hope she is right. But for what it's worth, it is the identical belief held by many of the young people I met in Dadaab.
© 2007
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Member Comments
Posted By: littlefoot @ 12/13/2007 4:33:48 AM
Comment: very well but and very true thank you
Posted By: jojoc10 @ 12/09/2007 6:18:42 PM
Comment: 1. (citizens) it's plural.
2. (from) no form (please check your spelling). The word is (through), not "thru."
4. Half other languages? The world is write by the way, not (right). The sentence you meant to formulate is (most American student(s) can't even read or write in their own mother language of english!)
I apologize I stopped there. There are far too many grammatical errors in this mess of a paragraph. It's not even about carelessness which you seem to loathe. I think you need to reeducate yourself and for starters, begin with an english class for America's sake.
And for the record, I am in the military and could not disagree more with any of your comments. This board is used for constructive conversation and dialogue, not bigotry.
You listed a few problems but no solutions...I can't believe I found myself even responding to someone who is probably a 5th grader.
Posted By: afype @ 11/19/2007 6:36:23 PM
Comment: God bless USA. I wished Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or Mike Savage would run for the office of the president. All are true Americans who have Red, White and Blue running thru their veins. They love and respect this land. But unfortunately they never will. There is not one candidate in these current bunches of republican and democrat party members, who are running for the white house, who is any good. They are a bunch old-idea, fizzled-out, self-centered, bribe taking, big business, America haters who have no clue as to what is going on in this dangerous world we live in. Consider these:
1. Dictators of Iran and Venezuela are banding together to terrorize their citizen and the world.
2. Dictators of Russia and china are actively working to dominate the world. They are taking b???s of dollars in one-way trade form the USA to bolster their military. They are actively stealing any technology they can get their hands on thru Russian mafia and millions of Chinese illegal aliens who hide in the storage containers and vanish in the big cities.
3. Illegal aliens are all over USA and most of our cities are over run and infested with them, and no one has any idea, or courage, on how to stop the flow.
4. English language is being replaced with half other languages in most schools (most American student can't even read or right in their own mother language of English!). No one cares or bothers to raise the concern.
5. Our school system is failing and they are graduating a whole class of dummies who can't compete in this technology driven world (all technologically advanced equipment is being designed, produced and manufactured somewhere else). This includes countries of India, China, Asian rim countries and even old Easter block nations in Europe. This is regardless of billions of dollars, which taxpayers are spending on the school system. Average per pupil cost is now $11,000 annually in USA. In India and China is $300! Which country do you think had more advancement in science and technology for the last 10 years? If you don???t believe it, look around in your company and see who is running, or designing the computer programs at your place. The best product this country had this year was a toy wooden carriage!
6. The only think our students now learning is how to have sex correctly and with condoms, how to have parties and watch useless programs, how to find the best porn sites on the web, how to find sites on the web to steal videos and songs, how to be disrespectful to their parents, how to ignore the laws of the society, how to trash the USA and burn its flag, and how to be non-working, non-producing member of the society, and always critical of US armed forces and against our brave men and women who serve in it.
I???ve got more for the next posting. But meantime, think about where your candidate stands on these above issues.