Lethbridge elementary school kids hear from former Syrian refugee

LETHBRIDGE – Park Meadows School hosted a visit Wednesday from Maged Hammo, a Syria native who immigrated to Lethbridge in 1999.

As part of the school’s Welcome to Canada Project, Hammo spoke to the kids, letting them in on what it was like to come to an unfamiliar country at the age of nine.

Hammo said the hardest part of it all was learning English. He said he hasn’t seen his family in Syria since leaving 16 years ago. He said the circumstances at the refugee camp – limited space and food – were also tough on him, his dad and brother.

“When I was younger we didn’t think really think too much about that, we were kids,” he explained. “We just ran around and had fun.”

Hammo now works as a journeyman welder and has four children at the young age of 25. His daughter Bella listened to her dad speak and joined in as he taught her classmates how to count to 10 in Kurdish. She, of course, already knows how to do that, but she did learn one thing.

“I didn’t know that he had to stay in the camp,” Bella said.

While she took that information in, the other kids learned something else for themselves, such as the answer to the question: “How are you going to treat new kids from refugee families?”

“A lot better than I would before because I didn’t know what it was all about,” Grade 4 student Austin Young said. “I would’ve treated them like a normal person, until I heard his story.”

Prime Minister Trudeau said he will be at the Toronto airport Thursday to welcome the first planeload of Syrian refugees to Canada.