Salvatori Niyongere has been in Lethbridge for a year after coming from Tanzania, and recently landed his first Canadian job at a local restaurant.
“Cooking, wash dishes, sometimes cut unions and carrots. I like it,” Niyongere said.
He was one of the new Canadians who took part in celebrating World Refugee Day in Lethbridge.
Laxmi Gurung also took part in Monday’s festivities, which were put on by Lethbridge Family Services.
“I was born in Bhutan,” she said. “After that I lived in refugee camp for 23 years in Nepal.”
Gurung said she finds Canada peaceful, a change from the conditions she endured for decades in a refugee camp.
Many people who come to Canada from Bhutan have long waits in refugee camps.
“We have students that are mostly–or before–they were mostly from Bhutan, and they on average were in refugee camps for about 20 years,” said Jillian Wiig from Flexibility Learning Systems.
Wiig teaches English as a second language. She said seeing her students at such a community event shows how excited they are to embrace their new city.
“I get students that are illiterate in their own language–so they can’t read or write, whether it’s Nepali or Arabic–and seeing them learn how to read is pretty amazing,” she said. “Just to be able to go out into the community and talk to people…they open up and it’s pretty awesome.”
Sandra Mintz with Lethbridge Family Services said refugees aren’t just people coming from other countries: sometimes the need for help is much closer to home.
“We’ve also welcomed our fellow citizens from Fort McMurray, who’ve also been refugees this last year, if we remember that the definition of a refugee is anybody who needs to seek refuge from something to some place safe,” she said.
No matter how far people have traveled, Lethbridge organizers said they want all refugees to know they have a safe, supportive place to call home.
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