Before I took my first class at Bowling Green State University, I attended a meeting for the BG News. While writing one of my first articles as a student journalist, I was introduced to the refugee community in Toledo. Connecting with several people involved with refugee resettlement organizations sparked a fascination with the Middle East. Arabic classes, Model Arab League, service learning courses with a focus on refugee communities and my own studies helped this fascination grow.
This summer I went beyond books, documentaries and organizations. Through a University fellowship, I traveled to Cairo, Egypt and Athens, Greece to work with different refugee populations.
Traveling on my own and exposing myself to new cultures and communities allowed my knowledge of the world to expand immensely while still learning about myself. The person I was when I stepped off the plane in Cairo is almost a stranger to the woman who arrived in BG a few weeks ago.
There’s not one specific experience that shaped me. Instead, I found it was the people I was able to meet and the opportunities I was given because of these individuals that were the most powerful and influential parts of my trip.
I grew close to a refugee from South Sudan whose father had been tortured for preaching. She and her family safely made it to Cairo 10 years ago, but they are just scraping by on the few underpaid cleaning jobs she’s been able to obtain. With an underfunded eagerness to attend university, she dreams of becoming an architect to help rebuild her home country.
An English woman and her daughter told me the wonders of Bahrain, where they have called home for the past several years. I met them while they were in Greece teaching English to a group of Syrian women. They host a film festival in Bahrain every year that highlights vulnerable international communities.
When I traveled to the island of Crete for a weekend, I was invited to share lunch with a group of sea-worn fishermen on their porch. Their stories were soaked in exaggeration and splendor, even in broken English, but none of their tales were as extreme as the strange and garish fish they pulled from their bags of their morning catch.
A quirky husband-and-wife pair of volunteers befriended me in Athens. Since leaving the Mexican wine business behind in Baja Mexico, they have traveled the globe doing aid work while remotely managing the finances of several international non-profits.
I met an Egyptian woman who opened up her home to me and showed me how to navigate her city. She led me down alleyways illuminated by dusty lanterns to shops she treasures, cafes she shares with friends and local cuisine she could not live without. She was a master at finding the cheapest prices at markets, even then, bartering for lower prices.
During Iftar, the daily breaking of fast during Ramadan, I shared a meal with an Ethiopian refugee. He was an English teacher in his hometown, but the government suspected him of encouraging his students to speak out against the government. With threats from officials, he fled to Cairo. He hopes to make it to an English-speaking country but someday return to Ethiopia to continue teaching his students with a more firm grasp on the English language.
These are just a few of the people I was fortunate enough to stumble upon during my travels. With every interaction and conversation with each of these people, I gained a new perspective of the world, a new set of lenses to look through.
I encourage you all, as you start your college career, to look for these people who give you new perspectives, who push you outside your comfort zone, who challenge you to see the world a different way, who help you grow. Growth can be uncomfortable and challenging, and it should be. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. From there, you will never stop growing.
