From Kakuma to Halifax

This summer, as part of the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) Refugee Study Seminar, Julia Keech spent six weeks in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, located in northwest Kenya, working with WUSC refugee students. The sponsored students have since arrived in Canada and are attending classes across the country, thanks to the support of their local university WUSC committee. WUSC Dalhousie has been sponsoring refugee students every year since 1981 and Ms. Keech had the unique opportunity to meet this year’s sponsored student, Majak Kuol, before he even set foot on Canadian soil.

Majak Kuol arrived at Dalhousie from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. (Danny Abriel Photo)

It was my third day in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and, as I remember very well, it was stifling hot but that wasn’t about to distract me from the pure excitement I was feeling towards our first meeting with this year’s WUSC-sponsored students. Our group had arranged a time to meet the students—all 39 of them—inside a one-room meeting house within the United Nations High Commission for Refugees compound. One of them going to Dalhousie, but I didn’t know his or her name or even what he or she looked like.

This initial meeting with the students was the first of many. It was a chance for us Canadian students to get to know the refugee students—who they were, where they were from and what sort of hopes, dreams and expectations they had about their future in Canada.  To have had the opportunity to be in the refugee camp and see and hear first hand the stories of these refugee students was truly a moving experience. They have been through such tremendous hardships yet their hope for the future and means to a more secure and fulfilling life lay in the pathway of education. 

It wasn’t long before I came to know Majak Kuol, Dalhousie’s 2008-09 sponsored student. His gentle, yet keen and enthusiastic persona shone through immediately. I knew his placement at Dalhousie was a perfect match.

Majak thought so too. When he discovered he’d be going to Dalhousie, he leapt to the first available computer and looked up university website.  It was the school’s motto that struck him the most. “Inspiring Minds—that is what inspired me,” he declared.

Majak and I met up again last week in the library and he filled me in on his experience so far at Dal.  “It is tough,” he tells me, “but it is all good and I will make it.” Majak is studying chemical engineering and although he is finding the workload demanding and the big change in food and culture challenging, he takes comfort in the fact that he is not the only immigrant in Halifax.

On a recent visit to Pier 21, Canada’s Immigration Museum, Majak learned how this city was the gateway to Canada for people of many backgrounds.  “These peoples’ stories are similar to mine,” he remarks with a smile. “The knowledge of this experience gave me sort of a reassurance in this place. “ 

Thanks to a recent increase in funding from the university administration, Majak will be among many more students to be given this same opportunity. Up until this year, the Dal WUSC committee sponsored two students and they were only fully financially supported for their first year. Following this first year, their financial assistance would expire and they were on their own—having to pay for their education and all living expenses. With the help of a student loan and employment, WUSC students were able to get by, but just barely.

With the help of Bonnie Neuman, Vice President of Student Services, Dalhousie will now be sponsoring three students each year and their tuition fees will be waived during the four years of their undergraduate degree. In addition, if the sponsored student completes his or her undergraduate degree at Dalhousie and wishes to pursue a graduate degree, his or her tuition will be waived. 

It goes without saying that these students are extraordinary people who have come from challenging backgrounds and are at a serious disadvantage from other students. For them to have still achieved academically is quite remarkable but they have very few external resources on which to depend. Dal support to them via student fees and the Faculty Association was only enough to get them through their first year. It was obvious to Dr. Neuman they needed more help.

Asked where he sees himself in 10 years time, Majak is quick to respond. “I hope to go back home to Sudan to help others,” he tells me. “The help I have received from the people of WUSC and Dalhousie will be transferred to the people in Sudan who need a lot of aid.” 
As we make our way out of the library, Majak ponders for a moment and then says to me, “You know, it is like this ‘pay it forward’ idea.”       

Julia Keech is from Grand Pre in the Annapolis Valley. She is in International Development Studies at Dalhousie.