Students ‘from away’ share their Sacred Stories

Sharing a laugh with their SMCC instructor Rosemarie De Angelis, center, are this semester’s “Sacred Stories” speakers, from left, Ageno Josephine (from Sudan), Idris Naney (Somalia),  Omba Diowo (Democratic Republic of Congo), Ahmed Roble (Somalia), Jose Pinto (Peru), Marek Chawlowski (Poland), Thao Nguyen (Vietnam) and Godfrey Biacho (Sudan).

Staff photo by Duke Harrington.

It happens twice each year, and each time it plays out before a slightly larger audience than the time before.

At South Portland City Hall, people who likely don’t look or sound like a lot of Maine residents gather to share with humility, and not a little humor, their tales of how they came to call American their home.

These are not entirely pleasant stories to hear. Many are far outside the ken of the average Mainer. Some are horror stories not even Stephen King could imagine, full of war and murder, slavery, oppression and privation, and, yes, even rape.

And, with each new revelation, a diminutive woman sits in the back row and sheds another tear. She is Rosemarie De Angelis, and on this May 5 evening, as she’s been five times before, she’s teary-eyed as the immigrant and refugee students from her Southern Maine Community College class tell their tales, in an event De Angelis calls “Sacred Stories.” As the tell their personal histories, some for the first time, De Angelis says a weight is lifted from them, and the audience gains an understanding of what it’s like to be a stranger in an adopted land.

Each gentle nod of encouragement to the speakers at the podium, each hand gesture to speak louder, or to make eye contact with the audience, is matched by a dab at the nose or cheek with a damp tissue.

“I work with them so long and so hard preparing for this day,” explains De Angelis, choking up even at the thought.  “I see the progression of their work, and I see the progression of their gifts. So, on this day, when all of that comes to fruition, it’s incredibly emotional for me.

“When I witness them for the first time sharing their gift, and seeing the power it has over the audience – and it does, every semester – I just feel so proud of them, and what they’ve accomplished,” said De Angelis. “For many of them, it is their first time to say out loud what they have endured.  It is their first time speaking before the public, something that truly horrified them at first. 

“And, keep in mind,” said De Angelis, “they are doing it in what, for them, is a foreign language. So I do, I get very emotional.”

De Angelis spent a career working as a speech pathologist in special education, before running for City Council, and eventually getting the nod from last year from her peers to represent the city as its mayor.

But since 2004, when she’s not fulfilling her duties – cutting the ribbon at new developments, or keeping time on council debate – or working as a guardian ad litem, De Angelis has taught an Advanced Speaking and Listening at Southern Maine Community College. A jump up from English as A Second Language, it is, along with Advanced Writing, a preparatory course needed by some students before they can earn college credits in English composition.

Those students, anywhere from 12 to 20 each year, come from all over the world. Sometimes, they are immigrants, but, alarmingly often, said De Angelis, they are refugees.

Initially, students prepared and presented their compositions in class. It was in 2009 that De Angelis hit upon the idea of sharing those stories before the public.

“What I found is that it really gave them validation for their stories,” says De Angelis. “It gave them a sense for the importance of the things that are just really, incredibly deep in their souls, and for what their stories tell.

“It’s really a process of healing for them,” De Angelis explains, “and, in doing that, I think it really educates the public.”

The experience has been so moving in fact that many of the students in that first 2009 group went on to found Color of Community, a nonprofit in which the students have continued to share their stories with schoolchildren.

“Part of this work is about decreasing stereotype and bias. Of opening other people’s hearts and minds,” said De Angelis. “It’s saying, ‘I am just like you.’”

But, of course, these students are not like everyone else.  They’ve each lived lives that have cast their psyches in ways few can conceive.

Ahmed Roble was so nervous about speaking he nearly took a zero in De Angelis’ class to get out of it. But the Somalia native persevered, making the final step on a journey that tore him from his homeland at a young age and parked him in a succession of refugee camps for five long years.

“Living in camps is really hard,” he said. “Sometimes, it is unimaginable. Today, I am grateful that I am here. I’m proud to be a United States citizen. 

”I am the luckiest person alive, but I feel guilty about the ones who have been left behind,” said Roble. “In this, I hope I am forgivable. ”

Godfrey Biacho spoke of his youth in Sudan. “As a little boy, I say things that were hard to see, and I remember things that are hard to remember,” he said.

“Because of the wars, I was separated from my parents,” he said. “I have not seen them since I was nine years old.”

Omba Diowo spoke of contracting malaria in the Democratic Republic of Congo and lying near death, seemingly incurable until coming to America. “I lost all confidence to survive,” he said.

Mark Chawlowski recalled living under Communist rule in Poland, Thao Nguyan of breaking down in tears after being sent from Vietnam to find a better life, Jose Pinto of coming from Peru and juggling work, school and sleepless nights to make feel worthy of his daughter, and Idris Naney of troubles in war-torn Somalia.

Finally, Ageno Josephine told of being torn from her mother by civil war in Sudan, living like a slave to her.

“I was given hard labor,” she said. “My job was to cook and to look after the other children. I was 10 years old. This lasted for seven years.”

Perhaps the best compliment given to the speakers came from Birger Johnson, who rose from the audience and spoke with an accept that might have passed for a 10^th generation Yankee.

He was born in Brooklyn, he said, to parents who emigrated from Sweden as teenagers 1922.

“I grew up speaking only Swedish,” he said. “My life began with immigrants. My life began with people like you. But one day, you’re children will have such stories to tell, just like me.”