First February Post

This month, my RISSE visits had a lot of really interesting and variegated supplements. One of them took place during the week that the RISSE after school program was closed due to the Albany school system’s winter recess. Instead of our usual visit to the refugee center that week, we stayed at Emma Willard and had what was apparently a long-overdue volunteer training session with one of its staff members, Teresa.

As part of the training, Teresa talked about the process refugees go through to get from their homes to a refugee camp to a place like the United States; RISSE’s history as an organization and what it does specifically for the 400 refugees and immigrants it serves in Albany; the status of RISSE’s clients (mostly refugees) and where in the world they come from (all over); and the emotional and behavioral implications of trauma, long stays in refugee camps, and world-shaking relocation that can exist for refugees.

It was particularly interesting to hear Teresa mention that one of the places refugees come from is Burma. Many of the children I know at RISSE say they come from Burma, or that they are technically from Thailand but were actually born in a refugee camp in Burma. As someone who had been taught that Burma is now Myanmar and that referring to the country’s erstwhile name is not only incorrect but disrespectful, I had been somewhat surprised to hear “Burma” uttered so often by so many of the kids. Teresa explained that the people fleeing the Burma/Thailand area are often part of the group that lost out when Burma became overtaken by the military junta that renamed the nation to Myanmar. It was an interesting peek into the crazy politics of that region and made me really interested in researching more of it.