An afternoon adventure

At Siloam this morning, I spent my time creating a "fact sheet" on Burma and its refugees for tomorrow's luncheon with a Karen refugee from Burma. It was really interesting to learn why we get so many Karen refugees from Burma, why their government is so corrupt, etc. I think I will be presenting it tomorrow as an introduction to the lunch.

This afternoon, I went with Bonnie (shown below in the picture at Clairmont) to four different apartment complexes around Nashville: the Clairmont apartments, the Wynstone apartments, Turtle Creek, and the Highlands. The first stop was Clairmont. Unfortunately, the new management has refused to allow community programs to continue in their apartments, so it was really hard to see efforts of Ingram scholars Thomas and Tyler have to be taken away. We went to remove the nutrition class materials and to assess whether it will be possible to hold classes in the future at Clairmont. Our hope is that one of the facilitators who lives at Clairmont will offer her apartment to hold the class.

The side wall of the kitchen with nutrition information.

Our next stop was to drive by the Wynstone apartments, where many of Siloam's Arabic-speaking patients live. That is where Irini, one of the women who took the class in the Spring, would like to teach her own Arabic class. It looked like a really nice place, unfortunately damaged by the flood, but it appears that a class can be held there in the fall.

We then stopped at the Turtle Creek apartments and had a TON of success. We met with the apartment manager, who was very enthusiastic about holding a weekly nutrition class. She offered one of the one-bedroom apartments as a possible site for the course and also offered suggestions on doing a program for the children at the same time. The task will be to decide who will facilitate the class and what group we will target, as Nepali, Burmese, Bhutanese, and Iraqi people all reside in great numbers at these apartments. We hope to talk to some of Siloam's interpreters who live their and see if they have suggestions or would like to facilitate the class themselves.

Finally, we went to the Highland apartments off of Nolensville Pike. The manager there also seemed very receptive of having outreach programs there and even more, she seemed to be very familiar with her residents, even offering names and apartments of bilingual refugees whom she thought would be willing to help facilitate the classes. She also expressed need for swimming lessons, hygiene and household task lessons, etc., but I think we will stick to the nutrition courses for now. She did not have an empty apartment to offer us, but was hopeful that community members would be willing to open up their own to use.

Overall, we had a really positive afternoon. We're going to start working on translating documents into Arabic for one of the fall classes and on Monday, talk to our interpreters to get feedback on additional classes at Highlands or Turtle Creek.

The Turtle Creek Apartments!