Friends without borders

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This article was published 17/03/2019 (2541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After her car was damaged in a rear-end collision last summer, Donna Alexander realized how her Canadian sensibilities clashed with the experience of her Yazidi friends.

When he heard about the accident, friend Khaleel Zndnan offered to loan Alexander money to fix her vehicle, not understanding how automobile insurance works in his new home province of Manitoba.

That generosity moved her to tears and underscores the depth of feeling between Zndnan’s family and Alexander, who visits them weekly to orient them to life in Winnipeg.

“It’s been an incredibly gratifying experience and made me understand how difficult it is to navigate our systems,” the retired teacher says about her friendship with Zndnan, his wife Fani, and four of their children who share a Fort Richmond apartment.

Connected through the volunteer matching program of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, Alexander and her family and friends are committed to being Canadian contacts to the Zndnan family, government-sponsored Yazidi refugees from Iraq who landed in Winnipeg a year ago.

Matched last May, the retired teacher now helps the family deal with bills, banking and notes from school, as well as preparing for the imminent arrival of their eighth baby and first Canadian-born child. Alexander also assists the family with the bigger issue of attempting to reunite with their two teenagers and one adult child who fled Iraq four years ago and ended up in Germany.

More friend than advocate, the role is designed to introduce newcomers to Canadian customs and practices through the generosity of ordinary Winnipeggers, explains Maysoun Darweesh, former co-ordinator of the matching program, who left her job last week.

“All that is needed in this program is love and kindness and time,” says Darweesh, who recruited volunteers though community organizations, schools and churches.

Sometimes, volunteers reach out to the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council looking for a connection. Winnipegger Alana Langelotz struck up a conversation with the four members of the Humsi family from Syria while waiting at the Toronto airport in December 2016. Just before boarding the flight to Winnipeg, she asked the two daughters to write down their names on a piece of paper.

She couldn’t forget those little girls, and after passing the names on to Darweesh, Langelotz was reunited with the family a few months later at the council office.

“They came into the board room and they started hugging me and wouldn’t let go,” recalls Langelotz, president of a speakers’ bureau.

Now she meets regularly with the family, helps them with their shopping and household matters, and attends the girls’ school events.

“She helped me translate for the landlord,” explains Badyra Humsi, mother of Shahed, 14, and Ghena, 9, of how Langelotz assisted during a recent furnace breakdown in their Elmwood duplex.

During a recent visit, the strong bonds between Langelotz and the two girls are evident as they explain their day and jostle to sit next to her on living room furniture donated by her mother-in-law.

Ghena demonstrates her recorder playing skills, while Shahed talks about her upcoming band concert at school (she plays flute). Both rush to translate for their parents and grandmother.

“She likes Canadian friends,” Shahed says on behalf of her grandmother Mouina Homsi (who spells her last name differently from the rest of the family), who arrived in Canada a year before her son and his family.

“She really loves Alana,” adds Ghena.

That affection flows both ways, says Langelotz, who invites the family to her North Kildonan home for holiday meals or summer dips in her backyard pool. The Humsi family has returned the hospitality by cooking meals and sharing their cultural practices and Muslim traditions.

“They’re no different than we are and were just born and raised in a different country,” says Langelotz.

“Canadians and Syrians are just the same,” adds father Yasser Humsi about the commonalities he’s found with Langelotz and her family.

“How we do anything with Syrians, we do with Canadians.”

That shared understanding underpins the matching program, which placed at least 50 volunteers in 2019, and keeps people engaged in each other’s lives, says the Syrian-born Darweesh, who came to Canada with her husband and two daughters in 2008 under a private sponsorship. She says the program creates social connections for newcomers who may have all the physical necessities to live in Canada, but no Canadian friends to explain trick-or-treating, appropriate dress for winter, or take them skating or swimming.

“It’s life changing for them,” says Darweesh. “It’s improving their self-esteem, it gives them opportunities, and it’s something really important.”

Moved by the stories of Syrians fleeing their homes, Winnipegger Dawna Wallace decided to join the volunteer matching program, and now visits weekly with a Yazidi family of seven. She helped the children learn to skate, carved pumpkins with them at Halloween, and invited them to relax at her cottage last summer.

“I feel very connected. They have very much become part of our family, they refer to me as their sister,” she says of the 18-month-old relationship.

“It’s truly amazing how much it enriches your life.”

That connection is one Kahairi Rashsho would have appreciated when he landed in Moose Jaw from Iraq in 2000, without knowing English or anyone in Canada. He found one sympathetic Arabic speaker who could translate for him, and now Rashsho returns the favour by translating from Kurmanji to English during a recent visit with the Zndnan family.

“It would have made it easy for us to have a friend like Donna (Alexander),” says Rashsho, of his early days in Canada, adding he moved to Winnipeg to be part of the Yazidi community here.

Alexander says she receives many blessings back from the match. She’s introduced her four grandchildren to the Zndnan family, planted and tended a garden plot with Fani and Khaleel so they could enjoy fresh potatoes, green beans and tomatoes last summer, and enjoys playing with the children. She has come to understand the generosity of the Yazidi people, as well as some of the hardships and atrocities they’ve experienced, and shares their pain of being separated from three of their children.

Although she signed up for just one hour a week, Alexander says the relationship has grown well beyond obligation to a mutual friendship, one that is not bound by a deadline or contract.

“I see this as a lifetime commitment,” she says.

“I’m excited to see the kids go through the school system and I can’t imagine not being friends. I care for them.”

brenda@suderman.com