I struggle to read non fiction most of the time. Unless it’s something I really want to research or is an enthralling subject in its own right, it feels like I’m back in High School reading textbooks about events and people far removed from my own experience. Despite the fact they may have had global impact, the reading matter can be very dry and rarely comes to life.
Perusing the first few pages of yet another “special” from one of my favourite bookstores, Outcasts United looked like it was going to be very different. Admittedly, the subject is very current, the resettlement of refugees from war torn nations around the world, but to enter the world of the vast range of people groups brought together in one place on the other side of the world, and those attempting to ease their transition into this new world, was inspiring yet confronting.
This immensely readable story of Jordanian born Luma Mufleh who single handedly established the Fugees soccer teams in Clarkston US, comes from Warren St John, a reporter with the New York Times. Moving to Atlanta to spend time with Luma and the Clarkston community, he follows the boys through a full season as they take on their opposing teams, most of whom are long established and well financed. We join this disparate group as they take their first tentative steps into a new culture, and live through their victories and setbacks, not only on the playing field.
We enter a world no one should have to cope with, especially young children, but what for many is becoming more the norm as they suffer at the mercy of military dictatorships, autocrats, despots, warring factions within nations, racial and religious oppression. For whatever reason, the choice eventually becomes very clear, you flee or die, so the refugee camps around the world swell to alarming rates and the laborious process of resettlement begins.
Imagine if you will this town in America’s south, on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia. We’re talking a hop, step and jump from Ku Klux Klan territory, and somehow, somewhere a decision is made to designate Clarkston as a refugee resettlement area. Not one person here and there, not just one family who a community would probably feel equipped to welcome and look out for, but from the 1990s literally thousands have come to Clarkston and been housed in apartment blocks, changing the demographic within this traditional Southern town.
Luma Mufleh, who decides to settle in America after completing her university studies, moves south simply because the climate suits her better, a decision which will bring her into the lives of countless refugees who she sees struggling to integrate themselves into their new home. It is also obvious the surrounding community is struggling to accommodate this invasion of people from cultures totally foreign to them. As a keen player herself, Luma believes football would be a good contribution to make as a way for the young boys to occupy their time.
Her role becomes much more than football coach, for to make real progress she finds it necessary to extend beyond the game and work with the boys and their families, advocating on their behalf in all sorts of situations. Finding only a few locals who have adapted to the influx of the refugees, it is an uphill battle to instil the confidence the boys need to compete, as well as bring them together as a cohesive group.
St John’s writing style reads almost like a novel, making you want to turn the pages to follow this unravelling story of trauma, grief, dislocation, poverty, determination and hope. In the whole book he only uses three pages in which to theorise, quoting British researcher Steven Vertovec’s findings into his studies of what he calls super diversity, the result of a broad range of cultures being brought together in one place. For the remainder, the attitudes and values of the individuals and community and their consequences are depicted as the story unfolds.
What I found challenging was not only the courage of this woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer, who was determined to set up a structure which would have a future, but the impact the refugee resettlement had on the local community. What St John notes as he spends time with long term Clarkston residents is not that they are necessarily racially prejudiced in their attitude to the multitudes coming into their town, but rather they are dealing with a sense of loss of what they have known all their lives. Their social cohesion has come into question, they fear the unknown, and are at a loss to know how to relate to people so different from themselves.
It was interesting when moving to Tasmania fifteen years ago to see how predominantly “white Caucasian” the population was after living on the mainland. In the intervening years refugees from Kosovo and African nations have been resettled here, but not to the extent in Clarkston. What the residents there failed to realise when they referred to the refugees in one lump, as a group totally foreign to them, was that each resettled people group felt as much apart from the other nationalities they were living next to, as the culture into which they had been brought.
The challenge was for this community within a community to find a voice, and in doing so, find their place within the wider community and feel accepted enough to make it their new home. To make space for those different from ourselves is always a challenge, whether they are from another culture or not. We have to be prepared for the chaos they might bring, for the demand it may make on our time and lifestyle. When the question is asked, what will be my response?
