Tour de Cafe

Catholic Charities held its annual "Tour de Cafe" last night at the YWCA in downtown Fort Worth. The Tour de Cafe is a celebration of our refugees...and wow, are they truly people to celebrate. I know I can't imagine what their lives are like - some have left behind family that they will never see again and probably didn't even know where they were when they left their country. Many of them have seen lots of blood, lots of guns, lots of death. And those who did not see war in their own countries and grew up in a refugee camp have seen life at its worst - very little food, extremely poor living conditions with many, many people living in a tent-like situation. Awful! And now they have found safety and somewhat of a better life here in America. "Somewhat?" you may ask. Well, imagine if you moved to a new country, didn't know the language, never received education in your own language so learning is difficult because you've never been formally taught how to learn. Imagine that you had little skills in your home country and therefore finding a job with little English education and almost no skills is what you have to offer anyone who might hire you. This is not all of their situations, but it definitely is the situation of the majority of the refugees that I teach from Somalia. Other refugees come from Burma, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Congo, Liberia, Pakistan, Iraq, Cuba.

At the Tour de Cafe we have teas and coffees from around the world and snacks from around the world as well. Some of our refugees perform music from their native country or dances. A family of Sudanese children sang and danced for us last night and they were a HIT!

If you're in the DFW area, maybe you can make it out to the Tour de Cafe next year!