quote below: At Christmas time, they often receive gifts from others, but don't typically exchange them among themselves or have a holiday tree because of their Jehovah's Witness religious beliefs. http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2580/context/cover/
| Post-Katrina Holidays Bring Season of Necessity |
| Run Date: 12/25/05 |
| By Juliette Terzieff WeNews correspondent |
Michelle Castillo managed to get her FEMA compensation package in the middle of November. But after buying necessities, she has little left over for the holidays. Third in a series about how one woman and her family are rebuilding. |
(WOMENSENEWS)--Michelle Castillo and her family used to celebrate the holidays as a quiet time for all to gather round a full table. Every year the meal is the same--gumbo, collard greens, baked ham and cabbage. Castillo's father makes homemade eggnog. Castillo makes the family favorite, Reese's Pieces Cake. This year, for the first time in the new millennium, her entire family is traveling in to Orlando, Fla., from around the country to sit at the same table, enjoy one another's company and reflect on the turbulent year gone by. "Somehow we all got spread out over the years and the last time we all managed to get to one place was the year before our mother died," Castillo explains. That was 1999. "Now we're going to have a jam-packed house and it is going to be wonderful." Three months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything her family owned but a small bag of personal items and the clothes on their backs, Castillo is still battling ferociously to lay the groundwork for a new life for herself, her two children and her ailing father. "There is still a long way to go, but all in all, we're doing OK," says Castillo, who readily admits to constant exhaustion and feelings of loneliness. "I thank God for what we have, we feel blessed. Are there problems? Yes, this is a difficult adjustment, but I want to maintain an upbeat attitude and just keep working my way through all this." After months of focusing on her application for relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and settling her family first in a relative's home and then permanently into a rented Orlando house, she finally feels she has the time to begin looking for work. Over the last month, she has been using public library computers to search for openings and send out resumes. Few Leads for Decent WorkThe 41-year-old was working as a dispatcher for an alarm monitoring service in New Orleans and is looking for something in administration or inventory control. So far, however, she hasn't found many strong leads. "Truth is that sometimes you have to take a job that doesn't pay what you want and that's OK, but there doesn't seem to be much available at the moment at all," Castillo says. |
Working a minimum wage job such as a cashier or motel maid--the only kind of work that seems available now--wouldn't provide her enough resources to care for her family and would lead to cuts in the little aid she's receiving.
Currently, there are precious few financial resources coming into the household aside from the $1,200 her father, Allen Wallace, receives in retirement benefits. Florida is providing the family of four with $184 a month in food stamps and earlier this month Castillo's unemployment benefits began to kick in $98 a week. Child support of $200 a month from Castillo's ex-husband, who was also run out of New Orleans by Katrina, barely covers the children's basic expenses. Rent alone costs the family $1,200 a month.
"We don't want handouts, we want to build a life," she says. "And to be honest, I will feel much better about things once I do find work."
Finding a job isn't the only thing on her mind.
When New Orleans' Southern University reopens for classes in January, Castillo plans to apply to transfer her credits to the She wants to finish the bachelor's degree in journalism she was two semesters away from completing when Katrina hit.
"One thing I've learned," says Castillo, "is that you have to take it one step at a time. Slowly but surely we will get our lives back."
FEMA Settlement Arrived At Last
In mid-November Castillo received a $10,391 claim settlement from FEMA for the losses her family suffered after Aug. 28 when Katrina submerged their Ninth Ward home. But the settlement won't come close to covering the costs of making a new home.
With the funds, Castillo began buying basic furnishing and supplies for their new rented home, and put a $2,000 down payment toward financing on a 1999 Chrysler Town and Country van so the family would have reliable transport.
"When you've lost everything and have to start from zero, you don't really realize what that means until you begin trying to rebuild," Castillo says. "We had to get winter coats, a suit for my father to go to church in, forks, knives, towels . . . Everything, we needed everything."
For Castillo, obtaining "everything" meant weeks of fighting holiday crowds to buy necessities before coming home to hang curtains, put together head boards and assemble end tables. At Christmas time, they often receive gifts from others, but don't typically exchange them among themselves or have a holiday tree because of their Jehovah's Witness religious beliefs.
Wallace, a 67-year-old diabetic, has gotten his blood sugar back under control after a severe post-Katrina flare-up. Last month, however, he began having vision problems doctors subsequently identified as glaucoma.
He is already legally blind in his right eye and the left eye is now being affected as well.
Kids Ousted From School After Records Lost
Problems with immunization records led the Robinswood Middle School to dismiss Castillo's two children, Alexandra and Giovanni, earlier this month. The children's New Orleans pediatrician lost all records in the deluge and the school will not readmit the children without firm dates of their immunizations. Orlando doctors informed Castillo some of the immunizations--which include tetanus and measles, mumps, rubella (MMR)--can not be given twice within a five-year period.
"This is the last thing these kids need, to miss more school, be shut away from the new friends they've made. They are very unhappy about it," she says.
At the moment school is out for the holidays and Castillo is hoping she can find some resolution before school begins again in January.
"Every day there is a something new, some new battle, and sure there are people around who try to help but in the end it's all up to you," Castillo says.
To a great extent, Avis Jones-DeWeever, study director for the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research, agrees.
"Truth of the matter is that the honeymoon period is over," says DeWeever, referring to the extent of Washington's official concern for hurricane survivors. "We just have to hope people are not going to forget about all these people who've lost so much."
Juliette Terzieff is a freelance journalist currently based in Buffalo, N.Y., who has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, CNN International and the London Sunday Times during time spent in the Balkans, the Middle East and South Asia.
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http://www.eveningsun.com/localnews/ci_3342876
Penn Twp. dissolves recreation board
| Eric Trimmer |
By CHRISTINA KRISTOFIC Evening Sun Reporter The Penn Township Recreation Board had nothing to do. So the township commissioners unanimously voted Monday night to dissolve the board until more recreation projects come up. Township manager Jeff Garvick said the commissioners decided to create the recreation board in 1988, when the township was planning to build the Kids' Kingdom Community Park on Grandview Road, near Beck Mill Road. The recreation board helped raise funds and oversaw construction of the park. The board also oversaw fundraising and construction of some of the township's smaller parks, which were built on parcels developers gave to Penn when they built large subdivisions - formerly a requirement in the township. Garvick said the township is more interested now in building bigger parks. So it now requires developers to make monetary donations to the township when they build large housing developments. The commissioners control those funds, leaving less for the recreation board to do. The commissioners did not want to eliminate the recreation board entirely, Garvick said, so they decided to dissolve it temporarily. When there are more recreation projects and people interested in helping with them, Garvick said the township will revive the recreation board. In other business: * The board of commissioners will sell two plots of land on either side of Industrial Drive to Hawk Hill Inc., which does business on Industrial Drive as Hawk Creek Laboratories. Hawk Hill will pay $15,000 for the two 50,000-square-foot plots of land near the intersection of Industrial and Barnhart drives. The township had the land's value appraised at a higher amount, said Garvick. But the commissioners decided to go through with the sale since the municipality has no use for the land. * The commissioners approved a request from Paradise Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses Corporation to waive land development requirements when they build a 720-square-foot addition to the church on Paradise Court. * Michael Brown resigned from the planning commission. * Leroy Snyder resigned from the civil service commission. * The commissioners agreed to allow the Penn Township Ambulance Club to participate in a regional task force. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quote: ." He said he had "religious problems" in his home country after he converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-time-sharing-joy-sadness-/2005/dec/1236546.htm |
A time for sharing joy and sadness
(The Irish Times)Co Meath's former holiday camp is playing host to more than 500 asylum seekers this Christmas, writes Kitty Holland in Mosney
Lahnon Adamolekun (35) and his wife Kateryna (30) are looking forward to their second Christmas together in Ireland, with mixed emotions. Though they will spend Christmas in Mosney, the new year will see them take their next step in Ireland, in a new home - a rented apartment in Donabate, north Co Dublin. The couple - he is from Nigeria and she from the Ukraine - have called the former Butlins holiday camp near Julianstown, Co Meath, "home" for the past two years.
The camp, which until 2000 opened between May and September as a destination for 200,000 Irish holidaymakers a year, is now open year-round.
Its 21st-century residents are asylum seekers. The biggest asylum accommodation centre in the State, it can house up to 800 people at a time. As the number of people being admitted to the asylum system has fallen over the past two years, however, and the processing of their applications has accelerated, the numbers in centres such as Mosney have fallen.
Smaller centres are being closed and residents moved to bigger centres such as Mosney. It currently houses just over 500 people from about 20 different countries and most of them are families with children.
Sitting in the bright, airy Kosy Kitchen canteen, the Adamolekun couple are in buoyant form. Lahnon and Kateryna explain they met in the Ukraine about seven years ago, where Lahnon says he was travelling.
They married four years ago and due to persecution, says Kateryna, they fled. She came to Ireland first, in 2003, with their daughters Karen (6) and Lorraine (2) and she has since got refugee status. Lahnon joined them last year and they have applied for family reunification to allow him to stay.
They also now have a third daughter, Hillary (seven months). They had hoped to celebrate Christmas in their new apartment though waiting until the new year has its advantages, smiles Kateryna.
"It is very nice here though and our first daughter doesn't want to leave. She keeps screaming, 'I don't want to go!'. It is very busy here, lots of children."
As we chat over coffee at about noon, the canteen is beginning to get busy. A display of lights, in the shape of Santa, sleigh and reindeers, shimmers above the hot-plate counter and, children of all ages are around, some eating lunch, others playing, laughing and generally enjoying tumbling with each other.
Kateryna nods that she too will miss the creche facilities, the canteen and the friends they have in Mosney.
"But it will be better to have our own home, to start our life properly in Ireland. Oh that will be very good," she grins broadly. Karen goes to national school in Donabate and they got help with finding an apartment there from the local health board and their community welfare officer. On Christmas Day they will go to a Pentecostal church in north Dublin in the morning and join about 400 others for Christmas lunch in the canteen. A number of the residents will spend the day in the homes of friends or family outside Mosney.
Catering manager Ann Durnan promises a party atmosphere in the Kosy Kitchen. Not all the residents will celebrate Christmas, of course, with many being of non-Christian denomination. The focus, says Durnan, will not be on the religious dimension of the day but on the coming together and sharing joys and sadnesses.
"It will be a bit of a sad day for some, missing family and loved ones, of course. But here in the restaurant we hope to have a happy atmosphere. We'll have music, and along here," she says, gesturing to a row of shutters along one wall, "we'll have hampers made up on display. We will give out tickets for the raffle and there's great joy when people win a hamper."
The wooden tables will all be dressed, she adds, and there will be "lots of sweets and chocolate for the children. They love that". On the menu will be traditional turkey, ham and all the trimmings, but also grilled halal meat and rice, mackerel baked with tomatoes and a Russian dish - golubohi - which Durnan describes as a "parcel stuffed with cabbage, rice and pork".
Among the desserts are trifle, fresh fruit and plum pudding with custard. Asked what those who are not familiar with plum pudding make of it, she laughs.
"Well, they mostly all try it, but they might prefer the custard to the pudding."
There are other parties in Mosney in the lead-up to Christmas - perhaps the most charming, that in the camp's Mabuhay Playschool which cares for 35 one- to five-year-olds for three hours a day, Monday to Friday. The facility enables the children's parents to go to classes either at the camp or in Drogheda and Dundalk.
"We dress the children up as angels, wise men, kings and as Mary and Joseph, and we have a black baby doll as the baby Jesus," explains Liz O'Reilly, playschool manager. "Santa comes and we give them each a little present of a book and some sweets. It is lovely and they all look so sweet. All the children join in whether they are Christian or not and the parents are happy for them, too. It's a communal thing really, more than a religious thing."
The children generally are the same as any other, though some are "challenging", she says. "There can be cultural issues, speech and language difficulties, different discipline methods at home."
Some, she says, are not read to at home, as in their countries that is the traditional role of grandparents. "And the grandparents aren't here so they miss out on that."
Some also are not familiar with crayons and pencils or how to hold them. She says very few are traumatised and most settle well. "If we have them for a good length of time we can really get them ready for school here."
Children aged five and over at Mosney attend up to 10 national schools in the Julianstown area, with children aged 12 and over going to secondary schools locally and as far away as Dundalk.
The adult school, where students take classes in English, literacy and computer skills, will also hold a small party.
The eight students taking the English-as-a-second-language class one morning last week came from Uganda, the Congo, Algiers, Libya, Croatia and Afghanistan. Few were inclined to talk to The Irish Times, though Mary-Jane Osumare from the Congo was happy to say she liked the two months she has so far spent at Mosney. She has been three years in Ireland, however, and is still waiting for a decision on her asylum application.
Also at the English class, Abdhul Hayy Nasseri from Afghanistan has been three weeks at Mosney, having spent one year at an asylum accommodation centre in Dundalk. "It's okay here. I miss my wife Nadia and my mother in Afghanistan." He said he had "religious problems" in his home country after he converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
As multi-coloured lights were being hung like bunting about the camp last week, Mosney's manager Patrick McKenna said Christmas Day would be quiet "like in any family". And as in many families it will be tinged with sadnesses.
As Kateryna and Lahnon make their way to the Kosy Kitchen counter to get some lunch, an Afghan asylum seeker, Dawi Roushean, approaches, saying he is a poet and would like to show his poem about Christmas. Written in stilted English, it tells of Mary and Joseph's search for a safe place and people's non-acceptance of them, and later of Jesus.
"I have been here in Mosney 15 months and before in Co Clare," he explains. "I feel we are in a limbo situation, waiting to see if we are accepted."
Asked whether he'll take part in the Christmas celebrations, given his poem, he says he will, despite being Muslim. He picks up the sheet of paper on which it is typed. "I think", he says, "asylum seekers' situation in Ireland is very similar to this Christmas story."