'Voice of the American'

Today we tutored here. It's the Marsa Open Centre for refugees of political, economic, and humanitarian statuses. They're mainly from Somalia and Sudan, with some others from western Africa. I went wondering if we could be of help, figuring translation would be difficult, if not impossible. But, it was wonderful. I loved it. I wish we could go everyday. The two men I tutored wanted to learn as much as they could, we talked about everything from punctuation to grammar, to voice inflection when asking a question. They absorbed everything. They want to get out, they want to go to America. One man told me his grandfather is in Ohio waiting for him. He's been stuck here for 9 months now. He asked me how to fill out his forms correctly in hopes of being released. They told me they wanted to hear me talk, they wanted to hear the 'voice of an American.' I read books to them, a stack our professor brought with her. One book happened to be about Cesar Chavez, and a line from it says, "You can no longer keep your eyes and ears closed to us, you can no longer pretend we're nonexistent." The man I was tutoring gave a thumbs up when I read that and said, "Good line." It is a good line, it was a wonderful day.