In one of my recent posts, I mentioned that one of my childhood friends (her name is Ruth) was involved with welcoming a refugee family from Syria to Ottawa.

Well, the story is a bit more involved than that! Ruth's sister Trish and husband Pat are working to bring other refugees to settle in Ottawa as well.

Trish and a group are currently working to help bring a family member (and his wife and children) of the Syrian couple they originally helped to settle in Ottawa.

Ruth (right) with a couple of recent arrivals to Canada

They're also working with a family recently arrived in Canada from Sudan

As Ruth says:

And now Pat and I (and group!) have added a Sudanese family to our extended family.

The Syrian/Canadian and Sudanese youngsters enjoying New Year's Eve in Ottawa

The Sudanese family would have been in Canada for two months on 8 January. Good thing they weren't hit with an ice storm! That wouldn't have been an ideal greeting for them.

Why leave Sudan?

I can't tell you this family's specific story, and even if I could it probably wouldn't be helpful for it to be publicised or saved on a blockchain in perpetuity.

However - not sure how well the news media wherever you are, dear reader, might be following the situation in Sudan, but here in South Africa we have heard some grim stories of government repression and violence, accompanied by not a whole lot of African Union action or international intervention, coming out of the capital city Khartoum. Fuel prices recently skyrocketed, causing people to do what people do when prices go up like that - they got upset and showed it, and got brutally beaten back for their troubles. Here is a link to a story published two days ago about the uprising which started 19 December 2018.

The sharp-memoried among you might remember that South Africa had the opportunity a couple of years ago to fulfill an international arrest warrant on the President Omar al-Bashir - he was here in South Africa and the government was fully aware of the International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest for crimes against humanity, specifically the Darfuri, some 200 000 of whom were murdered at his instigation. What did the Zuma-run government do at the time? Snuck him out of the country before activists could ensure the arrest happened.

Back to welcoming refugees in Ottawa

Luckily for this particular Sudanese family, they're safe now, in peaceful Ottawa, with caring people like Trish, Ruth and Pat and the extended group they're working with to help them settle in to their new life.

As my friend Ruth had to say about this photo:

Love this one. The boy on the left was born here [Canada] to our Syrian family. The girl on the right was born in Jordan to our Sudanese family.

Happy, safe children

Behind them is our wonderful friend Gladys, aged 80, a vital member of our team, who drove through a snowstorm to get here for New Year's Eve with them and has just done the paperwork to get subsidized childcare so the second family can go to English classes.

Simply amazing how communities can pull together to help people from the other side of the world.

All images courtesy of Ruth Irwin Lee, and political commentary mine only, not emanating from the families mentioned. Ruth obtained permission from the parents for their children's photos to be published.

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