Hutterite recalls ‘life-changing’ sponsorship

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This article was published 10/03/2023 (1039 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Green Acres Hutterite Colony’s sponsorship of a Syrian refugee family in 2016 had a “life-changing” impact on resident Elaine Hofer, so much so that she recently completed a self-published memoir about this cross-cultural exchange.

Hofer touched on this project, titled “Walking Home,” during a public presentation at Brandon University on Thursday afternoon, noting that her community’s decision to help resettle the Syrian family in Manitoba made her feel excited and anxious in the beginning.

“I’ve never met anyone at the Winnipeg airport, let alone someone speaking in a different language,” said Hofer, who is currently enrolled in BU’s integrated education program with an interest in the arts.

“I could not imagine leaving your country and your home with two suitcases and that being your entire belongings of comfort and familiarity.”

The sponsored family included Najwa, an elementary school teacher, and Reyad Al Hamoud, a construction worker, from the city of Hama in west-central Syria.

Following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Najwa and Reyad decided to flee the conflict with their two children in hand, eventually making their way to the neighbouring nation of Lebanon.

The Al Hamouds spent the next three years in exile, almost escaping by boat across the Mediterranean before learning they had been accepted into Canada, joining 25,000 other Syrian refugees Ottawa resettled between November 2015 and February 2016.

Once the family arrived in Manitoba, Hofer admitted they had to overcome several cultural barriers, especially since the Al Hamouds barely spoke any English at the time.

“There was a lot of waving and gesturing and Google translate,” Hofer recalled.

“You needed humour for sure. Humour was quickly a part of the mix, and Najwa was especially good at grabbing at humour when things were so tangly and tight.”

Another element of culture shock took place at the dinner table, as the Al Hamouds found Canadian food to be much too sweet for their collective palates, according to Hofer.

But with a little time and patience, Hofer and members of the colony were able to successfully integrate the Al Hamouds into their new life in Westman, with the family first living in Wawanesa and later moving to Brandon.

“We may have been the ones guiding Najwa and her family to English classes, introducing them to the Prairies, to mosquitoes and to finding Halal sections in the Superstore, but Najwa’s resilience and her relaxing personality, her confidence and her trust in us healed us,” she said.

Throughout this journey, Hofer said the Al Hamouds also thoroughly enriched the Green Acres colony through introducing unique cultural elements like their spicy cooking, which is desperately missed after the family moved to Edmonton in 2019.

“We’re at a point where we crave and love kibbeh and shawarma,” she said. “One of the biggest things I miss is cooking with Najwa.”

During this three-year period, Hofer kept her experiences with the Al Hamouds chronicled in a series of journal entries, having come from a writing background that began in high school and has continued throughout her adult life.

Coupled together with the copious amount of photos Hofer took during this time, she was encouraged by a BU graduate to put everything together in a single volume to help remember the Al Hamouds and share their story with the world.

“There is much more that unites us than what makes us different,” she said. “So writing is a way of reaching out to others and to ourselves.”

After spending hundreds of hours writing, editing and sorting her photos digitally, Hofer finally completed “Walking Home” late last year and handed out copies to members of her colony and a small cluster of schools in the region.

She is currently talking to a publisher about widening the book’s distribution.

And while Hofer misses sharing day-to-day experience with the Al Hamouds, she takes solace that meeting this family made her life better and helped reaffirm her own cultural, religious identity.

“Before this sponsorship, I loved being Hutterite,” she said. “After I met Najwa and the rest of our Syrian family, I understood what being Hutterite meant — tolerance, inclusion, empathy, community, differences and acceptance of differences were in the room in these relationships.”

The Green Acres Hutterite Colony is situated roughly 50 kilometers southeast of Brandon.

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