March 16, 2008

Ambassadors of peace
AFS exchange students get life experience and work for justice

By KATHY GRAY
of The Dalles Chronicle

     It’s a familiar scene: A birthday party. Decorations. Cake. Friends and family.
     Over in a kitchen corner, a gaggle of girls clusters, chattering about anything — their day, their plans, their hopes and dreams.
     Close your eyes and let the conversation eddy around you and they could be any teenage girls, in any home, anywhere in Oregon. Listen more closely and the accents of Egypt, India and Ukraine emerge.
     These teenage girls have a secret identity.
     They are ambassadors of international peace.
     They are AFS exchange students.

AFS-USA (formerly the American Field Service) describes its mission this way: to work “toward a more just and peaceful world by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools and communities through a global volunteer partnership.” AFS is the second largest volunteer organization in the world. It was started by World War I and II ambulance drivers and has sent more than 325,000 young people on life-changing adventures around the world.

Youssra El Fiky of Egypt, Hina Saifi of India (whose birthday they celebrated this month), and Olga Tolmachova of Ukraine have come to The Dalles (along with Suad Rashid of Ghana, who attends Hood River Valley High School) to experience the American culture — and to share a bit of their own in the process.

All three are eager to talk about their experiences since they arrived in The Dalles last August and about the cultures of their homelands.

Prominent in their minds are the special things that have happened. The local group won a contest with their cultural presentations. The prize? A trip to Florida for a national conference with 44 other exchange students students from 21 countries.

“We went to a mosque, a church and a synagogue,” Olga says, then leaders of the three organizations answered questions for the group.

They also went to Disney World.

More important in their description of the trip were the friends they made and how hard it was to say goodbye.

“On our first day, a woman promised us that in five days we were going to cry,” says Hina, remembering how she scoffed at the notion. “On the fifth day, everybody was crying.”

Now, the girls have friends from around the world and stay in contact with them through Facebook, MySpace and e-mail.

A day after the birthday party, Youssra and her host family, Sue and Jerry Kindrick, sat down to talk about what it’s like being an AFS family.

Youssra came close to not turning in her application.

She also ran across opposition from her extended family.

“A lot of people didn’t want me to come here, from my family,” she says. Some of her uncles had a stereotype about the permissive United States and were worried about what risk it might present to Youssra.

“They say, ‘How are you going to send your daughter away for one year. You don’t know the family. She’s only 16 and a girl.’”

However, her parents encouraged the stay.

“My Dad said to me, ‘If you listen to people, you will not do anything in the future.’

‘‘[My parents] are my best friends. They trust me more than themselves. [My mother] wants me to be the best person in my life.”

The experience, Youssra hopes, will help her realize her dream of becoming a tour guide and traveling the world.

The Kindricks have long been involved with AFS. One of their two daughters traveled to Brazil for a home stay and they have hosted two students in the past. Youssra’s stay has been an opportunity to have another daughter in the household (they have two grown daughters) and to learn about a new culture from their own, personal ambassador.

“Youssra’s a great kid,” Sue says. “It’s a lot of fun being a host mom. It’s very interesting, too. She’s very vocal about her country and religion and beliefs. It’s good to learn and to know about other cultures.”

Cultural differences have resulted in a few small household changes, Sue notes. For example, Youssra’s Muslim faith means she doesn’t eat pork, so no bacon for breakfast.

The family also practiced the sunrise-to-sunset fast involved in Ramadan observance.

“We don’t eat or drink anything,” Youssra explains. “It lets us feel how the poor people feel — people who don’t have food or water.”
***
Youssra has also had some cultural learning experiences, particularly when she first arrived in the United States. On their way through Washington, D.C., some of the AFS students toured the White House.

“We saw a woman saying “No Israel, No Bush,’” she recalls. “I was surprised. In front of the White House and she was not afraid. The freedom was a big surprise.”

Youssra’s reception in the Mid-Columbia has been positive, she says, and Sue agrees.

“I’m surprised that she’s so popular,” Sue says. “Usually, in my past experience, exchange students are a little quieter. This one’s got friends with her all the time.”

Other exchange students are regular visitors. And after growing up with three younger brothers, Youssra has adopted Hina, a fellow Muslim, as her sister. The two lived together with a Lyle family for two months and have stayed close despite living in separate households in The Dalles.

The girls have dived into local activities, as well, pursuing their peacemaking duties. Sue helped Youssra and the other exchange students, including some from other programs, decorate a tree for the festival of trees.

“Each of the students did a part of the tree based on their own country’s traditions of Christmas or winter festival,” Sue explains. “I wrote in English on big, blue ornamental balls words like ‘peace,’ ‘unity’ and ‘friendship.’ Each of the kids took a ball, or two or three or four, and wrote the same word in their language, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Ukranian, Danish and the language of Ghana.”

Sue chuckled over one of the translations: “‘Unity’ in Danish is ‘fred.’”

Youssra’s head scarf is a prominent reminder of her religion and culture. Seldom seen locally, the traditional garb has drawn some attention. She tells serving at a senior meal program in Lyle and a man there, watching her with a stern look.

“I just smiled at him, and went to ask what he wanted,” Youssra recalls. The two talked for a time about her visit.

“After he was finished, he said, ‘Bye, see you later — I want to see you again!”
***
One of the AFS requirements is that students do presentations to as many groups as possible, as one way of promoting the AFS mission of peace and intercultural learning.

“Through those presentations, a lot of people know me,” Youssra says, telling a story about teaching a belly dancing class at a local church, then getting a hug later in a store from one of the participants. As she speaks, tears well in her eyes.

“We’re more emotional in my own country,” she said. Tears are quicker to surface.

“She’s in tears a lot,” Sue confirms with a smile, “in both happiness and sadness. If she’s really, really happy about something, you’d better have Kleenex handy.”

Jerry Kindrick joins the interview partway through. As Youssra’s host father, he says he has become closer to Youssra than to previous exchange guests.

Perhaps it is Youssra’s open, friendly and welcoming nature that promotes not only her friendly reception in the community, but her close ties with Jerry. She also has a very close relationship with her father at home in Cairo.

Jerry says he’s learned things about the Egyptian culture that he never knew before.

“I learned she is very careful about how she dresses around me,” he says, telling the story of accidentally encountering her while she wasn’t wearing her head scarf and the resulting embarrassment.

Youssra didn’t grow up wearing the head scarf, and when she was younger, her mother didn’t wear it either. It was Youssra’s choice to don the modest covering — a way of reflecting when she “found my religion.”

Now she says it is part of her personality.

“I am proud I am a Muslim,” she says firmly. “A lot of people know Muslims for their scarves. I love to wear it.”

Sue, too, has learned about Youssra’s culture and religion.

“I had questions about jihad,” Sue says. “The only way I had ever heard it used was to mean a holy war — an excuse for a lot of atrocities.”

Youssra explained that it means to strive, or to try.

“When you work very hard to change a wrong thing to a right thing, that’s jihad,” she says. “If you play a sport and try to be a good player, that’s jihad.”

Youssra says her life has been changed for the better through the AFS program.

“I don’t know how I can give a gift to AFS,” she says with passion. “It’s changed all my personality, the way I think, how I look through things. I wasn’t curious about the world, like I am nowadays.”

She enjoys being a peaceful ambassador of Egypt.

The Kindricks echo Youssra’s sentiments about the value of AFS.

“It gives us a reason to go to another country,” Jerry says. “We would have never went to Brazil if our daughter hadn’t been there.”

As the school year ticks away, Youssra knows that the end of her exchange stay will ultimately arrive. The thought brings those ever-present tears to the surface.

“I can’t believe I’m going to leave here, to leave Mom and Dad,” she says, also expressing distress about the prospect of leaving her fellow exchange students.

But she misses her family, too.

“I want to be in two places sometimes,” she says, “with my family there, and my family here.”

Though parting will be hard, Jerry offers a bright side: “You can look forward to a visit from us in Egypt.”