Bellevue Adult Education Center
2221 Main Street
Bellevue, NE 68005
Phone (402) 293-5026

Our Experience With T!LC Young Sudanese Men
By Susan Tabler

Our young Sudanese men arrived in the summer of 2001. They came to our program with big dreams of entering professions in medicine, law, accounting, and the clergy. We arranged for them to register on a day we had no other students. None of us will forge them sitting at our tables two by two, each sporting a red Nebraska baseball cap, a gift from their sponsoring church. They were obviously terrified and horribly self-conscious. Academically, they had received a huge head start in Kenya. They have amazing vocabularies. For example, one young man showed me a passage he was reading with two seemingly contradictory points, and he asked me to please explain the "discrepancy." However, learning like Americans do is very different and it has produced its share of frustration for both students and teachers. Our school gives instruction one on one and depends on a lot of independent study. Our students are expected to ask for assistance when they don't understand something. We did not realize the Sudanese wouldn't ask for help and would stay up past midnight to complete homework we had intended to last them a week. Then one of the more articulate students explained to us why they didn't. They were used to being taught by lecture. By the time the Kenyan teachers turned them loose with written work, they were expected to know the information and to do the work as quickly as possible without asking for help. Technology is fascinating to them. When told that the calculator that they must use for the GED high school equivalency test does the order of operations for them they couldn't believe it. "How does it know?" They wondered. Another problem arose because they wouldn't read directions. It could be they were not taught to read directions or it could be the typical "guy thing" of not reading directions until you're in deep trouble. Anyway, we had to impress on them that those words at the top of the page were the key to their success. Also, the two or three pages of reading prior to the exercise have everything to do with the right answers to the questions. Finally, the higher order thinking skills that are required for the new GED are typically American and not taught in other countries. The Sudanese are amazingly quick to catch on considering the totally alien concepts they have been asked to work through. Two already have their GEDs and have gone on to college. Several more have one or two of the five tests out of the way. Typically, ESL students must study three or more years before even considering a GED.

We have also concentrated on more than academic skills. Between our school and their sponsoring church, the young men have received much instruction, formal and informal, on Americanisms. Their mentors from the church have impressed on them the peculiar American insistence on being on time for appointments. Other Sudanese groups we've had in the past hold the view that things happen in the fullness of time. These current students begin to pace the floor ten minutes before they are to be picked up and get beside themselves if their ride is late. They also need to deal with female authority figures-or at least female equals. We had a Thanksgiving potluck and they went through two female teachers and a female volunteer trying to get someone to fix their plate, and they still had to get their own food. Speaking of potluck, we cooked a turkey and all the trimmings for them. They loved it, especially the sage dressing.

Another American experience was cold weather. In the fall, when the temperatures fell to the 50's, the Sudanese came in heavy winter coats and thick gloves and still they shivered. When the first microscopic snow grains fell, they excitedly made me go outside to look saying, "Is that not snow?" Now, that they have experienced several months of winter, they have become typical American teenagers in that you couldn't pay them to wear a coat. As Billy Crystal's character Fernando once said, "It is better to look good than to feel good." They love opportunities to dress up in their finest attire. We recently took a group student photograph that will be a gift to our volunteers. The Sudanese came dressed in their Sunday best ready to pose-and pose they did. One young man has apparently studied GQ because he struck a pose reminiscent of one of their models. They also brought their own cameras to capture the moment for themselves.

All in all, our young Sudanese men are assimilating rapidly. Our school would like to take a big chunk of the credit for that, but I think their host church deserves much of the credit. Although they live independently and have jobs, the church has given each young man a mentor family who has adopted him as their own. They care about his health, education, and adaptation into American culture. And, when their young man succeeds, there is no one more proud than his mentor family. Do you notice I have never once called them "lost boys"? From their lofty goals and determined spirit to the mentoring families who love them, they are not lost, but a delightful find for all who come in contact with them.