9/10/2007 - New faces from abroad
Exchange students bring different cultural perspectives to gorge
by ED COX
The Chronicle
As usual, the latest crop of American Field Service students brings us friendly, unfamiliar faces. This year, however, they’re from unaccustomed places. Of five AFS students staying in the Mid-Columbia region, two hail from Muslim Africa, one from India, and two from Europe, including a former Soviet republic.
In the past, says host family coordinator Rymmel Lovell, most students have come from western Europe, east Asia, and South America. In particular, having Muslim students from Africa and India and a student from eastern Europe is new.
While families choose the students, the opportunity to draw from new countries of origin comes through two fairly recent U.S. government scholarship programs: the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) program and the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program.
YES was started by the State Department after Sept. 11 to “build bridges of understanding between Americans and people in countries with significant Muslim populations.”
Those include Egypt, India and Ghana, the respective home countries of Youssra El-Fiky, Hina Saifi and Suad Rashid. El-Fiky and Saifi are attending Lyle High School as juniors, while Rashid is a senior at Hood River Valley High School.
El-Fiky and Saifi, both living with the same Dallesport family and both from large metropolises — Cairo and New Delhi, respectively — harbor similar first impressions of Dallesport.
“It’s good; it’s calm” says Saifi. El-Fiky likes it because it’s quiet and because she can boat on the river and see horses.
Both speak glowingly of their first week at Lyle High School, with Saifi especially appreciating the audiovisual entertainment that teachers integrate into their classes. El-Fiky, a practicing Muslim, has been allowed to wear her headscarf and — since her religion dictates no bare legs — pants under her shorts in P.E. class.
For El-Fiky, an aspiring reporter, it’s the first time out of her country. She’s motivated by a desire to learn new things and expand people’s images of Muslim women to include someone like her. She loves technology and other cultures.
Saifi, nicknamed “Lucky” because of a birthmark, has been to the
U.S. before on a State Department “microscholarship” to the Intrax Institute in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. She wanted to return because of the friendliness of the people, she says, recalling a Chicago woman who drove her directly to her host home once when she was lost.
Rashid, an aspiring medical student who is in the U.S. for the first time, says American food is “very, very different.” Rice, potatoes and pasta are the only dishes shared with Ghana, she says, while broccoli, “some kinds of leaves you eat” and local fruits are all new to her.
Another scholarship program, FLEX originated in the FREEDOM Support Act sponsored by U.S. Senator Bill Bradley and passed by Congress in 1992. It provides study-abroad scholarships to students from the countries of the former Soviet Union.
The largest of those, apart from Russia, is the Ukraine, home to Olga Tolmachova, who is spending this year as a junior at The Dalles Wahtonka High School. That is the host school for the fifth student, Rune Sorensen of Denmark, as well.
Tolmachova remarks at the friendliness of locals and says she is really impressed with the natural beauty of the region.
“It looks like it should be a national park, but there are people living here,” she says.
Still, she is not accustomed to so much driving. “On the streets, you see just cars and houses, no people,” she notes.
Sorensen shares that observation. “People have four cars,” he says, marveling at their proliferation.
Both Tolmachova and Sorensen are pleased with school, though they find differences in school-day mechanics — including block schedules and having to move from classroom to classroom — challenging.
“It can be a bit confusing when you get your schedule,” Sorensen says.
Lovell encourages people to get involved with AFS and support the organization by buying grapefruit and oranges in its October-November fundraiser.
Still, she says, “We don’t always need money. Sometimes we just need people doing things with people.”
That could mean inviting a student to an event or volunteering to be an “Aunt and Uncle family,” which commits to befriending a student and having at least monthly contact with him or her.
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