Being Heard in Forgotten Places

The old adage "out of sight, out of mind" takes physical form in refugee detention centers. Behind soaring walls, heavy gates, and coils of sharp wire, asylum seekers are held indefinitely and reduced from people to identification numbers. Kept from the public eye, they slowly fade from public awareness. After all, how bad can it be if we cannot see it, and never hear about them?

That logic is built into one of our city's three detention centers. It sits far from the busy streets of the urban core, beyond the reach of public transit. Access is slow and cumbersome, granted only after long approvals, if it is granted at all. Even those backed by large organizations and their acronyms have little ability to reach the people held inside.

By design, it is a place where people are forgotten.

Within that population is one group considered especially sensitive, and among the hardest of all to reach. Just over a year ago, the thought of being with them inside that center, knowing their names, holding their stories, cheering them on, would have been unimaginable. And yet this year we celebrated 168 of these precious people as they completed an English program. Week by week, across months of lessons, connections formed, ideas were shared, and hopes were spoken aloud. People became known in a place meant to be unknowable.

With little access to support, or even news of the outside world, that steady presence became a lifeline. When someone fell ill, was transferred, or faced a new horror, presence was what met them in the moment. The people you would expect to hold the authority to enter could not be there. And so, inside the simple structure of an English lesson, real relationships were built, with the detainees, and with the staff and officials too. Because people matter, we were able to walk through doors that stay closed to others. In those conversations, others marvel at this kind of access, this ability simply to be present.

There were agreements, and curriculum, and planning sessions. But the true beauty of that classroom was hearing the stories, all the heartache and all the hope, of the people in it. The good came through listening, being present, and believing. As one writer put it, "being listened to feels so much like being loved that people can scarcely tell the difference." English is a powerful tool for asylum seekers. But the chance to be heard is the truest gift of being present in a forgotten place.