I’ve enjoyed my online silence, which did indeed make me more productive, but this piece jolted me back into the game…
In 2009, the Christian Science Monitor ran an award-winning year-long series, “Little Bill Clinton,” about nine-year-old Bill Clinton Hadam, a newly arrived refugee in Atlanta, and the charter school and community that became his home. The whole series — a multi-platform project that included daily blogs, regular videos and monthly print stories, and took a huge commitment by the writer and her editors — is worth an extended look, but I point it out today because journalist Mary Wiltenburg recently posted updates about the family — seriously heart-warming stuff — and about a family member still stuck as a refugee in Tanzania.
Mary’s portrait of Neema John’s life in Tanzania captured Monitor readers’, who wonder what has happened to the now 22-year-old who’s been in refugee resettlement limbo for ages. Turns out she’s trying to make it through the red tape of new US refugee resettlement rules, which require a DNA test to prove the relation you claim on paper.
It should be straightforward — and Neema and her family thought it would be — but nothing that involves relocation ever is, and Neema’s limbo continues…
Meanwhile, Neema’s family in the US is making the most of its new life — and Little Bill Clinton is basically training for the Olympics. Seriously. If you want a warm-fuzzy story for the holidays, and even the greatest cynics among us must want a little break from all that jadedness at this coercively jolly time of year, this is it. Check it out.
