Jobs

This is Dadi Nyopani. Only two weeks after resettling to Richmond, Virginia, one of his friends asked him for a favor. Dadi spoke English pretty well and the friend needed a translator for a conversation with a hiring manager. His friend got the job. But the recruiter also wanted a word with Dadi. Dadi couldn't believe it. He had just arrived and he wondered whether he was even qualified for the job. And he thought, okay, I'll try, I thought I was going to get a job and I was going to make money. That's all I had in my head. And I had some sort of relief that I was going to be able to help my family. But to be honest, I was just thinking, what would U.S. job would look like? What I was supposed to do and how do I interact with people? What would my role be? I didn't even know that I was going to wear a costume and dance. Dadi had been hired to stand on the side of the road with a sign, waving, dancing, and advertising in costume. Green whole body costume with the Liberty sign on the head, you know, the Liberty statue. The landmark that had once greeted immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, signaling the end of a long journey in the beginning of newfound freedoms. Well, Dadi ended up playing a caricature of this. Advertising tax filing. I mean, even though it was a winter time, it was December, early January, but it still, it was very warm clothes. It was quite hot. It was very heavy. I had a mixed feeling like, well, I couldn't speak to anybody. I didn't have no phone at that time. Dadi's shifts as the Statue of Liberty were three, sometimes four hours long. And most of the time, people would just drive by. But sometimes a few would slow down and ask what the sign was for. Maybe they treated me as a regular person there. They didn't know that I was a refugee or anything. Who just came in there and that was his first job, nobody knew it. They couldn't see my face and I was covered with the costume. Dadi had had good jobs before coming to the U.S. He worked in education, in research, and in journalism. But those types of jobs were hard to get as a newly arrived refugee. He said that he expected life in the U.S. would be easy. Easy to survive, easy to make money. Instead, he found quite the opposite. Within a few weeks of arrival, he was bearing the weight of the full-length green costume, quite isolated and bewildered by his new environment. And Dadi's mind was swirling with all sorts of thoughts. I was thinking about what I am, what I'm doing, what I'm supposed to do next in the future, looking around the buildings, and never seen that many cars before. I was not used to it with the U.S. system, how the job system, education system, trying to compare what they told us while we were back in refugee camp, how U.S. would look like, and how our life would be in the U.S. versus facing the reality on the road with a costume. I mean, I had all sorts of feelings and it was bizarre, you know. Hi, I'm Ahmad Badar. We're listening to Resettled. We tell the stories of refugees resettling in Virginia and the milestone moments that shape their experience. In this episode, we're talking about what it takes to get that first job after arrival, and what it takes to build a career. This came up in our first episode on Arrival, because getting a job is one of the most important things that a refugee needs to tackle in the first 90 days of resettlement. Like I said, we're going to talk about what your short-term goals are going to be, so anything from one to three years. That's Siyasha Faltz from the International Rescue Committee. Along with Steven Allen and Zina Abaka, Siyasha was one of the people that helped receive the Lapai family from our first episode. Taking care of the responsibilities here in the United States has to follow both of you, so you have to be involved in everything I teach today. And really, we're there to help families until they're able to help themselves, but we're definitely pushing them. Honestly, from the moment we pick them up at the airport, we're talking about work. And that sense of urgency is because the resettlement process is all about building self-sufficiency. The general expectation is that refugees should be ready to take any opportunity that comes their way, and should commit to a long process of picking themselves up by their bootstraps. The problem is, when you come to the US, you're given an entirely new pair of boots, metaphorically speaking. And refugees do get some help. The State Department's Reception and Placement Program gives a small sum of money per refugee upon arrival. And there are programs to assist with job placements through organizations like the IRC. But when Dadi arrived in Richmond almost a decade ago, he didn't get any career guidance. He felt like he was completely on his own. And refugees like Dadi have to start over, regardless of their previous education or work experience. In a new country with new customs and new language, Dadi had to figure out how to get from a job dancing in costume and into a long-term career, one he could be proud of. Our executive producer, Angela Messino, picks up the story here. For Dadi, starting from scratch was a tough pill to swallow. But honestly, for the first few couple of years, it was very hard. It was traumatic. There were days when I was frustrated. I was depressed. I can't imagine what it's like, I guess, to move to a new environment and maybe not speak the language or maybe have no previous experience, but then to also be expected to have a six-month plan for your career or for your education, you know, like wanting to understand where you are first and just orient yourself and orient your family to your new environment before you start thinking about what you'd like to accomplish in the next year to five years. Dadi wanted to be able to pay his rent and have enough left over to send money to family in Bhutan. But for the first few months, he only had a part-time, minimum-wage job, expenses piled up. You know, you're overwhelmed with all kind of responsibility around you. And behind all of this is the frustration that everything you did in your home country, your professional life, up until resettlement, it doesn't count. That's something that a lot of refugees struggle with. Yeah, I was a teacher in Nepal and India, I was a news reporter, I was a community organizer, I was a research assistant, I was a college student, I was a community advocate, everything. So when it comes to their employment, they want to work right away. But then also there is that learning curve, there is that initial intimidation. There is sometimes, you know, some client resistance, especially if they come from higher in jobs when they're coming to the United States. Sometimes people want to return to their field, but just frame in the bigger picture that these are immediate needs that you have for your family to be self-sufficient. Dadi spent a big part of his life stateless. That is, without a home country to claim him. Dadi is originally from Bhutan, a small kingdom nestled between Tibet and India, within the Himalayan mountains. And then in the 1980s, the government of Bhutan came up with a discriminatory one nation one people policy. Bhutan had been a multi-ethnic country. But now Bhutanese people would have to follow one language, the national dress, one religion. Dadi's community would be stripped of its customs and way of life. In our elders, they demanded the government of Bhutan to be allowed the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of everything. They demonstrated, and the peaceful demonstration was dispersed by using army, tortured, raped, killing, violence, and a lot of people were jailed, tortured, and houses were burned. And people were left with no choice, were told to leave the country, and that's how we ended up being refugees. Bhutan refused to repatriate any of the refugees, and, in neighboring Nepal, where many fled, they denied them citizenship. This made Dadi stateless. During the early 1990s, approximately 80,000 Bhutanese refugees resettled in camps in southeastern Nepal, set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. It's the UN agency responsible for overseeing displaced persons. Dadi was four years old when his family arrived at one of these camps on the outskirts of the jungle, with no claim to any country. When he got older, Dadi worked at his camps by monthly newspaper. He was assigned story after story for three years, working his way up the ranks. He was even recognized for his reporting by the Bhutan Press Union. That's for a one, Dadi's oldest son. But the next year, he got a tough story. There were rumblings about an international agreement to resettle refugees in countries like the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Dadi's editor sent him to all seven Bhutanese refugee camps to see what people thought. And I was like, "Okay." And I went to the field, I talked to a lot of people, I interviewed them. Back then I did not have a recorder like you. I had a pen and a notebook, and all I had to do was talk to them and write it down, everything. So fast writer. So I took almost a month and investigated and wrote a nice investigative story. Dadi's story ended up being highly controversial, even dangerous. He received death threats from certain factions in the camp who were determined to go back to Bhutan. They thought his story was political and supported resettling refugees in western countries. They didn't want to go to any other country, they just wanted to go home. But that option wasn't available. People were angry, people were confused, people were mad, all sort of things were going on. It got so bad, UNHCR offered to pay for Dadi to live outside of the camp while the backlash subsided. Bhutanese BPU appreciates your selfless, selfless stylist and invaluable contribution in the field of journalism. When he got to Richmond, Dadi couldn't believe that none of that experience, his teaching job, his community organizing or his reporting seemed to count for anything. I had to restart from the beginning, very, very intruable job. It was very hard to process that. Before the break, we were hearing from Dadi Niopani and his effort to rebuild his career from scratch. He knew he had to push forward, but he wasn't quite sure how or in what direction. Here's Angela. Most of the time, the story of someone's job hustle can sound pretty typical. It's grueling with a lot of setbacks and dry spells and it just takes time. In Dadi's first job, he was dressed as the Statue of Liberty. When he got that job, Dadi hadn't even seen a lawnmower before. He imagined doing some gardening or watering plants. Instead, he was operating heavy machinery all day. Many refugees get stuck in entry-level jobs because they don't have the credentials. That is credentials recognized by U.S. employers, like specialized training or higher degrees or the language skills. The IRC connects refugees with a career development specialist. This person helps address the issue of resettled refugees getting stuck in these entry-level positions. The specialist provides personal career counseling with the specific goal of finding the client a job, either within their previous field or in a new one. It's a long-term process that can involve vocational training, developing networking skills and technical skills, making the client competitive against other candidates. But even with this specialized help, it's still really difficult to get hired in the area you're looking for. Last year, the IRC in Richmond worked with 45 career development clients. Only six landed a job in their desired field. Dadi wasn't resettled through the IRC, so this help wasn't an option for him. Working for the long-care company was a low point for Dadi. His wife Deal was pregnant with their second son, so the pressure to work was very real. And Dadi worked all day. He couldn't even find time to register for community college classes to get those credentials he needed. So, Deal took charge. She found the local community college and signed Dadi up for his first course. He would work during the day and go to school at night, which might sound like a pretty familiar American story. After the nursing home, he started serving food in the hospital. As an operating technician, Dadi disinfected the room and prepared the equipment for the next day's procedure. He began building strong connections with the hospital staff and his bosses, and he started taking classes at Virginia Commonwealth University. He'd reach out to professors to discuss his career goals. They became his mentors. I guess I was starting to have a feeling that I'm moving upward a little bit. Dadi was finding a support system. He just had to create it on his own. But I hadn't visioned what I was going to be. At the hospital, Dadi would interact with nurses and doctors with their lab coats and manila files and medical jargon, and he thought, "If they could get higher degrees, why can't I?" As a full-time employee at the hospital, Dadi could apply for tuition assistance. Eventually, he saved up enough to start taking classes towards a bachelor's degree. Again, when he wasn't working, he was at school. And with classes at college, came internships. Dadi started to feel more and more connected to the community. Then I started having exposure with these different kind of people, a lot of colleagues, fellow students, and then learn from them and see where they come from, what kind of job they would like to do, being able to travel to downtown Richmond every single day, go around the capital building and see people how they work there. After five years of hustling at work and at school, Dadi got promoted to supervisor at St. Mary's Hospital, leading a team of 14 operating technicians. He started to feel a sense of pride. I kind of felt excited and then believed on my own ability, and I thought, "Okay, well, this is a point where I am gaining a lot more confidence and also liberating myself from the entire bottom into a level job. I could at least learn something, how to manage people in the U.S., how to interact with the high-level executives, bosses, and get hands on knowledge on how to be a leader in the U.S. and a real leader, a paid leader." I had that opportunity once I started leading my group, my team, daily basis, and constructing that team from scratch to one of the top team in the department. In 2015, Dadi received the highest honor for any employee in the regional hospital system, the Dedicated Service Award. Dadi was invited to a fancy banquet. It was the first time he stayed in a hotel. He felt like he had made it into this new circle of professionalism. There was a turning point, too, where I get an opportunity to meet with high-level executives and the CEOs and the top person in the health system. But Dadi still felt like he was capable of more. He wanted to get a position to better help his community so other refugees didn't feel like he did, like they had to go through it alone. He made a plan to get his master's degree in social work. Dadi was used to working hard, but his wife, Dil, began to see the stress weigh on him. I asked him to quit the job because it's too much for the full-time school and the work. He refused to quit the job. The memory of struggling to make ends meet was still too fresh for Dadi. His sons were in elementary school and wanted to join clubs. He had a mortgage to pay and was still sending money home to his family in Bhutan. But deal was right. In late spring 2016, Dadi was finishing up his bachelor's degree and because he was working so hard, he didn't get enough sleep. He came down with a high fever and ended up spending ten days in the hospital. I said, "If something happens to you, it's going to really hurt for me to live with two kids." Dadi wanted to get his master's degree to be an example for his community and his sons. But Dil argued he needed to be around so they could learn from that example. So, Dadi cut down hours and his work scheduled to finish his bachelor's. When he considered the demands of a master's degree, he realized Dil was right. It would be too much to juggle. Dil took on more shifts to make up for any lost income. Dadi quit his job. In 2019, a few weeks before Dadi graduated with his master's and social work, I caught up with him and his family before dinner time. Their home is tucked in a quiet suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Richmond. I came over for what I thought would be a quick interview, which led to Dadi and Dil insisting I stay for dinner. Before dinner got started, Dadi's oldest son, Ruan, asked if he could give the mic a try. Hi, my name is Ruan and I'm going to ask my dad some questions. I do know that my dad had like a lot of brothers and sisters and he's the youngest one and I'm pretty sure he's the only one who's ever went to college or university. His first question was about what his dad would do if Bhutan ever allowed him to go home. I would first go to my village and find the house where I was born. I'm dying to see my country. I'm dying to see my friends and families who live over there. I want to see how the rivers are. I want to see how the mountains are. I want to see how the village looks like. I want to eat the rice that was planted in my country. Ruan has always been curious about Bhutan. Dadi makes it a point to share with him both the happy memories of the farm and the mountains and the ways grandmother would squeeze oil from mustard seeds. But he shares the tough memories too. When we get evicted from our country, we lose our farms, we lose our kettles, we lose our money, you know. We had a property worth of hundreds and thousands of dollars but we lost everything. Half of my families are still in my country. We haven't met for 30 years, 31 years now physically and we cannot see each other in the government and Bhutan doesn't allow us to go and see them even now, so I wish the government would allow us to go see our family. Dadi wants nothing more than to share his accomplishments with his family back in Bhutan. He especially wanted to celebrate with someone in his family who he didn't really get the chance to know, his own dad. When his dad died in a mountain accident, Dadi was only a few months old. Rewan nudged his father to reflect on what it would be like if he hadn't passed. So if he was still alive, it would be a big impact in your life. I wish I had a dad, she had comes out of my eyes, I don't know how I would feel, I don't really know how it feels like to have a dad. How does it feel like for you to have a dad? Lucky, if you can meet anyone in the world like your dad, what would you say to him also? I would say that I have worked very hard all of my life and I wish you are happy with my achievement. You can also say that I miss you a lot. Dadi did work hard, very, very hard. He and Deal sacrificed a lot for the lives they have now. While Dadi can't share his pride with his father, he can share it with his wife and his sons. Hi, today is Friday, April 19th, and it's 3.13pm, and I am at my home. I have my son, little boy, what is your name? Ronit. And my older boy, Rewan, and we're talking about my graduation and this guy knows that I have been working a hard work, doing a hard work for a long time. So how do you feel, Ronit, about my graduation? It's finally great that you've achieved your goal. Wow. Yeah, we are walking down the stairs to the commencement hall. I feel like I'm so close to the peak. I'm so close to get it. I have my degree. Dadi, near party! Once Dadi graduated, he went back to St. Mary's and applied for a job, this time as a care manager. Give me a chance and to prove them that I could do it. In this role, he helps patients get back on their feet by creating plans and connecting them with services to ensure they have a successful recovery. It's a social worker as much as I can, and at least on part, a little bit, to navigate the challenges the local community, especially our patient population face, and work with the physicians and nurses in the hospital administration. In so many ways, Dadi's job journey is a success story. He did what was asked of him. He worked whatever jobs came his way. He sacrificed his nights to school, earned his credentials, and became self-sufficient. During this time, Dadi also became a citizen. I feel very privileged and very fortunate to be able to work here in the United States legally without having a fear in your heart. Dadi can now claim a country and a career, but for now, he can't do the one thing he wants to do most. He's not able to legally set foot in Bhutan. Still, your heart meets your motherland, your place where you're born. You miss your place where your relatives are, you know. It's always that you'll be missing your country. This week on Resettled, we'll focus on culture and how to carry it with you when resettling in Virginia. We'll meet Chef Nouri, who believes so strongly in his Afghani culinary traditions that he bet his livelihood on it. Resettled is produced by Jilda DeCarly and edited by Kelly Jones. Our production manager is Gavin Wright. Our executive producer is Angela Messino. Steve Humble is VPM's chief content officer. And I'm your host, Ahmed Badar. Special thanks to Catherine Komp, Zarmina Wahidi, and Yasmin Juma, and thanks to Curtis Schaefer, who helped with research. Make is by Sandhill and Blue Dot Sessions. Be sure to check out vpm.org/resettled to see more photos and stories from our community. If you enjoy this episode, please do subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Members are a fundamental part of VPM. Member support is especially vital right now. Through member support, we're able to provide timely and fact-based information, educational resources for our kids, and informative and entertaining content to keep minds active and engaged. Be a part of what makes VPM possible. Visit vpm.org/donate to become a member today. [BLANK_AUDIO]