Karen widow in Oregonian

[Tara]

Refugee, Family Rebuild from Scratch
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/sharing/index.ssf/2008/11/refugee_family_rebuild_from_sc.html

Featured in Oregonian newspaper "Season of Sharing" holiday charity campaign; donations for Nu Way's family can be made at the www.oregonlive.com website.

If you can offer help to Nu Way and her family other than the holiday donations, you could try contacting IRCO:
http://www.irco.org/contact-us

Refugee, family rebuild from scratch
November 19, 2008 
Rob Finch / The Oregonian

Nu Way has lost nearly everything in her life. Yet she carries on, doing her best to make sure her children have a chance at a better life.

When she tells her story with the help of an interpreter, she cries and reaches for a box of tissue. Nothing has turned out the way she'd hoped. There are moments when she's scared. But she collects herself. She wants dry eyes before returning to the Southeast Portland apartment where she lives with her three children.

At 32, Nu Way has spent nearly half her life in a refugee camp in Thailand. She and her husband, Toe Toe, fled there from Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) because her husband was a soldier in the Karen rebel group, which made him a government target.

"We walked there on foot," she said. "We walked at night and rested during the day. It took nine months."

What did she leave behind?

"Land, farm, house, family and religion," she said. "But we were alive."

While in the camp, the couple had three children -- a boy, Toe Lwe Po, now 13, and two girls, Ta May Paw, 11, and Kaw Kay Paw, 7.

Last year, Nu Way's husband left the camp to look for work in Bangkok. About the same time, paperwork came through for the family to move to the United States.

Nu Way was unable to contact her husband. So she and the children went ahead. A refugee organization randomly sent them to Portland; plans were made to have Toe Toe follow.

Staffers at the nonprofit Immigration and Refugee Community Organization in Northeast Portland began teaching Nu Way English, as well as skills she can use to become a care provider -- the nonprofit's goal is to help refugees become self-sufficient. IRCO also found her a job as a hotel housekeeper.

Meanwhile, papers were filed to bring her husband, who'd returned to the refugee camp, to Portland. The couple spoke frequently on the telephone and planned a new start.

In June, Nu Way lost contact with her husband.

Friends in the refugee camp said he had disappeared. Authorities learned Toe Toe had left the camp with people he believed were rebels. They were, however, from the government. Toe Toe was killed.

Devastated, Nu Way was unable to work and lost her job. She and the children are getting by on food stamps and cash assistance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and she's applied for welfare in Oregon.

Her first instinct was to return to the refugee camp because she had a support group there. Her IRCO interpreter advised she stay because her children face a better future in Portland, where they are in school.

Nu Way said through the interpreter that she knows staying is the right choice. Staying, though, means she must rebuild her life.

"I am going to do my best," she said. "My son was crying the whole last night. He misses his father."