Algernon D'Ammassa

Headlight Staff

DEMING – Amid boxes packed for the impending move to the new high school, students and a few other onlookers gathered in the library of the Deming High School Hofacket Campus at 1400 S. Iron St. twice this week for successful video conversations with teenage refugees sheltering in Iraq and Uganda.

Last year, preparations for a Skype session with teenage refugees in Sudan fell through due to internet connectivity problems, but AP Language Arts students still benefited from a talk by Deming filmmaker Terry Nickelson, who has lived in Africa and documented genocide and humanitarian crises across the continent and in the middle-east.

Nickelson was on hand again this week, documenting the exchange between Deming high school students and their peers across the world, and sharing his first-hand observations from refugee zones.

On Tuesday morning, a self-selected group of juniors and seniors participated in a Skype conference with refugees at a school in Iraqi Kurdistan. On Wednesday morning, students met a group of students from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who were reached at the Panyadoli Self-Help Secondary School in Uganda.

“We thought their conversations would be geopolitical in nature,” said Nickelson. “On Tuesday, the kids on both sides took over the whole event within five minutes. They talked about music, dancing, food. It was not what we expected – it was better. They hijacked the whole thing.” Students treated one another to demonstrations of dance and samples of favorite music.

“The refugee students in Iraq all had smart phones and seemed to be more connected to Western culture,” said Library Media Specialist Teresa Ortiz, who facilitated the Skype interactions. “They just talked to each other like teenagers, and we allowed that rapport to develop.”

On Wednesday, the interaction was more subdued, in part due to frequent interruptions of the Skype connection, but students laughed, waving to each other on shared screens. There were comparisons of spicy foods, including a challenge to a young African gourmand to try some red enchiladas in Deming. At one point, a student held a microphone up to a cell phone to share a sample of electronic music. A girl from South Sudan sang for the Deming students, and in response, student Adam Lindberg played guitar for them.

In addition, the African students shared stories of frequent migration, fleeing violence across multiple countries, exposed to battlefield scenes as well as rape, torture, and varying conditions in refugee encampments, in detail that left many in the room in tears.

After the farewells on Wednesday, Nickelson debriefed the Deming students on what reality awaited the African students after they hung up. “Where they live right now looks like long rows of hundreds, even thousands of blue tents, behind fences. My experience when I have visited these places is of kids running up to grab and touch me, wanting any diversion from the tedium and boredom of life as a refugee. It is unlikely that any of them will go back to their homes. A refugee has no home or country.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” observed Nickelson after the Wednesday session had closed. “There is no other place these students can go to find out what similar experiences other students had, because this is a pilot program. This is part of our learning experience, and we are learning from this as well.”

Ortiz intends to document the project on the Deming High School Library Services website, http://dhslibraryservices.weebly.com/. Both she and Nickelson, who works with the organization Our Humanity in the Balance, intend to continue these exchanges. “The students and the adults involved have expressed a desire to continue this. There is a great interest on all fronts – on that side of the world as well as here.”

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-546-2611 (ext. 2608) or adammassa@demingheadlight.com.