ELK RAPIDS, Mich. — Not long after Hefzur Rahman enrolled at his new school in Michigan three years ago, his fifth-grade class studied the subhuman conditions that enslaved Africans endured in overcrowded ships bound for North America .

He knew what it was like to be on a boat in fear for his life, he told his classmate s.

At the age of 11 , he had joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing violent oppression in Myanmar, cramming onto boats piloted by smugglers. The men beat their human cargo, he recalled, and he watched desperate people drink seawater only to die of dehydration. As his boat began to sink, Hefzur tied empty water bottles around his waist and jumped into the ocean. “I thought I would pass away,” he said.

Today, Hefzur is safe, living with a foster family in small-town Michigan, where most of the boats that ply nearby Elk Lake are filled with families headed for sunny afternoons on the water.

But he stays up at night worrying about his parents, who put him on the boat leaving Myanmar not just to save his life, but also in the hope that he would help get the rest of the family out . They are still counting on him. “I feel like I am in jail,” he told his foster mother, anxious that he was spending too much time at school. “I want to work. I must send money to my family. ”