Personal Narrative: A Women's Refugee Experience

On Tuesday, March fifteenth I attended the Women's Refugee Experience. There we heard from the women refugees living in southwest Ohio. The women refugees at the event were from Bhutan, Burundi, Iraq and Syria. I enjoyed hearing about the experiences of the woman’s travels and their stories actually made me rather emotional. Although learning about their experiences there was one major conflict at the event which was the language barrier.
One does not choose to leave their home country, but is pushed out by others negligence. The refugee women were treated poorly by their governments. As a result the United States welcomes over 70,000 refugees per year. In the past year over 2,800 refugees have settled in Ohio. At the refugee experience event, I heard two of the 2,800 refugee stories.
During the refugee experience I learned about the experiences of two women from Bhutan. The first woman I spoke to was Jahga Acharya. Jahga started her journey to the United states in 2008. Jahga decided to leave her home country after the Bhutan government took her family's farm land. After the government took the land their government workers started to force Jahga and her family out of their home. Jahga traveled
I found it interesting what the women had to go through to get the the United States. I can not imagine leaning my country and walking 18-20 days to another country. Leaving most of my belongings and family behind. I also could not imagine the living conditions at the camp. Lastly it would be hard learning a new language. If I could change anything about the event I would wish that there was translators present. Although the women were learning english they still did not understand our questions and how to reply. I felt as if we could have learned more information about Jahga and Pabitra’s experiences than we did. Even though there was a language barrier I still enjoyed the event and would enjoy learning