Journal Entry #3: Musa and Ann

In the title above are two people’s names, both connected through literacy, yet both very different from each other. Ann grew up in a small town in Ohio, she has traveled abroad with the peace-core, and recently found herself volunteering her time at the CLC. She seems to find a joy in the people she gets to know through tutoring and has a patience that reveals a high value she places on people in general.

Musa is a woman who has gain citizenship and has lived in the United States since 2004, but her heart belongs to Liberia, a place where her family and the majority of her children still reside. A place that has been war-struck and abandoned by many, yet Musa lives her life trying to make money simply to have her children with her…one day. She seems joyful and excited to be at the CLC, yet, she comes from a background where war and displacement are a normality.

Musa has nine children all together and only one is with her in the States. her husband works as a nurse’s aid and she cleans rooms. She has studied English for several years and has come a long way from when she first started in Skill Book One.

She seems emotional when she describes the day she got her citizenship, a day where she was so afraid her voice and hands were shaking and the people around her weren’t convinced it would ever happen.

Together Musa and Ann study and converse. Which seems simple, yet, a relationship has formed and a bond between two very different people has been become something that I think both of them will and have benefitted from in a big way.