GONZALEZ: Imagine you’re a single mom of 8 kids. Hard enough, right? Now imagine, you’ve lived through war. And, now, you and your 8 kids are sent to live in a new country on the other side of the world. I’m Ana Gonzalez.

NUNES: I’m Alex Nunes. And this is Mosaic.

GONZALEZ: It’s April, the weekend before Easter. And I’m in the pews of St Vartanantz, an Orthodox Armenian church in Providence. It’s my first time in an Armenian church. St. Vartanantz has domed ceilings painted to look like a beautiful summer sky. There’s a neon cross in the center of the wall, over the altar. Off to the side, there’s a small baptismal fount. It’s getting filled with water. That’s the sound you’re hearing.  

GONZALEZ: After everyone finds a spot in a pew, Reverend Kapriel Nazarian comes to greet us.

NAZARIAN: Welcome, everybody. This is a very, very special day.

GONZALEZ: There are about 30 other people here, all Armenian. That is, except for the group of 8 kids in the first 2 pews. You can’t miss them. They’re right in the center. And they stick out because they’re African, and they’re in a sea of white, Armenian churchgoers. They’re siblings from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Refugees.

NAZARIAN: All of our friends are going to become a part of God’s family today. And that’s what it is in baptism: we become a part of God’s family. That universal family that goes back to our Lord Jesus.

GONZALEZ: In today’s show, we hear how a community of immigrants with their own tragic history is helping these present-day refugees find their way to an American dream. St. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic church is nestled between Broadway and Armenia Street in Providence’s West End.

NUNES: Even though the neighborhood has turned into more of a hipster hangout today, there’s a lot of history in those blocks.  

GONZALEZ: Yeah, so many different immigrant groups have called the West End home over the years. You can see it in the architecture.

NUNES: The building St. Vartanantz uses was originally an Episcopal church, built in 1890. But the Armenian community took it over in 1940 to accommodate the growing Armenian population.

GONZALEZ: Yeah it was the second Armenian orthodox church in Providence. The first is up by Smith Hill. That’s where the majority of Armenians settled when they first came to the US at the turn of the 20th century during and after the Armenian genocide.

NUNES: To give you a very simple history, the Armenian genocide was this horrible 2-year period from 1915-1917 when the Ottoman Empire tried to extinguish the Armenian community because of their Christian faith. 1.5 million people were killed, and countless more were forced to flee.

GONZALEZ: And this was before the word “genocide” existed and before the term “refugee” was used to describe an immigration status. But the Armenians who settled in Rhode Island were refugees.

NUNES: In the 100 plus years since the genocide, Armenian-Americans have established themselves in Rhode Island and the United States in general.

MANOOG: It's hard to believe that some of the best legislators came off that street. 

GONZALEZ: That’s Manoog Kaprielian. He’s a staple of the Armenian community in Providence. He’s talking about what he calls “the original community” of Armenians up on Douglas Avenue in Smith Hill.

MANOOG: We had people that didn't know the one word of English language, but became the chief justice of the Rhode Island Family Court.

NUNES: But, obviously, getting to that point is a process. It takes generations of families and community to create stability and wealth.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, and those first years after someone immigrates to the United States are particularly difficult because it’s an entirely new world, and they’re usually realizing that America isn’t what they thought it would be.

CLEMENT: Sometimes we're watching the movie for the United States. As you can see this is the life for United States.

GONZALEZ: This is Clement. He’s 20 and the oldest of those 8 kids in St Vartanantz. I’m sitting with him and his mom, Pichuna, in their apartment on the South Side of Providence. 

CLEMENT: Because if you see the 50 Cent, the Lil Wayne, sometime you would move the Van Damme. You know Vann Damme? Chris Brown, something like that. The super star for this country. So this is the life for United States.

NUNES: So, Jean Claude Van Damme, 50 Cent, and Lil Wayne are Clement’s ideas of classic Americans before he gets here.

GONZALEZ: But, he’s finding out that the American life in the movies and music videos he and siblings love isn’t the life he gets to lead.

CLEMENT: I don't think many thing of the future. But for this time, I think about my school because I want to start a school to finish my school. This is my project, the first project I have. And every day I pray to God to help me for school. This is my future, I think every day.

GONZALEZ: But Clement can’t go to college because he hasn’t been able to get a green card.

NUNES: And you need a green card to get federal financial aid.

GONZALEZ: So, he got a job washing dishes in Cranston instead. It helps his mom pay the bills refugee resettlement agencies won’t cover. She’s working, too.

PICHUNA: Speaking in Swahili.

WINIFRED: So she works as a housekeeper in a hotel

GONZALEZ: This is Pichuna, Clement’s mom, speaking to me through an interpreter named Winifred.

WINIFRED: She's not going to serve her children breakfast. She just prepares everything because she has to leave at 5:00 in the morning.

GONZALEZ: Pichuna takes 3 buses to get to work in Newport. It takes 2 hours each way.

GONZALEZ: Which hotel in Newport?

PICHUNA: Chanler Hotel, Chanler hotel.

NUNES: The Chanler hotel is one of the fanciest places in Newport, by the way.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, and Pichuna works there all day and then comes home to cook for 8 kids.

NUNES: But, just to be clear, the family is getting help from resettlement agencies, right? They weren’t just plopped in the middle of a foreign country to fend for themselves.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, absolutely. They have case managers at Dorcas International, and they’re getting additional support from the Armenian community.

NUNES: Ok, yeah, can we talk about that? How does a family of 9 Congolese refugees end up in an Orthodox Armenian church? So, how does this family wind up getting baptized there?

GONZALEZ: Ok, to understand that, we need to go back about 40 years, to a small village in the Democractic Republic of Congo.

PICHUNA: Speaking in Swahili

CLEMENT: She's born in Uvira.

GONZALEZ: Uvira is on the east side of DRC Congo. Pichuna lives there with her family until she’s 17 and gets married. She goes to live with her husband’s family in another town. She has two sons, almost immediately. Then, the war starts.

WINIFRED: So it was a civil war with many different factions…

GONZALEZ: Again, that’s Winifred, Pichuna’s interpreter.

WINIFRED: Her husband then left her when the war had started.

GONZALEZ: Her husband goes to fight in the war. Pichuna lives with her father-in-law. She comes back from the market one day and sees him being killed by rebel soldiers.

WINIFRED: They took her. They captured her.

GONZALEZ: Pichuna is crying as she retells this next part.

WINIFRED: So the "soldiers," quotes, took her and wounded her with a knife. Stabbing her in her upper leg.

GONZALEZ: They let her go. But she’s all alone. Her husband’s still fighting, and her only family has been killed. S,o she takes her two babies, straps one to her front and the other to her back. She walks and walks. 6 miles on a wounded leg. Until she comes across another woman.

WINIFRED: And she explained to this woman that she did not know where she was going that she had seen a person killed in front of her own eyes and she was travelling fleeing a war zone. And so the woman said, "Well, come and stay with me."

GONZALEZ: They stay together for 2 weeks. Pichuna heals. But then, it becomes clear that this village in the Congo isn’t safe from the war, either. So, Pichuna and this woman cross the nearby lake into Burundi. It’s the year 2000. Pichuna never went back to the Congo.

NUNES: So, what happens after that? Does she start trying to come to the US?

GONZALEZ: It’s kind of unclear, but the first thing Pichuna does is register herself and her sons as refugees with the U.N.

NUNES: And do they settle them in a refugee camp?

GONZALEZ: No, she starts working, selling vegetables at a market. She’s self-reliant, taking care of her babies with some help from new friends. Pichuna lives like this for months and months. Until, one day, she’s at the market, and somebody recognizes her and says: “I know you, and I know your husband, and he’s here, in Burundi. I’m gonna go get him.”

NUNES: What? Her husband who was fighting in the war? He’s alive and in the same town, in another country, as Pichuna?

GONZALEZ: Yeah, I ask how Pichuna felt in this crazy moment. Like was she mad? Elated? But she’s very matter of fact. She says that the person brings her husband to her, and they start living together again.

NUNES: Wow. Is he a refugee too?

GONZALEZ: At this point, I don’t think so. It’s confusing. Pichuna tries to get him added to her case with the UN, but they tell her that the deadline to add a spouse has passed.

NUNES: So what do they do?

GONZALEZ: Nothing. It doesn’t affect their daily life. At that point, anyway. It becomes important later. They’re living in an apartment. Pichuna keeps selling vegetables. And her husband is a skilled tailor, so they’re able to make ends meet. And they live like this in Burundi for 15 years. They have 6 more kids: so now there’s Clement, Armand, Henri, Claudine, Ketia, Gigi, Edgar, and baby Victor.

NUNES: 15 years, 8 kids. Wow. That’s a whole life. Why did they want to leave after all those years?

GONZALEZ: Well, Clement answers that question best.

CLEMENT: Burundi is not my country. My country is Congo, but I'm a refugee in Burundi. Because we don't like to live in Burundi or to live in my country because in my country, no peace, and the Burundi is the same thing.

GONZALEZ: Police in Burundi can stop anyone they feel like and ask them for their IDs and then tell them that their cards aren’t valid or aren’t even their ID cards. They beat people up, arrest them for weeks, and won’t stop until you pay them enough money. Clement says, it’s worse for Congolese refugees.

CLEMENT: There's too many too many Congolese live in Burundi. But they passing the border. Too many, many people and they killed them on the water. Yeah. From Congo to pass in Burundi.

NUNES: So, Clement and his family, understandably, want a safer life.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, but they don’t know when that will be. Until one day in 2018, Pichuna gets a phone call.

CLEMENT: They call mom on the phone and say, “We need, we need to see you.”

GONZALEZ: It’s the family’s case manager at the UN. They tell Pichuna that she and her 8 kids are cleared to be resettled in the United States.

CLEMENT: We so happy in the house. Mom say, “But now my problem is finished because now, I’m going to America. Everything they going doing very well.”

GONZALEZ: For Clement, America means peace, security, and free school. It’s the home of Jean Claude Van Damme and 50 Cent. It’s the promise of, what he calls, the good life.

NUNES: But, the UN says only Pichuna and her kids can be resettled. Not her husband.

GONZALEZ: Right. He’s going to have to stay in Burundi. Pichuna tells her husband, this is a chance to give their children something she never had: peace and endless opportunity. She can’t pass that up.

WINIFRED: So she said, "You've done everything for me that you could, but I shall just continue on my own trajectory. And she told him that she would work to try to get him with her.

GONZALEZ: Now, this is obviously a bigger moment and a bigger conversation for Pichuna than she’s telling.

NUNES: Yeah, you don’t just leave your spouse to go to another country forever with your kids without some tears.

GONZALEZ: And while Pichuna doesn’t really talk about her emotions like that, Clement does.

CLEMENT: That's not easy. Everybody think about him. But I cry about him because he tell me, “Be strong, only. Be strong for everything because they family, all the family they look at about you because I'm not over there. Everything I wanna do, if I was over there, if I, I would be over there. You want to do that in my place because I'm not. I say, “Ok. I want to do that.”

GONZALEZ: So, it’s the end of May 2018. Pichuna is a single mom for the second time in her life, and she and her children are on their first-ever plane ride to a place they had never heard of: Providence, Rhode Island. And on the East Side of Providence, a landlord is getting one of his apartments ready for a family of 9 refugees.

MANOOG: They're not gonna end up living in a place like this, but it is their first stop.

GONZALEZ: It’s Manoog Kaprielian again. He owns a fancy apartment building on the East Side of Providence, Wayland Square. Normally, visiting Brown professors and minor league baseball players rent his apartments.

NUNES But, for the past 2 years, Manoog has been working with Dorcas International, providing an apartment for refugees when they first get here until they find a more permanent place to live. He’s housed over 70 people.

MANOOG: There is a figure that every second eleven refugees new refugees are made in this world somewhere. And it's hardly seven seconds, it's hardly   seconds of helping refugees you know. It just pales to the whole larger picture of what's going on in this world. And I, my gift is, I can see that first moment of feeling freedom.

CLEMENT: This is the picture is the when are we coming the first day. It's day May 30.

GONZALEZ: Back in Pichuna’s apartment, Manoog is sitting with us. And he shows me a photo he took the moment Pichuna walked through the door of his apartment. May 30th, 2018. She has the youngest kid, Victor, strapped to her back, and she’s beaming into the camera. No sadness, only joy. 

GONZALEZ: You look so happy.

PICHUNA: Yeah!

MANOOG: More than any other family, remember that first moment when they walked in here with the credentials hanging off them. And the smile. And they were singing. And I found out when I translated, they were singing the Lord's Prayer in Swahili.

GONZALEZ: The Mulilikwa family are Christians, and back in Burundi, going to church was a huge source of community and fun. So, Clement asks his case worker, a Congolese man, if they can go to church with him. But it’s far away, and he can’t fit all nine of the Mulilikwas in his car. So, they ask Manoog if they can go to his church.

NUNES: I’m guessing they don’t know that it’s going to be an Armenian Orthodox church.

GONZALEZ: Not at all.

MANOOG: So I'd have to order two Ubers, and I had to make up like a baby seat for one of them because they wouldn't take him. And we went off to church.

CLEMENT: Sunday, the first Sunday, he bring all the family to the church. We pray for everything.They church so surprise because the church of Manoog, everybody is the white people. My family, all is the African people.

GONZALEZ: See, the Armenian church is not only an ancient institution, but it’s also the main place Armenians keep their culture alive in the United States. It’s not often they get new, non-Armenian parishioners.

MANOOG: And that's the one thing about the Orthodox Armenian Church and the first nation to adopt Christianity. A quick change in that church comes every 600 years.

GONZALEZ: At St. Vartanantz, I’m talking with some parishioners about the Mulilikwas.

PARISHIONER 1: The minute they arrived in Rhode Island, they didn't they don't even know how to express themselves. They found out how to say I would like to be baptized. That was their first wish.

PARISHIONER 2: To see these children who have the faith to come forward and be baptized. They're not even Armenian, which is interesting. You’re filled with joy watching them being baptized.

NAZARIAN: So, this is beautiful. This is where we’re going to take these children and young adults to the baptismal fount…..

GONZALEZ: Reverend Nazarian asks all 8 kids to take off their shoes and get in line, from youngest to oldest and stand next to the small baptismal fount against the wall.

NAZARIAN: And then, we’re going to pour in the holy water of our church, the Muron. Which our church tradition has, goes back to when Jesus sent out his apostles to go evangelize. When he sent Thaddeus and Bartholomew to Armenia, he sent oil with them to anoint and heal the sick, our church has never allowed the oil to run out.

GONZALEZ: Then, the reverend asks all the godparents to come up. There are 4 godmothers total. Each one has two of the kids. But there’s only one godfather: Manoog. And he’s crying.

MANOOG: They just emotionally bring me such such pride and they want to know why I was kind of crying today. You know they couldn't get their minds around. Tears of happiness.

GONZALEZ: The feeling is mutual. The Mulilikwas call him Baba Manoog.

CLEMENT: If you say Baba is daddy. Yeah. Yeah, because moms she doesn’t have the parents. But now Manoog is my grandfather.

PICHUNA: Speaking in Swahili.

WINIFRED: So she she's thanking God for you know her fate now and also for having having found Manoog, you know, who helped her so much.

GONZALEZ: When I talk to Manoog alone, he reads me the emails that he and the godmothers exchange where they discuss what to do next to help the family.

MANOOG: They're talking about their new house. And it should be ready for Pichuna and her family to begin moving in on the 18th which was two days ago.

GONZALEZ: There are dozens of little messages back and forth, talking about transportation, immunizations, transcripts. With the help of Manoog and the godmothers, Pichuna and the kids are moving to a bigger place up in North Providence, just in time for the kids to start school in the North Providence public school system.

MANOOG: And then it has Clement's phone number and it goes. It takes a village. And, in Armenian, “Sirov,” which means, “With love.”

GONZALEZ: And, with the help and love of Manoog, the godmothers, and Dorcas International, Clement finally has a shot at getting closer to the good life.

CLEMENT: The first class is the English, for to read. The second for to write and math. Yeah. The first semester. I said I need to do that in the first semester. The first semester. In the second one, I want to take my classes for my business class.

GONZALEZ: Clement is attending Community College of Rhode Island in the Fall. He says he wants to get his bachelor’s degree in business so that he can own his own company, and spend his days in a big comfy office, telling people what to do.

NUNES: It’s not Jean Claude Van Damme status, yet, but things are really looking up.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, and Pichuna got a better job, working at the same place Clement does in Cranston, so they drive there together.

NUNES: And going to college, getting a better job, these are things a lot of folks might take for granted, but they’re huge steps for immigrant families.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, they’re steps towards making a home in a new place. And it’s taken more than a year of really hard work for the Mulilikwa family to get to this point.

CLEMENT: I talked to Manoog. I say, “Manoog, I don't like America. What’s happening?” I say, “I need to have the car and to have the other things.” He say “No, everything goes step by step. You cannot to come to the second floor if you don't pass the first floor.”

NUNES: It sounds like Manoog is helping Clement realize it’s gonna take a few more years to get a car like 50 Cent.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, he is. But it’s not a one-sided relationship. Manoog gets so much joy out of being in the Mulilikwas’s lives. And, he says, the family is bringing new life into the Armenian community at St Vartanantz.

MANOOG: I think something clicked. Maybe when they saw what they had endured as a people is something that, 102 years ago, we endured. And they felt maybe the reverberations of of their own past through Pichuna and the family. It was like unspoken.

GONZALEZ: Mosaic is a production of The Public’s Radio, edited by Sally Eisele with production help from James Baumgartner and Aaron Selbig. Our original music is by Bryn Bliska. Torey Malatia is the general manager of The Public’s Radio. And thank you to Dr. Winifred Lambrecht and Dr Richard Fluehr-Lobban. I’m Ana Gonzalez.

NUNES: And I’m Alex Nunes. Thanks for listening.