Going the mile for your kids

Awhile back I mentioned that my kids had befriended two new girls at the park and that after chatting with their mother, they had just arrived in Canada from Venezuela. She said her English was terrible but I found it quite good, she just needs someone patient enough to listen and let her find the words. Her husband spoke even less English when he came to the park one day but we managed a brief exchange with a mish-mash of English, Spanish, and hand gestures.

I asked the mother why she had decided to leave Venezuela to come to Canada. She told me that her home country is beautiful but the government is very corrupt and very much a dictatorship. She said there’s not much in the way of middle class, just very rich or very poor and that people don’t have very many choices in their life – she didn’t want that life for her two daughters.

And so they started the long process of paperwork to be allowed to come to my country. They’re both doctors but they can’t practice here until they’ve taken a French course and written tests to prove that they are qualified and that they know enough of the main language in this province. They know little French and little English. And yet here they are.

To me that must be frightening, to come to another country where you have no family and no friends and no comfortable knowledge of the languages spoken here. How terrifying. They had help, of course, through an immigration organization, but still, at the end of the day it’s four people hoping for the best and hoping they can hang in there.

They did it all for their kids.

I’ve never gone that far but I’d like to think that I would, that I could. How far have you gone for your kids?