I see her waiting for me through the plate glass window that separates us. On her work uniform, her name is written in blue threads that match the kitenge headscarf she’s wearing. I recognize it. It’s the same kitenge she wore on a brutally cold December morning when she walked down the escalator steps at Bluegrass airport, into the arms of the family she had been separated from for nearly eleven years.
I had been there too, just after midnight, waiting to welcome her to America. She smiles at me beyond the door, teeth glinting in the late March air.
“Emmy, no kazi,” she says in Swahili. The only people who ever call me ‘Emmy’ are clients and my mother.
“No job,” she says again, this time in English, and holds up papers she wants me to read. But I don’t read them. I already know what they say. Dawa has lost her job, and she’s come to Kentucky Refugee Ministries to find someone who can help her understand why.
Just an hour before, the manager at the restaurant where she works cal..
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