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Checking Out

I remembered my grocery list too late and Walmart was my only option by then. At the checkout lines that evening was predominantly Afghan. I live close to the neighborhood in my town where refugees arrive are helped by a number of community and faith-based organizations to establish in America. So seeing a bunch of young Afghans at the store was no surprise. There was only one among them that could speak English. The young man who was checking my items out had to match the item to a picture and he truly struggled to get things right. Behind me the line of frustrated and impatient customers was growing. The woman right before me had waited a long time as he struggled with her debit card. The English speaking friend was summoned many times during the process. 

It took forever but I was done. It had been a long day and I was not expecting my quick grocery run to take this long. I am sure the same was true to others there waiting behind me. As I put my things in the car and drove home, it occurred to me how a community gives and withholds at the same time. Many among us are working as volunteers to help these refugees in our town. Yet in this particular interaction with a young man seeking a new life in America as a refugee, no one was feeling kind, giving or charitable. We were just frustrated that a simple task took him as long as it did and with the number of mistakes he made along the way. We were not in the mood to think about the series of events that brought him here. A minute of consideration would highlight not getting the type of tomato right was very many orders of magnitude less wrong than the wrongs of America in that country

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