By Text and photos by Ann Coady

A Maryknoll Affiliate’s longing to return to developing world is met at her doorstep in places such as a Wisconsin clinic

I’ve been rubbing shoulders with immigrants all my life. As a child, I have vivid memories of visiting my grandparents, immigrants from Finland who lived in a community “up north” where their heritage was very much alive. They even sent us to camp to learn of the economic cooperative system common in their homeland and replicated in countless ways on the Iron Range in Minnesota.

As a young adult, recently returned from a stint in the Peace Corps in Colombia, I longed to go back to the developing world, but things kept getting in the way—a new baby, my husband studying for state boards, a sick child, an aging parent in need of assistance. I felt I was living in limbo, waiting to return someday, living life on hold. Then a phone call changed my perspective. Someone from the local St. Vincent de Paul chapter had to make a call on a family of recent immigrants from El Salvador, and asked if I would go along to interpret. After that, word got out into the community that there was someone who understood their language and their needs and was willing to help. The phone started ringing off the hook.

At the time I was a “stay at home” mom, waiting for the domestic duties to lighten up. It got to the point that our youngest child, who was just learning to talk, would speak in English to us, but when talking on the toy telephone, would speak only Spanish.

One day I called the local school district to help a newly arrived family enroll their child. The district had just received a state grant to establish an outreach program to serve lower income residents, and the director I spoke with offered to hire me on the spot! Thus began a 25-year career with the Port Washington schools in New York, helping mostly immigrant families negotiate systems, access resources, and generally integrate into the culture of the school district. During that period we went through different waves of immigration, with students arriving from Central America, Ecuador, Chile, and later the Middle East. I still remember the Salvadoran children, who arrived so traumatized by the war there that they would dive under furniture when they heard a car backfire.

One of the highlights of that experience was setting up a family summer camp so that parents and children who could not afford a vacation could spend a week together in beautiful Harriman State Park. Once I was also invited by a group of Turkish businessmen to tour their country at their expense, along with a few colleagues, and to experience their wonderful hospitality in an effort to foster mutual understanding. The following year, an Indian-American colleague invited me to go to India with her to announce to her extended family that she would eschew an arranged marriage in favor of a love match with an Italian-American. The news was not particularly well received, but change is never easy. One of the greatest satisfactions for me was, toward the end of my tenure with the school system, helping to fill out college financial aid forms for the very students I had helped to register as preschoolers.

A few years ago, with our nest empty and an extended family calling, my husband, Jim, and I packed up and moved back to the Midwest I expected that my adventures with immigrants were behind me, but the Twin Cities I had left in my 20s was not the Twin Cities to which I returned! My mother had moved into assisted living housing and many of her “assistants” were Liberian and Somali, part of the largest Somali community outside
of Somalia. I will be forever grateful for the wonderful and respectful way they took care of her. Our local farmer’s market is filled with stalls of the most delicious vegetables raised by Hmong farmers, part of a large community of Laotian “hill tribe” peoples who fought alongside U.S. soldiers in that undeclared war during the Vietnam conflict and then faced annihilation when the war was lost. They were granted refugee status in the States if they could find sponsors, and many church groups in this area answered the call.

I volunteer as a Guardian ad Litem in the Juvenile Courts in Minnesota, where all children involved in the court system due to abuse or neglect have such an advocate. After extensive training, I was assigned my first case: a young, Spanish-speaking girl who was brought to this country as a victim of human trafficking. I learned that there is a vibrant community of Mexican immigrants in St. Paul, where I volunteer (20 minutes to the west of here). Minnesota is the end of the migrant trail, with our sugar beets the last crop to be harvested. Some stay the winter and look for work, and many families have been here for generations. I am now working with Mexican foster parents getting ready to adopt two little girls of Mexican heritage. This couple is poor by most standards, and not at all young, but they fell in love with these little girls and have been encouraged by their own adult children to take this on, with the promise of support from the extended family.

I have also taken parttime employment at a rural free clinic that was getting started in River Falls, Wis. (20 minutes southeast of here). A couple of months after the clinic opened, someone brought in a Mexican laborer for treatment. Until then I didn’t know that local dairy farmers trying to hold on to their family farms in the face of competition from big agribusiness companies are hiring Mexicans to do the work done by large families
in generations past. Again, word got out that there was someone at the clinic who understood their language and their needs and was willing to help. We are at the point now where we need a Spanish interpreter for every clinic session.

No, I never did get back to the developing world, except to visit. Instead, I opened my eyes and the developing world came to me.

The Maryknoll Affiliates are people who seek to carry Maryknoll’s faith-based concern for the world’s poor into their day-to-day lives.
For more information, visit www.maryknollaffiliates.org and contact Fred Goddard at Maryknoll Affiliates, P.O. Box 311, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0311, call toll-free 1-877-897-2386 or e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it