“AIDNW Volunteering Is Such A Beautiful Experience”
By Dieu Est Amour Nsungi, AIDNW Volunteer
My journey to start volunteering with AIDNW began in 2015 when I moved here. I didn’t know anyone in the United States, no family or friends. I had been an International Student in Morocco, completing an associates degree there in computer science after graduating from high school in my home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I was selected by lottery for an Electronic Diversity Visa (DV) which provides a green card in the U.S. My plan had been to go to France to do my bachelors degree since I had family and friends there, but then I got this opportunity to come here. I had heard from a friend from high school who used to live in Seattle that it was nice here, but I didn’t know English – nothing but my numbers and the alphabet. So when I arrived, I enrolled at Highline College in its ESL Level II classes, then did summer quarter Level III speaking skills, then Level III writing, went on to finish my Level IV ESL, and then participated in the Highline College Jump Start Program then completed an associates in network security.
The teacher of that class told me about how she volunteered with World Relief every Friday afternoon, utilizing the AIDNW Welcome Center to help guests exiting detention. In the summer of 2019, I joined World Relief and started volunteering. One thing I immediately loved about the Welcome Center was experiencing the joy of people coming out. You can see the humanity in everyone because right there, in those moments, you have all different kinds of people, different colors, different nationalities, and you can see them all as human.
They are all connected when they come out because they lived inside together, knew each other, and sometimes there will be crying when they will go their separate ways. Then there’s the connection we feel of being human with them. Experiencing the feelings they have once they are out, with all the different reactions, some laughing, some crying, is beautiful.
One day I will never forget is when we received a lady from Texas. She was 36, had moved to the US when she was 3 years old, and now had a 12-year-old daughter. She was arrested in Texas with her husband while they were out on a date, but there was a fight in the restaurant, and the police came and detained everyone there. Since she was undocumented, she was separated from her husband, him going to a detention center in Texas. She was flown up here in handcuffs, and detained here for 6 months.
When she came out, we immediately called her daughter, and you can imagine what that was like. The same day, there was also a 22-year-old lady from Cuba who spoke with no English, but the woman from Texas translated for her since I don’t speak Spanish, and was able to call the Cuan woman’s family in Miami. I took them both to the airport, got a pass to help them through security, and accompanied them to their gates. When it was time to separate between the gates to Miami and Texas, they both started crying. The Cuban lady was so thankful, and could not believe she would find help directly outside the detention center all the way to reaching an airport gate within a couple of hours.
We only knew each other for a brief time, and it was beautiful we could all connect because we could all speak the same language of being human. At the time, I was also focused on my studies. Back in the summer of 2017, I had transferred to Bellevue College for a bachelor’s in computer security. I graduated in June 2019, and had already started working for BECU since the summer of 2018. It has a program that pays employees to go to college after 1 year of work, so I started a master’s in cybersecurity, and in March of 2022 became a cybersecurity engineer with a semiconductor manufacturing company.
I no longer had Fridays flexible to volunteer, but in October 2023, I saw an email about an AIDNW community meeting, met with the volunteer coordinator who was Mya Schultz at the time, told her I used to be a World Relief volunteer, and Mya suggested volunteering for AIDNW directly so I could choose other days of the week to serve at the Welcome Center.
Now in addition, I’m doing visitations inside the detention center. It’s such a beautiful experience to do that, just being there listening to the people inside, sharing stories and backgrounds. One thing I really won’t forget was visiting a 21-year-old man inside from Nigeria. He came to the U.S. as an International Student in nursing, but then he stopped school and lost his F1 status, and not long after, was detained in association with – a fight. I started visiting him a few times, but he decided to go home, so was deported.
I remember the day I was going to drop his deportation bag off, leaving him a note to say goodbye along with a Bible Verse. The next thing I heard from him was receiving a WhatsApp text message after he got back to Nigeria. He said he would never forget my visits, and that he would never be the same person as a result, because the visits and Bible studies changed him completely, so he wanted to thank me. We didn’t stay in touch, but it was so wonderful that he reached out at least one more time.
I can’t imagine being alone outside the detention center if I didn’t speak English and had no one to help me. What we’re doing there is great: we help people in such a way that it impacts their lives forever. Just the simple things we’re doing – saying hello, giving snacks, letting them use a phone, driving them to the airport – just that experience changes their lives, and impacts them in a positive way. I don’t know how they would get to their families sometimes otherwise! It’s very important to help other people, I want to do it as much as I can.
