The autumn of learning | La Presse

In January 2022, in Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, Robert Kijanja saw an advertisement in the offices of an organization – PER, the Student Refugee Program.

The PER has existed since 1978. Each year, it allows more than 150 young refugees to pursue their higher education in Canada, in different colleges, CEGEPs and universities. They are welcomed into the country as permanent residents.

Robert Kijanja immediately thought of his daughters.

“He gave me the ad, and he told me it was a stroke of luck,” says Sarah Kijanja, seated at the café at Rosemont College in October 2023. In the hubbub of the start of the semester, the petite 23-year-old tells her story in a discreet voice, her gaze shifting.

Sarah Kijanja and her family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018. Armed forces were looting homes, raping women, killing people, she says. Gunshots rang out in the evenings. Her parents decided that enough was enough, that they had to flee Goma. “It was the worst time of my life,” she says.

Sarah, her parents and four sisters ended up in neighboring Uganda at the Nakivale refugee camp. More than 150,000 people live in the camp, Africa’s oldest, but only 30% of adults have jobs, according to the United Nations. To support the family, Sarah worked as a mechanic, a makeup artist and then a seamstress. The most profitable part of her income was making cloth masks during the pandemic with her sisters and mother, she says.

When Robert Kijanja – who was an English teacher in the DRC – saw the PER advert, hope filled him. Sarah and her older sister Anne-Marie successfully passed the written test and were both invited to the interview in Kampala, the capital.

In September 2022, Sarah saw an email pop up on her phone during an English class. She walked out of the classroom with tears in her eyes. “I wondered: Did my sister get the message?” When she got home, her sister told her she had received a message… of rejection. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I had been accepted,” Sarah says. “But when I told her, she was even happier than I was.”

Sarah searched online to see images of Canada. She didn’t know which city she would be sent to. “My prayer was to come to Montreal,” says the woman who once again had her prayer answered.

The Kijanja family drove Sarah to Kampala airport in August, hoping to one day be able to reunite with her in Canada.

On August 8, three teachers and a student went to greet her at the Montreal airport. For the Rosemont college, it was the very first experience with the PER. “The first month was rock’n’roll, because it was going too fast for her, everything was going too fast,” says teacher Rahabi Benaïche, program coordinator, who sensed Sarah’s state of shock.

We had to show her a lot of things that we thought we had already learned. How to use a computer for all the administrative aspects. How to use an ATM card. How to tell the difference between a refrigerator and a freezer. How to use a washing machine. “From September, October, she started to make her mark,” says Rahabi Benaïche.

Sarah discovered a beauty in Montreal that transcended the photos she had seen on the internet. “But the streets look the same!” she says, laughing. “I felt like I was always going to get lost. But no, it was fine.”

Then the classes started. In her Tremplin DEC program (an upgrade), many students, like her, are from immigrant backgrounds. She is comfortable, but you can tell: she is putting pressure on herself to succeed. “I am the pillar of the family,” says Sarah, who considers that 70% of her family’s future is in her hands.

Her goal: to be admitted to the Nursing program in the fall of 2024. “In the refugee camp, it was my first choice,” she explains. “I wanted to help, but I wasn’t qualified. There was a lack of doctors, medicines… Many pregnant women and babies were dying. There was cholera, malaria…”

Sarah Kijanja is sponsored for a year by Rosemont College, which allows her to live free of charge in the residences, receive one meal a day in the cafeteria, sandwiches at the student café, a transportation card and $82 a week. “After this year, I have to support myself,” explains Sarah, who will therefore have to pay the rent for the residence starting in the summer of 2024. She also hopes to send money to her family in Uganda when she can afford it.

“I’m going to work soon,” she said.