Teen's journey from Cameroon to Pittsburgh reflects city's refugee influx

When Reol Audhasse and his family fled Cameroon for Pittsburgh last year, surging ethnic violence had displaced more than 1 million residents of the central African nation.

Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist group, had slaughtered thousands of civilians near the country’s northern border with Nigeria.

Conditions were dangerous, and so Reol’s parents moved him and his two younger siblings 6,000 miles away to Pittsburgh.

On Wednesday, Reol gathered with a dozen other teenage refugees in Frick Park to celebrate the end of the spring session of a youth program run by Jewish Family and Community Services, a local nonprofit that provides services each year to more than 2,000 refugees and immigrants in greater Pittsburgh.

As he quietly plucked an acoustic guitar, Reol, 19, of the Hill District, didn’t want to talk about life in his former home.

“I mean, it was war,” said the teen, a native French speaker who was born in the Central African Republic, Cameroon’s eastern neighbor.

Reol preferred to dwell on the future and America’s wealth of opportunities.

“I like computer science, IT — I’d like to become a computer scientist,” said Reol, today an Allderdice High School sophomore who serves as president of the Squirrel Hill school’s French club. “And I like it here because school is easy.”

Sporting a gold necklace with a diamond-studded medallion of Africa, Reol flashed smiles that beamed in the afternoon sun as he poured himself a cup of Coke.

“And I don’t really like it when it’s cold,” he laughed.

ESL numbers grow

The Jewish aid organization has served thousands of refugees from dozens of countries since being formed more than 80 years ago, officials said. They estimate they’ve helped resettle families in Pittsburgh from five continents.

On Wednesday, there was no teaching or formal program. There was just fun.

Around a wooden picnic table in the Beechwood Boulevard park, the teenage refugees were just another group of Pittsburgh kids — snatching slices from a stack of Pizza Palermo boxes, kicking around soccer balls and laughing at each other’s jokes.

Reol and his fellow refugees represent a growing segment of the U.S. population.

About 5 million English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students attended U.S. public schools in 2020, up from 4.5 million in 2010, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And census data show that more than 5.2 million American students are foreign-born.

While some populations are shrinking in public schools — white and Black student enrollment dropped over the past decade — the number of ESL learners continues to grow.

Today, they make up about 10% of the student population nationwide, according to the national center.

Another group, the Center for Immigration Studies, estimates that nearly 1 of every 4 U.S. students come from immigrant-headed households. That’s double the number from a generation ago.

Where you live in Southwestern Pennsylvania will dictate how you see the trend.

Pittsburgh Public Schools, Pennsylvania’s second-largest district, served 1,665 ESL students this year, spokeswoman Ebony Pugh told TribLive.

Pugh did not have similar data for last year, but she said that the number of ESL students in the district has risen 3.4% since the 2017-2018 school year.

More than 8% of Pittsburgh students have languages other than English as their mother tongues, including Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Uzbek and Nepali.

In North Allegheny School District, the second-largest district in Allegheny County, the percentage is even higher. Statistics show that about 1 in every 10 of their students speak languages other than English at home.

By comparison, at Hempfield Area School District — Westmoreland County’s largest district — just half of 1% of students are learning English, school statistics show. In Greensburg Salem, a mere 1.6% of students are ESL learners, spokeswoman Kayla Tamer told TribLive, but the district’s numbers have tripled to 37 this school year since 2021-22.

Not like YouTube

For the past 16 months, Taylor Raszman, one of 30 Jewish Family and Community Services staffers, has helped the teens master English and prepare for life after high school. That includes helping them get their first jobs and first apartments.

The staffers help the teens open bank accounts — and prep them to become first-generation college graduates.

Raszman, who grew up in a small Crawford County town and attended what is now PennWest, Edinboro in Erie County, thinks there’s something definitively “Pittsburgh” about this group of teens.

“Pittsburgh was founded on immigration — Carnegie wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and now look at his museums,” Raszman said. “Pittsburgh was a city built by immigrants. We’ve always had strong immigrant communities.”

“These kids are the next ones,” Raszman added. “Maybe we’ll have the next Andrew Carnegie here.”

Edmund Albert saw snow for the first time after moving last year from Tanzania to Squirrel Hill with his family of 10.

He chuckled — but did not answer — when asked who he targeted with the first snowball he ever threw.

The 16-year-old Allderdice High School freshman has found the U.S. to be different than the nation depicted on YouTube channels in Africa — but he has trouble putting it into words. There’s just something about the size of it, he said.

Edmund, who wore the collar of his red polo shirt flared upward, has simple desires for the upcoming summer.

He wants to ride his bike.

He wants to play soccer and basketball.

And he wants to sleep late.

One thing he doesn’t want is to think about Tanzania — where government forces last summer unlawfully jailed dozens of people from the central African nation’s Maasai community. Late last year, floods and landslides destroyed thousands of homes.

“I don’t like Tanzania,” said Edmund, as he dismissively shook his head from side to side. “I do not like it.”

Important voices

Not all of the teens share stories about the places they fled, Raszman said. Some come from refugee camps in places like Burundi’s Muyinga province.

About 80% of Burundians live in extreme poverty, advocacy groups say; in rural areas — like Muyinga — the rate is even higher.

Reol, too, is getting ready for summer.

The bespectacled teen, who wears a white Apple AirPods case on his belt loop, will work as a counselor at ARYSE Academy, an East Liberty-based educational program for immigrant and refugee youth.

He’s also preparing to be inducted this week into Allderdice’s National Honor Society.

Reol’s success — and the success of his peers — doesn’t surprise Raszman.

“After falling in love with this demographic when I was in college, I realized there’s such a service need here,” Raszman said. “America’s birth rate is low. So, the country’s future growth is these kids. I think their voices are important to share.

“People need to hear them.”