A sampler of ELI students: class of 2007

Some of the bonuses of studying at ELI are the diversity of cultures a student can rub shoulders with and the talent and drive possessed by fellow classmates. The three students profiled below illustrate these qualities. They have been chosen to represent the class of 2007.

Single-minded determination
His name, multi-syllabic and multi-generational, looks towards the past. Otherwise, everything else about Said Abdourazak Said Boina points forward in a single direction, especially his purpose in coming to the United States and to ELI.

Said Abdourazak

“I always believe in success and progress,” he said.

From his first week of classes, Said could be seen perusing the bulletin boards, pencil and paper in hand, looking for announcements of lectures and meetings on campus. He attended gatherings of the campus chapter of the NAACP, the Delaware African Students Association and the Black Students Union.

“I just want to talk with Americans,” the high school English teacher said. “My first objective is to improve my English, so when I get back to my country, people will feel a difference.”

The first-ever Fulbright scholar to the United States from the Comoro Islands off the east coast of Africa, Said hopes to earn a doctorate in American studies, a passion he developed while a graduate student in Madagascar. His parents sent him to the University of Antananarivo on that neighboring island, and it was there that he met Dr. Philip Allen, a Fulbright lecturer and professor emeritus at Frostburg State University in Maryland.

“Dr. Allen gave me the taste of American studies,” he said. Said wrote his 120-page dissertation on Dr. Martin Luther King and his philosophy of nonviolence.

“I was struck by the tremendous courage of this man,” he said of King. In the future, Said hopes to do research on African-American social and economic integration. He also wants to promote nonviolence in Africa and in the Comoros, which became independent from France in 1975.

“We are living in a world where violence has become a daily routine,” he said, “so people must know you can achieve what you want without violence. Let’s go to the negotiation table and settle our differences, reach a peaceful compromise and move forward.”

Said hopes a doctorate in American studies will help him become a professor at the newly created Université des Comorres.When he left for the United States in the middle of the school year, he recalls, many of his high school students were in tears.

“I’d like to go back and teach them at the university.”  • BM

On the forefront of change
She never wanted to come to Delaware. Now she doesn’t want to leave.

Suzan Tami

Upon learning that she had received a Saudi Arabian mission scholarship to the United States, Suzan Tami had to persuade her father that this would be a good opportunity for his daughter to earn a master’s degree. Soon the recent graduate from King Abdulaziz University was on her way to Newark with her brother, Sultan.

At first, though, Suzy wanted to change the ministry of higher education’s decision to send her to Delaware. She had never heard of the state and was sure it could not be as good as Colorado or Florida. But, after living here, she changed her mind. In Delaware, she felt, “Everyone opened their arms to us.”

Suzy met her first teacher and made her first international friends in Level I, where she learned that teachers could be sensitive, supportive and inspiring. In class she renewed a lifelong interest in art, put on the back shelf while she was studying nutrition and food science in college. As she worked on her poetry skills and wrote a skit, she learned to allow her creativity a legitimate space in her studies.

“I grew up in class,” she said. “I became a new person.”

And ELI became her second family. So, when Suzy was accepted into the master’s program at the University of Texas, she rejected that offer in order to study at the University of Delaware. At UD, Suzy will study human nutrition. Her aim is to educate people so that they can avoid going to the hospital. Her sights are set on working for the World Health Organization or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Eventually, she would like to start a similar organization for women in Saudi Arabia. “Opportunities for women are opening up in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

Suzan Tami is positioning herself to be at the forefront of those changes.  • JL

English as a performing language
The film opens with cafeteria trays moving slowly past on a conveyor belt. As the camera pans left, platefuls of discarded dining hall food get scraped by a minimum-wage worker into a huge garbage bin.

Giovanny Galindo

In Giovanny Galindo Cuervo’s imagination, this could be the first scene of a movie about America. Working in Rodney Dining Hall while studying English at ELI exposed this professional stage and movie actor to a world totally different from his native Colombia.

The experience, he said, sensitized him to the reality of daily life for many immigrants to the United States, many of whom work in the food service industry. That awareness, plus his greatly enhanced English skills, would serve him, he hoped, in an exciting project that took him to New York City following his graduation from ELI in February.

In Tunja, a small city near Bogota where he grew up, Giovanny never had to do any physical labor. After studying electronic engineering for four years, he decided to follow his true passion. He joined the newly created Academía Superior de Artes de Bogotá and graduated five years later with a master’s in performing arts.

Since then Giovanny has played many part -- his favorites include Don Quixote, the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and Filinto in Molière’s Misanthrope -- and he has appeared on stage, in film and on radio and TV.

But whenever he auditioned for European or American movies, his limited English skills held him back. Then a friend of his in Toronto told him about a film project in North America. Giovanny sent off a reel with a couple scenes of his work.

“It was like throwing a bottle in the ocean,” he said.

Nine months later, he got a response. The film director wanted him for a part in a short film about immigrants in the United States to be produced in New York. Giovanny arrived at ELI in the fall of 2006 in order to prepare for the spring production. At ELI, Giovanny discovered a new passion for writing in English, which he honed in his Level IV Reading andWriting class.

“Now I have more tools for writing,” he said. Through his dining hall work experience, he gained greater empathy for immigrant workers.

“I grew up with that experience,” he said. After graduating with honors, he was looking forward to the project in New York, “nervous, but happy.” • BM

[Editor’s note: At press time, Giovanny had completed Foreigners, directed by Jeneth Sternbeck, and was in Colombia “working very hard” on a new film by Gabriel Camargo entitled L-Mental.]