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Outcasts United: A holiday letter from the Fugees
By
Published: Dec 29, 2010
Category:
Non Fiction
This is not about the Fugees, the hip-hop group that sold a trillion CDs.
This is about the Fugees, a ragtag soccer club for kids started by Luma Mufleh in Clarkson, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The players are immigrants from Somalia — poor, black, easy for the residents of a small town to hate. Luma fought every battle for her kids, and the kids responded, and then Warren St. John, a reporter for The New York Times, chronicled the Fugees’ struggle in the paper and made them almost as famous — for 15 seconds — as the hip-hop group.
I wrote about that article in 2007. Your response was magnificent — you showered Luma and the Fugees with donations. Then Warren St. John wrote a book, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Team.
Life is better now for the Fugees — enough better that Luma used Christmas as a teachable moment for her players. Here’s a letter from Ogbai and Santino, two of the Fugees. It was Luma’s end-of-year e-mail, and if you’ll just start to read it, you’ll know why I had to share it.
We were at Coach’s house and I was joking with Coach that Santa wasn’t real. And she kept telling me Santa was. I said that I put milk and cookies out and Santa never came.
"What did you ask for?" she said.
"A soccer ball."
"Have you ever been Santa?" she asked.
I was confused. I am not Santa. "Have you ever given?"
"I don’t have money to give."
"You need money to give?" And she looked at me and waited for an answer. I was quiet and I knew something was going to happen, a learning experiment.
On Christmas Eve at 9 AM, I got a call to tell me to get out of bed and get ready. It was early, I was on vacation, and I didn’t know why. When the bus came, there were six other Fugees on the bus.
"Where are we going?"
"We’re going shopping," they said.
I got excited, thinking we were all going to the mall. But Coach drove us to the Farmers Market. I thought maybe we were getting food for our big Christmas party, but then she had 5 of us get carts. I know we eat a lot but that’s too many carts. Coach then explained we were buying food for families. We got rice, potatoes, beans, lentils, oranges, bananas and then Solomon told Coach that the families would also like sugar cane. "What are you waiting for? Go get it!" Coach said. Solomon came back with 30 sticks of sugar cane. He’s right, I love sugar cane and so does everyone else.
We headed back to the school and more Fugees were there waiting. Some thought we were going to play a soccer game, some thought they were getting their own gifts, but not today.
Coach told everyone that today they got to be Santa, that each person gets to pick 2 gifts to give to two people in their lives. Moms, dads, uncles, brothers or sisters. In the room there were over a hundred shirts and pajamas. All new, all in their packaging.
Coach reminded us that today was not about us, that we have a lot and we need to show appreciation. So we wrapped gifts for a few hours. First I thought it was a bad idea, but then I wrapped a gift for my mom and one for my uncle. And then I thought of other people that would like a gift, so I asked coach if I could wrap more. "It’s Christmas, of course you can."
After we were done, we started putting food boxes together to give out. And then we put them back in the school. I thought we were done for the day. But then Coach said, "Put two big tables on the bus, and these bags of toys, and I’ll meet you at Indian Valley Apartments."
So we went there and then Coach came and she had 1500 hot wings and drinks. I thought it was for us, but it wasn’t. It was for the people living in the apartments. I thought to myself, "Why is she doing this?"
The kids from my neighborhood started coming up and laughing. They were very excited. From the look on their eyes I felt as if I changed a family’s life just by giving. The kids were laughing and telling their parents about the gifts and eating and drinking and they told me thank you. It made me feel good. The smiles on their faces made me realize that Christmas is about giving and being happy, it’s not just about getting. That was our learning experiment.
This Christmas we gave back to our community, to our neighbors and families, for all the hard work and support they have given us. So I recommend or ask you to do as my team and I have done and see what you feel after it. I learned that you do not have to be rich just to give — all you need is hope, and a heart. But coach was wrong. It was about me. It was about me learning and feeling hope.
Ogbai and Santino
p.s. I got a soccer ball and a new coat for Christmas.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
To buy the Kindle edition from Amazon, click here.
To make a donation to the Fugees, click here.
To read an interview with Warren St. John, author of the book about the Fugees, click here.
