Renton Students Find Hope And Home In America

Their stories are inconceivable to most Americans: Having as a child to flee your home, your family, your country because of war, threats of violence, abandonment.

So difficult was the journey for Iraqi teenager Sura Alani and Burmese refugee Seng Raw Lahpai that they find it difficult to share details of what initiated their path to the U.S. The two girls choose instead to look confidently to the future.

Sura Alani: “Everything was perfect, until the war.”

Sura Alani lived in her home country Iraq in a big house with a garden full of flowers. She had family and friends and would walk each day with her brother and father to their neighborhood school. “Everything was perfect,” she said, “until the war.”

She was eight when the soldiers came and bombs began exploding in her village. Her family would huddle for days sleeping together in the hallway, away from windows and flying debris.

Sura’s family soon fled to Syria to escape the war and destruction of their homeland. They would spend six years as refugees in Syria, living in a small apartment “that felt like a prison,” Sura says. The country is a safe haven for many Iraqi refugees, but is not—and never will be—home. There was no creating a better life or making plans for the future. For an intelligent, ambitious girl, the future was bleak.

 “There, I did everything I was told to do,” said Sura. “I never thought of what I wanted to do with my life.” Syria was not their home and someday Syria would send them back to Iraq.

In 2010, the family moved to America to be with others who years earlier had settled in Renton.

After first learning English, Sura committed herself to education, excelling in all subjects. Sura would impress her teachers so much that she recently was named one of Renton High School’s top 12 graduating seniors.

Sura will attend college, but has altered her career path to something that provides help for families and improves life in her beloved country.

“I once thought I wanted to be a nuclear scientist,” said Sura. “But as I saw what war can do to a country and a people, I now will become a doctor and return to Iraq to help children and families.”

Seng Raw Lahpai: “As a young girl, fleeing for safety in a fishing boat was frightening, but necessary.”

At 14 years old, Seng Raw Lahpai found herself alone—without family—on a fishing boat fleeing her country Burma (now known as Myanmar). The escape continued in a van full of strangers too frightened to speak or console one another. Later, there was a long nighttime trek through a forest where the group remained deafly silent, keeping their footsteps light, afraid that if found out, they would be shot by soldiers. The last leg of the trip would deliver Seng to her new home, Kuala Lumpur.

“I was very scared about everything,” Seng says. “But I stayed strong and hopeful.”

In the new country, Seng found work in a Chinese restaurant, quickly becoming self-sufficient. She worked for 15 hours each day, but the work was illegal and came with the threat of imprisonment. After two years, no longer wanting to live life afraid of deportation or jail, Seng walked alone to the United Nations office and asked for help to travel to a safe country for a better life.

“I was so relieved to receive word from the UN that I would move to America.”

In 2008, the teenager would start her life over yet again in new country.

“Learning English was hard for me,” said Seng, “and trying to live a new lifestyle was strange and difficult.”

But, as she had done before, she adapted and excelled. 

“I discovered that I was a strong person and could survive,” says Seng.

Seng excelled at math and used her past struggles to push herself to do well in other subjects. She began volunteering with community service organizations and working with a support group of other Burmese refugees. She took quickly to learning to use computer-aided programs to design 3-D structures. “I could take anything from my imagination and see it form in front of me!”

Her desire to learn resulted in good grades and garnered the attention of teachers and school staff. She was recently named one of Renton High’s 2012 top 12 graduating seniors.

Seng will take her love of learning on to college to become an architect and eventually design community projects to improve life in poor countries.

“I’ve learned that I am driven to take risks,” says Seng, “and to use 

*Editor's Note: This story was provided by the Renton School District Communicationc Department.