Staff photo by Don Himsel: Jairus Olocho, a Kenyan immigrant, is staying at the Anne-Marie House in Hudson with his wife and children. Olocho has received his license as an LPN nurse and is looking for work.
HUDSON – Jairus Olocho, his wife and their three children have a place to live and friendly faces to greet them.
For now, that’s enough for Olocho to feel blessed.
“It’s good. It’s a wonderful place to be. It has a lot of rules, but rules are good,” said Olocho, 38, an immigrant from Kenya who since July has been living with his family at the Anne-Marie House, a transitional program for homeless families.
Residents’ rooms resemble small dorm rooms. Olocho and his wife share one room, their 14- and 12-year-old sons share an adjacent room, and their 7-year-old daughter has her own room directly across the hall.
But there is a communal kitchen and dining room and a parlor to socialize – and a place where Olocho does much of his studying. A devout Christian, Olocho praises God for his chance to live here. But it isn’t where he wants to be in 10 years.
“Ten years from now, we will have our own home – God willing,” he said.
First, though, Olocho must find work, and so far that has proved to be a tough nut to crack.
Olocho arrived in the United States 10 months ago after going through the immigration process and obtaining a green card, which allows him to live and work in the United States. At first, he lived with relatives in Nashua, but the house was too small for both the hosts and Olocho’s family.
He can stay at the Anne-Marie House for two years, but he hopes it won’t take that long for him to find work so he can rent his own place and support his family.
Olocho and his wife earned GEDs and then recently, Licensed Nursing Assistant certificates through an American Red Cross program.
He and his wife both have been “vigorously looking” for work, applying mainly to nursing homes, he said.
“I have already sent out many applications, but not yet – just not yet,” he said of his struggle to find work.
Olocho was inspired to get into nursing by his great-grandmother, a woman who cared for people back in Kenya and died at 104 when she was gored by a cow.
Olocho studied in school for 12 years in Kenya, the equivalent of a high school education. He couldn’t afford to go to college there, he said.
For now, he’s taking a cross-cultural communication system class and hopes to land temporary or part-time work translating from Swahili to English. Swahili is a native language in Kenya, although English is taught in schools and is used as the main language for other courses, such as history, mathematics and geography, Olocho said.
His children are doing well and like school, he said. Some immigrants at a recent summit in Nashua talked of their children having difficulty with peers and teachers, but that hasn’t happened with Olocho’s kids, who attend school in Nashua because that’s where they started before the family had to move into the Anne-Marie House.
One of the friendly faces at the Anne-Marie House is that of Sovannareth Carlson, an immigrant from Cambodia who has lived at the transitional program for two years after she said her husband threw her out at a time when she was seven months pregnant.
With her 2-year-old son, Dominic, playing nearby, Carlson talked of encountering a glitch in her desire to start training to be a cook.
Carlson said she cooks very well and wants to work in a hospital or nursing care home because of the good benefits. She wanted to attend the culinary arts program at the N.H. Food Bank in Manchester, but learned she first needed a Social Security number. She received her number last week and now is waiting to hear back from the culinary arts program.
Like Olocho, Carlson said she’s thankful for now to be at the Anne-Marie House until she gets a job and is able to make her own way.
“Thank God I’m here. God brought me here,” she said.
Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashua telegraph.com.
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