Story and photos by ZACH CARLSON

Laureen Carlson is an employee for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program through Utah State University’s College of Agriculture. Carlson’s goal is to help individuals and families, especially those who are lower-income, eat healthy and affordable. Carlson said EFNEP is available in every state and most territories. Carlson has been employed by EFNEP since 2013.

For the past four years Carlson has gotten to know many refugees. Most of the refugees she has worked with are Nepalese, but she has also worked with some families from Sudan and other African countries.

When asked what nutrition was like in refugee camps, Carlson said, “They would get packages that they were so appreciative for. But for example, their protein was lacking.” She also added that they would get meat packed in salt. Salt-packed meat isn’t as healthy but does last longer. “Their diet consisted mainly of rice with small amounts of vegetables,” Carlson said.

Once refugees get to Utah they can get the ingredients that they really need to be healthy and provide for their family from a nutrition standpoint. Carlson said one of the biggest problems she faces is getting refugee families to eat complete proteins. Because most families face dietary restrictions due to their religion or customs, they only will eat goat or yak — especially with the Nepalese. These also happen to be two of the more expensive meats to purchase, so many families go without the proper proteins that they need.

Carlson’s goal is for families to eat healthy, not necessarily eating like Americans. “I always try to be their facilitator using their own bread, yogurt, whatever food and spices they regularly eat,” Carlson said.

Often, she tries to combine common foods here with food or spices that refugees know and eat. Carlson said many families make their own yogurt. She will use this yogurt with fruits to make healthy smoothies. One of her other go-to foods is pizza.

She uses bread that the family makes in place of regular pizza dough. “With almost everything we add spices we wouldn’t traditionally use in American pizza. I use theirs,” she said. “They have these tin containers that have all these different spices. Some of them have even brought those when they came because they are very careful with their spices. I would have them use what spices they wanted on their pizza.”

She would then add cheese that meets their dietary standards. This is to add more dairy to their diet. “I don’t think I went into a refugee home that was getting enough dairy,” Carlson said. She added that some children do get enough dairy, because many refugee mothers nurse longer than average here. Most of the refugee families Carlson teaches breastfeed the children until they are about 3, with one family even nursing a child until he was 5.

Carlson only speaks English, so sometimes there is a language barrier in their communication. When she can, Carlson works with a Nepalese translator, Chandra Sapkota. Sapkota often asks for Carlson because he considers her to work well with the families.

Google Translate is an incredibly helpful tool for her to communicate with refugees who aren’t fluent in English when she doesn’t have Sapkota’s help. She recalls one instance where she was teaching a mother, who spoke little English, how to make tuna casserole for her daughter. By using Google Translate, Carlson could communicate by typing in what she wanted to say in English, then it was translated to the mom’s native language. Because she can’t read, Carlson would have Google Translate “speak” the translated message to her.

“You couldn’t tell her to go buy tuna fish because she wouldn’t know. I left her all the cans, everything, so that way she could go match it in the store,” she said. “So, not only did we make it together but you can’t give her a recipe. We ended up having to make it two different times so that she could go through all the steps. In hindsight, I should have had her do voice recordings on her phone,” Carlson said. This is a new technique she has begun using, where she will have refugees record the steps in recipes on their phone in their own language. This helps them re-create the meals cooked together on their own, because they can grasp the cooking concepts better.

A health and hygiene issue that Carlson faces involves proper dental care. “I never saw a grandparent or great-grandparent that had a full set of teeth. There were multiple children that their teeth had rotted and had to be pulled. That was something we would try to bring up and encourage. We really would talk about brushing teeth and things like that,” she said.

Carlson said it is uncommon for a refugee to eat out a lot and get fast food often, but she has taught some refugees who partake in American food. She taught an African refugee who was extremely excited to be here and eat American food. But then he noticed that he was gaining a lot of weight. Carlson said once he realized how much weight he was gaining he immediately stopped eating fast food and went back to the food of his culture. He began working out to lose weight and is back to where he was before he dove into American food.

Carlson said most of the families she teaches make food from their homeland. Most, if not all of them, cook their own food, typically curry, sometimes three times a day. One indulgence that she has had a problem with is soda pop. They particularly love Fanta Orange.

“There’s something about Fanta Orange,” she says. Many of the refugee families thought that Fanta had juice in it and that they were being healthy. They loved that they were drinking juice and that it tasted so good. Except it wasn’t juice. Even when she went back to visit them later after her teaching with them concluded, some families still consumed Fanta Orange very frequently.

Life is hard for everyone, refugees included. For many refugees, their trials and hardships don’t end once they get to a new country. They instead face a new set of challenges that take the place others. A big challenge that many of them face is eating properly. Through the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, Laureen Carlson helps refugees get the nutrients they need without spending unreasonable amounts of money.

A boy Carlson taught in his home.

A grandma that Carlson taught in their home.

The grandma lovingly plays with the boy while the mom laughs.

The Raj family that Laureen Carlson taught.

A girl takes her little sister for a walk, using Cup of Noodles as an incentive.

A girl and her sister are happy to have their photos taken.

The middle Gangi child.

The Gangi family who Carlson previously taught.

The mother of the Gangi family with her most recent child.

A boy Carlson taught who suffered tooth decay.

An example of translating English to Nepali with Google Translate.

Filed under: Education, Food & Restaurants, Health & Fitness, Immigrants & Refugees, Organizations | Tagged: Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program | Leave a comment »

Story and photo by ZACH CARLSON

Chandra Sapkota lives with his wife and children in Salt Lake City. Sapkota currently works three different jobs. He works as a translator, he helps refugee families with children under the age of 3  at a local organization called Discover, Develop, and Impact (DDI) and he assists students part time at Cottonwood High School through the Granite School District.

Sapkota began educating people and helping parents while he was living in a refugee camp in Nepal. Sapkota lived in this camp for 18 years before the United States accepted him as a Bhutanese refugee in 2009 — one year after America began taking these refugees in.

Once Sapkota came here to Utah he met a friend who was working for DDI who helped him get a part-time job as a translator. Sapkota began to work his way up the corporate ladder and began to get more hours. He quickly became a full-time employee going into homes and doing what Sapkota referred to as “parenting.” This means that he helps the parent give their kid a better childhood, hopefully leading to a better adulthood and life.

“The DDI focuses on education and parenting,” Sapkota said. He goes into homes that have children up to 3 years old and helps the parent raise the children while honoring their culture. How Sapkota helps the family honor their culture varies from background to background, but with most cultures it involves making sure that they eat the proper foods to get enough nutrition without compromising their values on what foods are acceptable.

DDI works with families of all incomes and ethnic backgrounds in the Salt Lake Valley. Sapkota specializes in refugee families that typically fall beneath the poverty line. “I visit and work with 11 different families and spend 90 minutes with each of them,” Sapkota said.

One of the biggest unseen challenges that refugees face is not only getting enough food, but also getting healthy food. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, undernutrition has been reported in many cases with refugees. The CDC also stated that “although undernutrition is often associated with refugee status, concerns are increasing about overweight/obesity among refugees resettling to developed countries. Overweight and obesity are frequently assumed to be associated with assimilation to a U.S. lifestyle (increased availability of high-calorie foods, reduced physical activity), compounded by lack of nutritional education.”

This is where Laureen Carlson comes in.

Carlson is a frequent collaborator of Sapkota’s, working together to help Nepalese families. Carlson is an employee of the Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), whose goal is teaching people and families, particularly those who are lower income, how to eat healthy on a budget.

EFNEP is available in every state and most territories, according to Carlson. EFNEP is funded in Utah by Utah State University in Logan, through its agriculture department.

She met Sapkota while teaching a Nepalese family with whom he was working as a translator. Sapkota contacts EFNEP and asks for Carlson to come and help these families with nutrition. He requests her because she is good with the families and everyone else working for EFNEP in the Salt Lake area has quit, citing low pay for their leaving within the last five years, according to Carlson.

Carlson said she has taught roughly 20 different refugee families about nutrition, most of them from Nepal. She said it has been quite a culture shock for her as well as the families she teaches. She said, “One of the things that surprised me the most was how many people live in these small living spaces. You’ll oftentimes have three or four generations of a family living in a two- or three-bedroom apartment.”

Another aspect of living that astounded her was the sleeping arrangements. “A lot of these families do not have enough mattresses for everyone. In some cases, everyone sleeps on the floor with blankets. One family had couches along the edge of their living room where they slept in shifts,” Carlson said. “Family members who worked the night shift would be sleeping on the couches during the day, then the rest would take the available couches when the others went off to work.”

Laureen Carlson with the cute puppy of a family she was teaching in Kearns, Utah. She is an avid dog lover.

Carlson said that one of the hardest parts of working with refugees is helping them eat healthy while also honoring their traditions and customs. When working with Nepalese families she said that most of them want to eat goat, lamb, or yak, which happen to be some of the more expensive types of meats. “Our goal isn’t for them to eat like us. Our goal is for them to eat healthy and affordably,” Carlson said.

What can be especially hard for some refugee families, Carlson said, is making food for everyone in the family. Carlson said that in every refugee family she has taught nutrition to, the children receive free breakfast and lunch from their schools, due to the family’s low-income status. Carlson said the kids really like the food here and ask her to teach their parents how to make it, which can cause problems at home.

“The kids like some western food like tuna casserole, and the parents are willing to make it for them. The problem comes in with the grandparents and great-grandparents. They only want to eat their home food, which is understandable, but sometimes the kids don’t. A lot of these families don’t have the money to make two separate dinners, so it can lead to a sort of rock and a hard place,” Carlson said.

Sapkota has been an active member of the refugee community in Utah since he arrived here, but Carlson is a much newer addition to the community. As Carlson works with the refugee families she becomes closer and closer with them, with her even being invited to some family parties and functions. Sapkota and Carlson both work hard with refugees trying to help them provide for and take care of their family.

Filed under: Education, Food & Restaurants, Health & Fitness, Immigrants & Refugees, Organizations | Tagged: Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program | Leave a comment »