E-mail a friendLuma Mufleh
airdate June 19, 2009
With a mission of giving voice to the experiences of refugees in America, Luma Mufleh became the inspirational coach of the Atlanta, GA-area soccer team called the Fugees—short for refugees. The team's players come from 18 war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Somalia and Sudan. An immigrant from Jordan, Mufleh moved to Atlanta after graduating from Massachusetts' Smith College. She also helped found Fugees Family, Inc., which helps refugee families transition to life in the U.S.
Fugees' coach discusses the political tensions associated with her team of refugee kids playing soccer. (2:46)
Full interview. (12:09)
Luma Mufleh
Tavis: In 2004, Luma Mufleh started a soccer team in Georgia for young refugees from troubled countries around the world; Afghanistan, Congo, Liberia, Bosnia, just to name a few. The team was called the Fugees, which has grown into a well-known nonprofit featuring four teams now, a tutoring program and so much more.
As I mentioned at the top, Luma and the Fugees were the subject of a major front page New York Times profile which has now been turned into a book called Outcasts United. Luma, nice to have you on the program.
Luma Mufleh: Nice to be here.
Tavis: It's good to see you. I should hold this up right quick. Luma walked out and brought me a gift, so I should show this. It's a Fugees jersey that she brought for me from all the teams with all of their names. They all wrote on the back of it. So to all the guys, "Hey there. I know you wanted to come out to Los Angeles. We couldn't get all of you all out here" - how many? 76 now?
Mufleh: 76, yeah.
Tavis: 76 - "but thank you for the shirt, the jersey. I appreciate it. I will wear this in good health, I pray." How you doing, though?
Mufleh: Good.
Tavis: Good. Glad to have you on the program.
Mufleh: It's good to be here.
Tavis: Tell me how this all got started. Some of us have heard about it and read about it in the Times and now there's a book and I hear a movie coming. But take me back to how this all came to be.
Mufleh: I grew up in the Middle East and my parents sent me to college in the United States. I went to school up at Smith in Massachusetts. After that, like the weather, I moved south and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life after college. You know, you keep trying to prove to your parents and your alma mater what you want to do, so I just kind of bounced from place to place and job to job.
One day, you know - well, at that point in my life, I had opened up a café and I had gone up to Clarkston, which was five minutes away from where my café was, to a Middle Eastern grocery story that I go to all the time.
On the way back, I forgot to take the turn, so I had to u-turn into this apartment complex to turn around. When I u-turned, I saw these kids playing soccer. They were playing barefoot out in the parking lot, no rules, no regulations, no parents yelling at them, just having fun. You know, it's rare that you see kids outside doing that these days.
I sat outside and watched them play and I came back later on in the week armed with a soccer ball. I asked them if I could play and they were a little hesitant and skeptical. You know, a woman's approaching them and a stranger, but my ball was a lot nicer than they had, so they finally relented (laughter). It's all uphill from there.
Tavis: So you get to know these kids. Who are these kids?
Mufleh: They're refugee kids, so they've all fled war-torn countries, like you mentioned, from Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Bosnia, Iraq. We just got a whole group of Burmese kids coming in. So they've been forced to leave their countries and the United States welcomes them here.
Clarkston is one of the big resettlement areas, so they resettled in Clarkston, are expected to start their life anew, but we don't really give them infrastructure to do that or the opportunities to do that.
Tavis: I was about to ask, Luma, how they wound up in Clarkston. So to your point, it's one of the major resettlement areas. Tell me what you know about that. Why that is? How they end up coming to that specific place? How the community deals with and handles that issue? Tell me more about this area called Clarkston.
Mufleh: Clarkston is 20 minutes from downtown Atlanta.
Tavis: Okay.
Mufleh: It used to be a small town, but now it's kind of, you know, engulfed in metro Atlanta. The resettlement agencies picked it because it has access to public transportation, affordable housing and jobs. So that's why that was one of the locations.
Lewiston, Maine is another location. Los Angeles is a location. Phoenix, Arizona; Boston; Des Moines, Iowa. I don't think there's usually a rhyme or reason why this happens. So there's a huge influx of refugees coming in. It wasn't just, you know, 10 or 20 or 30. It was just - so the town -
Tavis: - how's the town deal with that?
Mufleh: I don't know how you deal with that. I don't know how you deal with such a sudden influx of change and difference and not a lot of education. You know, not a lot of people that were aware or educated of what refugees - you know, their pasts and their struggles. So there's always resentment and tension between the town. The town thought they had to give, give, give, and the refugees didn't understand that they weren't welcome there.
Tavis: How does that tension play itself out politically? I mean, for example, when you start your program of working with these kids, give me an example of what you've had to encounter and deal with politically because the community feels one way, the refugees are over here. Help me understand this better.
Mufleh: I'm not a political person. I'm a coach and I wanted to coach these kids, give them a chance to stay off the streets and have something that made them feel confident in who they were. So I didn't understand what this tension was.
I was like what is going on? I didn't live in Clarkston, so I was coming in and working with these kids. Then it was like, "No, we can't have them play on this field." It wasn't just one field. There were two or three soccer fields in the area that we were not welcome at.
I was dumbfounded. I'm like this is just a group of kids wanting to play. But I didn't really understand that soccer represented more than just a game. You know, it represented the refugee experience and the other. You know, it wasn't just a kids' game anymore. So trying to mediate between the town and, you know, biting my tongue a lot and trying to figure out a way to work together.
You know, it's been a struggle, but we've come a long way. We've gone from "You're not welcome here" to "How can we work together?" My job now is, you know, talking to a lot of people, explaining to the town that this is what the refugee is, this is what the family goes through, this is what their needs are. So I have to do a lot of that.
Tavis: Tell me more about these kids. I mean, pick two or three of them. I mean, we know they're refugees. I'm trying to get a sense of their personal stories. Pick out a couple of them and tell me about their stories.
Mufleh: Plada (sp), a kid from Afghanistan.
Tavis: Right.
Mufleh: You know, his family fled the Taliban. His dad was killed by the Taliban when he was seven or eight. They fled first by foot and then in a truck where they had to hide under rugs to cross over the border. Then when they got to Pakistan as refugees there, they had to earn money and the only way they could earn it was by sewing these rugs.
So a seven or eight-year-old was pulling 12 or 14 hours a day not going to school just to try and earn money for his family. It was him and his three siblings doing that. They were fortunate enough and lucky to come to the United States and start their life anew, but then it's a whole set of other struggles that they had to face.
One of the first weeks I was coaching, he had gotten jumped by a group of kids in the neighborhood who told him to go back to Afghanistan and that he's from the Taliban. His father was murdered by them, you know, and it's just so hard to see stuff like that go on.
Tavis: So how do you start to organize these kids? I mentioned earlier, you know, that this story has a happy ending, at least up to this point. It's gonna get better, I presume and hope. But now you go from pulling the ball out of your car and convincing the kids that you play with them to having an organized soccer league, teams, players, jerseys. Tell me how this is coming along? What is the infrastructure?
Mufleh: It's a nonprofit organization. It's a 501 CP. We have four full-time employees, seven AmeriCorps interns to handle these 76 kids and their families. Soccer is the hook. We get them to come to our field and then we do a lot of academic programming for the kids. Like right now, they're in a six-week summer academic boot camp, is what we call it. We help their families.
We've started our own school where we pulled 16 kids out of middle school and helped build the basics that they never got in their countries. It just keeps growing. You know, it's a lot more structured; it's a lot more organized. You know, some days I wish it was back to just me and kids on the field and in the car, but we serve a lot more kids now and we serve them very deeply.
Jerseys? The first season I coached, we would hand over cleats from one team to the other and, when I had to sub one kid in, he'd like switch it out. Now we have a Nike sponsorship, so I don't have those worries anymore. But, you know, the kids that were with me from day one would always talk to the other kids, "Well, you don't know how much we suffered first."
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
Mufleh: You're like, "This is suffering? After everything you've been through, this is the suffering you want to talk about?"
Tavis: Your resources to run - you mentioned Nike's one of the sponsors for the equipment - the resources for the programs that you run, the academic programs, etc., where are most of your resources coming from?
Mufleh: It's private donations and foundations. We intentionally don't apply for government funding. You know, we want to serve our kids deeply. We have a big impact on them, so we rely very heavily on individual donors to help us out. We're very frugal. Fiscally conservative is what we like to say.
We also - like the kids have to earn part of it. They have to earn their spot on the team and they also have to help raise part of the money. So one of the things we do is an end-of-season tournament for each team if they've all passed their classes and they've done well in school.
They have to raise half the funds, which is usually between $700 to $1,000 to take the team. They raise it by washing cars or raking yards. I'm like, "If you raise it, we'll go. If you don't raise it, we're not going." Because you need some buy-in and you need them to know that not everything is going to get handed to you. You need to have some hard work.
Tavis: So I want to end where I began - where you began, actually. So with regard to your parents and to Smith, you feel good now? That you have found what your calling, what your purpose in life is? You feel good that you have honored what they did to aid and abet your success?
Mufleh: I think it was more me than them, you know. Like I wanted to prove to everyone and, when I took that weight off is when I found what I loved, you know. I never thought my father would be proud of me coaching kids and coaching refugee kids and you're giving up that life of privilege to do this. But he's the proudest he's ever been.
He has a Google alert on me and will tell me when I'm doing stuff. So he Googled me. He's like, "You know you're on Tavis." I'm like, "Yeah, dad, we agreed to the interview." He's like, "No, Google just put it up." I'm like, "Google doesn't know stuff before I agree to it." He's just so proud of it and it's great.
Tavis: (Laughter) You make sure your dad gets a copy of this.
Mufleh: I will.
Tavis: He can go online and watch it. PBS.org. Shameless plug, we call it.
Mufleh: Okay (laughter).
Tavis: Luma, nice to have you on the program. The Fugees, I love them. I got the new jersey. Thank you for coming on.
Mufleh: Thank you for having me.
Tavis: And congrats on all your good work.
Mufleh: Thank you.
Tavis: Our pleasure.
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