Like one of the family

THANKS TO A UQÀM INITIATIVE, international students who are feeling lonely have the opportunity to spend a ‘traditional’ Christmas with local families

24 Dec 2009, The Gazette, p. A7
JEAN-SÉBASTIEN MARIER, SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE
(Also available in .pdf)

Sitting in the living room of a downtown Montreal home on a chilly Saturday afternoon, Aïssata Konaté helped strangers unpack their Christmas ornaments.

The international student will spend a “traditional” Christmas holiday with a local family, thanks to a Université du Québec à Montréal initiative.

Konaté, 21, came to Canada from Mali a year ago to study urbanism.

“I want to see what (Christmas) looks like,” she said.

The Tremblay-Devirieux family will give Konaté a chance to do just that.

“I noticed this program last fall and I thought it was interesting,” said Micheline Tremblay, who graduated from UQÀM in 1988.

“So I talked about it with the rest of the family and they said: ‘Okay, we can try it.’ ”

Now in its third year, the UQÀM holiday season sponsorship program matches international students with alumni and their families for Christmas dinner, a weekend in the country or a New Year’s party.

Manon Charron, director of the alumni office, explained that the idea arose from concerns expressed by foreign students. Many of them felt lonely during the December holidays, unable to go back home and having no relatives in Montreal.

This year, 17 families and 16 international students are taking part in the program.

“It’s enriching for both host families and students” and promotes exchanges between cultures, Charron said.

The program can forge lasting ties. The TremblayDevirieux family will also spend Christmas with an international student they met last year.

Khadija Gaha, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student in management who is here from Tunisia, met the family through the program last year. This time, she is attending as “a family member.”

“We really kept in touch,” Gaha said. “Every time there is a family dinner, I take part in it.

“This year, I am not invited for Christmas (through the program) – I am part of the family. So she is the guest this year,” Gaha said, looking at Konaté.

Gaha was also present alongside the TremblayDevirieux family to greet Konaté that Saturday.

“We insisted to keep you. You have no choice,” Tremblay told Gaha, prompting laughs from everyone around the coffee table.

Julie Tremblay-Devirieux, the older of the family’s two daughters, recalled an interesting anecdote from last year, when Gauthier Mertens de Wilmars, a Belgian student, joined Gaha and the family for a traditional réveillon dinner. The young man, a devout Catholic, had wanted to attend midnight mass.

“It was the first time in my life that I went to the Christmas mass,” said TremblayDevirieux, a 24-year-old master’s student at the Université de Montréal.

“We’re not a practising family,” her mother explained. “In fact, I think I am the only one who practises a bit in the household.”

After their Christmas gathering, the Tremblay-Devirieux family invited Gaha and de Wilmars to their cottage in the Lanaudière region.

“It was great. I felt integrated, like in a family,” de Wilmars said yesterday in a phone interview from Belgium. “We shared the tasks – cooking, for example, conducting errands.”

Gaha said her family does not usually celebrate Christmas, as she is a Muslim. She had been used to spending the holidays with her loved ones, however. “It was really difficult, especially with the change of country, the change of temperature – there are so many differences. So being left alone is not easy.”

In this context, the sponsorship program allowed her not only to discover another culture but also to spend the holidays with others, Gaha said.