Young African immigrant's dreams getting back on track in Roanoke

Janvier Fataki kicked the soccer ball, his breath a misty cloud as he yelled at his players on the brisk January evening. “You’re walking,” he shouted, running across the soccer field and wearing a pink scrimmage jersey. “That’s not defense!”

Fataki, 22, an assistant soccer coach at William Fleming High School, scrimmages with the players he coaches so they see that he knows how to play the game. Plus, it forms relationships.

“The players enjoy playing with you and having fun with you,” he said. “You need to be friends with players for them to respect you and love you.”

Fataki learned to play soccer barefoot, kicking and chasing a ball made of plastic bags rolled and tied tightly together. Players raced to make a goal between two garbage cans, a cloud of dust hovering around them in a playing field mixed with dirt and patches of grass. That’s how kids learn to play soccer in a refugee camp in Burundi, where Fataki spent the first 17 years of his life.

Ten years of kicking and chasing the ball went by before Fataki felt soccer cleats hug his feet when he was 17 and living in Roanoke.

“I was so excited, my uncle bought me blue cleats,” he said. “I felt like a big player wearing that. You cannot imagine.”

Fataki got the teal blue cleats in the winter of 2018 after arriving in Roanoke from the refugee camp in central Africa. His mother fled the Democratic Republic of Congo the day he was born, taking his older brother, as well, in the midst of the civil war that was raging. Growing up in a refugee camp meant that Fataki had little to do but play soccer and dream about getting out.

“In Africa we don’t have jobs so the only way kids can focus is by playing soccer,” Fataki said.

In camp he dreamed of being a professional soccer player and having a career in technology.

“The only place to watch TV was at the hospital, so I would go and sit there and act like I was sick so I could watch TV,” Fataki said. “I was watching Elon Musk, and I was like, I want to be a good engineer.”

Fataki graduated from Patrick Henry High School in 2021 and was awarded a modest scholarship at Tusculum University in Tennessee. There he played soccer on the university team and thought about majoring in mechanical engineering.

“It was a dream come true to be the first person in my family to go to college,” Fataki said. “I was proud of myself.”

For the first time his dreams felt attainable, but they soon were derailed.

Just 3% of the world’s refugees are enrolled in higher education, compared to 37% of non-refugees globally, according to a 2019 report from the United Nations Refugee Agency Language, costs and lack of proper educational documentation are among the barriers that keep refugees from attending college, according to the report.

Navigating the future after high school can be a challenge for many students, but for a first-generation immigrant or refugee just learning English and a new culture, life can present many more challenges. Strong support systems are often necessary for first-generation American students like Fataki, who relied on soccer, his family, coaches, teachers and refugee outreach programs to help him along his path.

The Commonwealth Institute of Fiscal Analysis, a Richmond-based nonprofit that advocates for public policies that improve welfare of minorities, immigrants and other disadvantaged communities, reports that the English learner population in Virginia is less likely to enroll in higher education courses compared to their non-EL peers and that high school graduation rates in Virginia are sixth- worst in the country.

Fataki completed high school in a Burundi refugee camp just before he and five siblings came to the United States with their mom. He spoke six languages, but not English.

More than 70 languages are spoken by Roanoke City Public Schools’ nearly 14,000 students. Spanish is the most-spoken language of English learners, accounting for nearly 70% of all EL students. Swahili, the language of students who are primarily from Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo where Fataki was born, is spoken by 3% of English learners.

The DRC has been at war or facing armed insurgencies since 1998. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 500,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have left the country due to violence, and that number is growing with a resurgence of violence this year.

It takes a village, and soccer

Fataki spent most of his early life trying to survive, but in the United States he was determined to thrive. Soccer and being a part of a team, gaining support from community organizations and mentors helped him along his journey in the United States.

Fataki entered as a freshman at William Fleming High School, even though he was 17. He was a few years older than most of his peers and had already finished high school in the refugee camp.

“I had to learn English from A to Z, it was really hard,” Fataki said. “But I was really happy to get the opportunity of doing high school [in Roanoke]. Because not a lot of kids who come here get the opportunity of going to school, they just want to go and do jobs.”

In 2018 four in five refugees were displaced for extended periods of time, like Fataki, living in refugee camps through an entire school cycle from ages 5 through 18, according to the UN report, “Refugee Education in Crisis.”

The report suggests that refugee school enrollment can be improved by partnerships between governments, businesses, schools and universities, charities, and members of the public.

After arriving in Roanoke as a teenager, Fataki charged quickly toward his goals, playing on his high school’s varsity soccer team and learning English. The next year his family moved to the Patrick Henry school zone, where he continued to play soccer.

Despite his determination, he still faced hurdles to learn a new culture and new language.

“I remember the first day of school I was really confused,” Fataki said. “Everything is different for us so you have to learn from the beginning, you feel like you are a newborn.”

Tim Cintron, an English learner teacher at Patrick Henry High School, recalled working with Fataki when he first arrived at William Fleming and how driven the student was to learn. Cintron was teaching at Fleming at the time. “He always wants to find out the answer to something,” Cintron said. “He was never content not knowing. He wanted to know exactly what was happening, and how to do something and how to get that answer or how to solve a problem.”

Fataki said he was shocked to see students being disrespectful to teachers and their parents.

In his family’s culture, “when you grow up you have to respect your elders,” he said. “If you don’t, you get slapped.

“My father told me to respect my mom, respect everyone. Never put yourself that you know everything.”

Watching some students not try to learn frustrated him, especially because they were, as he put it, “born in America.”

“But you are failing your writing or reading test in school. That’s impossible for me to imagine. I tell myself, let me be born in America and see if I can speak. I will never fail.”

For a moment he considered stopping going to school after he said a few students said racist things to him.

“I was really hurt and crying and disappointed,” Fataki said.

He told Cintron about his feelings, and the teacher told him, “‘they are not taking anything from you, you are still Janvier,’” Fataki remembered Cintron saying. “‘Focus on you, don’t focus on them.’”

The advice helped.

“I always respect him for that advice and he’s one of my favorite teachers of all time,” Fataki said.

Cintron, who is also the head coach for the Patrick Henry girls JV soccer team and an assistant coach for the girls varsity team, said that sports and mentorship from community members can help English-learning students like Fataki, who might need a boost to achieve goals.

“I think it’s vital that these kids come and they have a support system that they feel comfortable with, and that they know people are backing them,” Cintron said.

Fataki made good friends on his soccer team at Patrick Henry, and formed close relationships with his teammates and head coach Chris Dowdy.

“We’re very diverse … with players coming from all over the place,” Dowdy said of the Patriots’ soccer program. He said that four different languages are spoken by players on the team. The situation was similar when Fataki played.

“Soccer helps you focus on school and do better in school,” Fataki said.

Dowdy agreed that soccer can bring together people from different backgrounds and cultures, who might not speak the same language. “There’s a lot of acclimating that they do in the language and immersing, but the game is like the undercurrent,” Dowdy said. “The game is the ultimate translator.”

Fataki also received support from Sue Nussbaum, whom he met through Mentoring Youth in Virginia (MyVA), a Virginia Department of Social Services program for refugee youths. Nussbaum, whom he affectionately calls “Mama Sue,” worked with Fataki to enroll in college, and the two have stayed in touch.

Commonwealth Catholic Charities (CCC), one of Virginia’s main resettlement agencies, has received funding for the MyVA program through the Office of New Americans since the grant was introduced in 2019. Marnie Mills, a mission advancement associate for the nonprofit, says mentors through the MyVA program help adolescents they serve achieve their academic goals. “Mentors help strengthen self-esteem, interpersonal and leadership skills, explore career and educational goals, and navigate other resources available.”

The MyVA program helps students with college applications, and explore educational or vocational opportunities. CCC has a 100% high school graduation rate, with 12 students currently participating, since the program started four years ago.

As Fataki worked with Nussbaum to make decisions about his future, Tusculum University’s soccer coach contacted him and encouraged him to apply to attend the university and play on the team.

“He got accepted based on his [academic] performance in high school, and then his soccer ability,” Nussbaum said.

Weinstein helped Fataki apply for student aid and said he received a small scholarship from Tusculum. Fataki also received funding to help with tuition through the Star City Soccer Foundation, a nonprofit that provides educational support for refugees and immigrants who live in Roanoke. Landon Moore, a longtime soccer coach and owner of Soccer Shots Southwest Virginia, started the foundation after working with refugees and immigrants through soccer and recognizing a need for extra resources to support them.

Playing soccer is not required to receive foundation funds, but for many, like Fataki, the game was already a part of his life. Moore, a former English teacher who coached soccer at William Fleming for eight years, saw firsthand how soccer brought disparate cultures together.

“This speaks to soccer as the global game and soccer as a kind of barrier breaker and soccer as a language that people around the world can share,” Moore said. “So, a lot of it is identity and hopefully a sense of community that comes with being a part of a team or something that is familiar.”

Moore said that sports can inspire students to do better academically if they want to remain eligible to be a member of a team.

“If soccer weren’t connected to the academic piece of it, then there might not be that same motivation,” he said.

Dowdy coached Fataki for three years at Patrick Henry and described him as resilient, a common character trait seen in players from different cultures because of difficulties they have endured, he said.

Fataki, who played defense, fits the description well.

“You can tell there’s something different about him in the way that he spoke to his teammates and the way he was so fired up,” Dowdy said, “And he was very, very passionate about what he did. I always called him a foxhole kid, because if I ever had to be in a foxhole in a battle, I’d take Janvier, first choice. Absolutely. He’s not scared of anything.

Surviving in a refugee camp

Life in a refugee camp gave him the resolve to overcome challenges he faced in the United States.

“To survive in camp, there are a lot of tough situations,” Fataki said. “It was really hard with my mom only and six kids. My mom, she’s my hero to me.”

The second oldest of his siblings, Fataki wanted to help his mom. There were no jobs in the refugee camp, but he gathered water. Fataki said he walked an hour every morning down the mountain to the river where he’d fill a box with as much water as he could carry. Then he hiked back up the mountain, balancing the weight of the water on his head, careful not to spill a drop, but trying not to be late for a 7:30 a.m. school start. He frequently went to class hungry. His family received one box of food to last them one month. “We only ate three or four days a week,” he said.

The journey for water took Fataki outside the camp where native-born Burundis and police officers were hostile toward Congolese refugees, he said, who were sometimes beaten, raped or killed. Fataki recalled an incident when he and a friend were harassed and ran back up the mountain, losing all the water they had gathered. Fataki, otherwise avoided harm.

“Some people don’t know how hard it is to live in a camp, or to live in a different county,” Fataki said.

He was grateful to come to the United States but said it has been hard to witness the extravagance.

“It’s hard to see how people are wasting stuff like water and you know that there are people who suffer to get that stuff. You feel like you want to cry, but you can’t cry. There’s nothing you can do.”

Despite the war in the DRC, Fataki’s father did not want to leave the Congo, and be sent to another country. He was worried about racism in the United States. Fataki had a close relationship with his father even though he visited the refugee camp less than once a year.

“He was my best friend, anything I struggled with my dad was there for me.”

The last time he saw his dad was at what was then called Bujumbura International Airport in Burundi, when Fataki came to the United States. Fataki recalled the day while showing, on his phone, one of the only pictures he has from Africa.

“I was so sad to leave him,” he said. In the photo, his dad’s arm is around him, they both have a buzzed haircut and wore red shoes and red T-shirts.

Dreams derailed

Fataki’s first year at Tusculum University did not go as planned.

The pressures of higher education while still learning English, paired with pressures of collegiate soccer and missing his family in Roanoke weighed on him. He worried about his family.

“I’m the one who keeps taking care of my sisters, making sure they do everything right at school,” he said. “They not getting into any activities, drugs, gangs or stuff, keep them away from the street. I always give them good advice from when we grow up and advice from our father.”

Then his father got a cancer diagnosis.

It all was too much. Fataki completed the school year at Tusculum, but his heart and mind were with his family in Roanoke and with his father in Africa. He sent the money that was refunded to him from his financial aid after his tuition and fees were paid to help pay for his dad to have chemotherapy.

“Mama Sue” helped to find a medical care facility in Kenya and gave money toward his father’s treatment. He felt as if his life was standing still as he tried to help his father from afar and his grades floundered.

Fataki decided to move back to Roanoke. He enrolled at Virginia Western Community College where school expenses were lower, which helped him save money to support his father’s cancer treatments.

Fataki kept his passion for soccer, even though he was no longer playing in college. He was hired to work as an assistant coach with the William Fleming boys soccer team, and Moore, who runs training facilities for young soccer players across the Roanoke Valley, hired him to coach players with his Star City Soccer Academy.

Fataki was settling back into a groove, when his father died in early December at age 40, right as final exams were nearing at Virginia Western.

Grief-stricken, Fataki did not show up for the exams.

“I love my dad so much,” Fataki said. “When he died, I did three weeks without going to school, without playing soccer, doing the things that I love the most. I was really giving up on my future.”

Fataki’s support network did not give up on him. His school counselor called and asked why he had not showed up for his tests. He confided in friends and mentors including “Mama Sue,” and eventually decided to return to his studies at the community college, this time with a lighter workload.

“I couldn’t stop there by giving up on the good people who helped me mentally and physically,” Fataki said.

Still, he grieves the death of his father.

“Since I lost my dad, I am struggling with something in my heart,” he said.

His main focus now is to save enough money to visit his dad’s grave in Kenya.

“I need to go there and see him. Talk to him. For him to open my doors.”

Trying to thrive

Fataki is enjoying college at Virginia Western and coaching and playing soccer. He plays with the Roanoke Latino Union Soccer League and considers pursuing a coaching career.

After a morning of studying for class at Virginia Western, Fataki walked through campus texting his players at William Fleming to make sure they were in school.

Zach Quest, William Fleming’s head coach, remembered Fataki when he played his freshman year at the high school. Quest, a math teacher, was the girls soccer coach at the time.

“I didn’t know him then but he impressed me in the way he played on the field and how he carried himself,” Quest said.

Now, Quest and Fataki work closely together coaching the boys varsity team at William Fleming.

“We just kind of bounce off of each other in a typical practice,” Quest said. “He’s been fantastic for the kids, who all look up to him because he went here and he played at PH and he was a very successful player and he has a huge drive to succeed and soccer has been his avenue for that.”

He said Fataki relates well to the William Fleming players.

Fataki is learning to speak Spanish so he can communicate better with many of the players who are still learning English.

Quest said that Fataki often yells simple Spanish words from the sidelines during games. Because of his multilingual skills, Fataki communicates with one player who speaks only French.

“This helps make them feel more comfortable,” Fataki said.

During a match in April, Mama Sue sat in the bleachers looking over William Fleming’s soccer field, not to see the game, but to watch Fataki coach. At halftime, she waited outside the locker room. Fataki walked next to a player, having a lively talk. He saw Mama Sue, and he gave her a hug, a smile spreading across his face. “Thanks for coming,” he said, before running off to help coach his team for the second half.

“Maybe coaching can become my career. I don’t know, everything changes in life.”