Local Restaurant Hosts Community Meal to Support Refugees

A community luncheon was held at Vimala’s Curryblossom Café last Sunday to recognize refugees and other immigrants that have resettled in Chapel Hill.

Along with café owner Vimala Rajendran, the event was made possible by the Refugee Community Partnership of Carrboro and Love Chapel Hill, a contemporary Christian ministry.

Matt LeRoy, the teaching pastor of Love Chapel Hill, claimed that his congregation was compelled to sponsor the dinner based on their interpretation of Christianity.

“The table is always a symbol of alignment,” he explained. “We wanted to invite our neighbors to the table, to humbly come to the table ourselves.”

According to LeRoy, the refugee population in Chapel Hill is growing, with transplants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Syria having taken up residence in the town.

“From the numbers that I have seen, around 1,000 or so are from Burma [Myanmar], and I believe around 30 that are here from Syria and then around 20 from the Congo,” he offered.

One of those transplants is Zeed Al-Zoubi, a 42-year-old Syrian who was allowed last year to resettle in the United States along with his wife and six sons.

“It has become my adopted home,” he claimed.

Al-Zoubi spoke through an interpreter while answering questions about the event, his plans for the future and adapting to life in a Western country.

“There’s an impression where he came from that the American peoples are just too loose, too free,” noted Al-Zoubi’s translator. “He feels that the American public […] is very disciplined.”

Over 15,000 refugees from Al-Zoubi’s country of origin passed through the US State Department’s Refugee Processing Center in 2016, with approximately 700 of them resettling in North Carolina last year based on data from the US Refugee Admissions Program.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-profit research group, the estimated cost to resettle one Middle Eastern refugee during an initial five-year period is over $64,000.

Photo by Bruce Rosenbloom/WCHL.