Craig Dilger for The New York Times
The city of Portland, Me., drew a big crowd for its class intended to help immigrants from warm countries cope with the cold.
PORTLAND, Me. — Charlene Masengu left the Democratic Republic of Congo late last year, hoping to get asylum status in the United States after a wave of political violence made life at home unbearably dangerous. She made it to this coastal city last month, just before it was covered in more than 30 inches of snow, and she wondered, briefly, whether she had made a mistake.
"Deadly!" Ms. Masengu, 29, said in French, shaking her head as she remembered the snowstorm. "I didn't feel good at all. I wanted to leave."
Ms. Masengu was squeezed, notebook in hand, into a plain conference room at the city's center for refugee services. She and dozens of others were here to be schooled in a central piece of Portland's cultural curriculum for its growing population of new arrivals, many of whom are asylum-seekers from Central Africa: the art of handling a Maine winter.
The instructor, Simeon Alloding, a human services counselor here, sat at the front of the room, ticking off winter's many perils as clip art images of a penguin and an elephant decked out for cold weather hovered in a PowerPoint presentation behind him. "Everyone here has fallen, right?" Mr. Alloding asked as he began a discussion on how to navigate the city's icy sidewalks. "You don't walk too fast, you don't take long steps. You take shorter steps," he said, dispensing advice that even the most seasoned New Englander would do well to remember.
The workshop is part of a series of courses that new arrivals here seeking general assistance are required to take. On this slushy morning, there were more attendees than could possibly find seating, and late arrivals clustered around the entrances to the room, many still wrapped in winter coats and hats despite the stifling heat of the room.
Northern New England would seem an unlikely destination for immigrants from Central Africa, but many new arrivals — who include a steady number of refugees and a rapidly growing number of asylum seekers, who say they are refugees but whose claims have not yet been evaluated — are drawn here by referrals from family and friends, as well as the relatively low crime rates of this region's small and manageable cities. "Big cities are more challenging, and more terrible to people who have nothing, including language," said Mr. Alloding, who came to Portland himself after leaving Sudan in 1995.
Still, for this growing population, winter — especially during stretches like the last several weeks, when heavy snowfalls have come one after another — compounds the difficulties of life as a new arrival. Amel Joudha, an Iraqi refugee who arrived here in mid-February, said she initially stayed in a shelter that provided her with space only in the evening, leaving her to navigate cold streets during the day. "I was sick," Ms. Joudha said, in Arabic. "The streets were icy." She said another Iraqi saw her on the street and took her in; she has since found an apartment.
Mr. Alloding asks his students to list the clothing they need to stay warm in frigid conditions.
"Socks," says Abraham Conde, who is from Nigeria, with some conviction, before Mr. Alloding explained the merits of scarves and the absolute necessity of boots. He showed the class his long johns, peeking out from beneath his sleeves, and reminded his students to send their children into the snow with an extra pair of gloves in their pockets.
"Children are forgetful — they get warm and they throw everything away," he warned.
More than anything, he says, his students have to learn how to bring the weather into their daily calculus. "The weather forecast — you have to plan ahead. The best way to do that is wake up in the morning, put the TV on and look at the cancellations," Mr. Alloding said.
Miguel Chimukeno, from Angola, rose to ask a question in Portuguese, which another student translated to French, which the French interpreter, Eric Ndayizi, posed to Mr. Alloding.
"He's low income — zero income — and you said they should watch TV and know some information. How does he get TV?" Mr. Ndayizi asked.
"There's nobody that's going to issue out TV's," Mr. Alloding said. "My only suggestion is that you talk to your neighbors."
One of the biggest winter-related issues refugees face, Mr. Alloding said, is dealing with the heat in their apartments. "Some landlords have evicted some of my clients," he told the class. "There is a complaint that a certain population will open the heat at 90 and keep it on. They are under law to provide you with a temperature of no more than 67."
Wrapping up class, Mr. Alloding mildly suggested that his students try to enjoy the winter.
"I know most of you don't have fun in the snow — maybe children, I don't know," Mr. Alloding said. "The snow looks beautiful during Christmas. It's white, there are no insects flying around, that's the fun of it."
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