This story originally published online in The Assembly.
Two days after Christmas 2024, Mangar arrived in Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport in pouring rain. With him were his pregnant wife, their six children, and four suitcases packed with the weight of 13 years in Kenya’s refugee camps.
He had never seen North Carolina. His only glimpse came from a pamphlet handed to him by the International Organization for Migration. It mentioned a museum, a coliseum, and some mountains. “This is an old city where people have lived a long time,” he remembered thinking…