America ‘opened the door for me, and I just walked through it’

Seventeen years ago, he left his wife and young child to escape his war-torn west African country, to reach safety and to seek a more hopeful future for his family.

He walked approximately 100 miles over seven days with his two oldest sons and two of his brothers.

Last weekend, Paul Yarwaye, now a 55-year-old refugee from Liberia, took a different kind of walk that also changed his life.

He proudly strode across the Columbus Civic Center stage, reached for his Columbus State University diploma and secured that hopeful future.

“I was thanking God, first of all, for making it possible for me to reach that far,” he said. “I hope that my degree will give me a chance to impact on my society.”

Yarwaye intends to use his bachelor’s degree in health science to establish a not-for-profit organization to teach Liberians how to sanitize their drinking water. He also plans to teach disease prevention and health promotion. But first, he wants to further his education with a master’s degree. He is awaiting acceptance to the Master of Arts in Teaching program in CSU’s Department of Health, Physical Education and Exercise Science.

“It was a big step forward, at this age to get a bachelor’s degree,” he said. “I’m so excited, and I know this will help me to get a better job.”

Meanwhile, he works at Publix. Each month, Yarwaye, a former elementary school teacher, sends money home to Liberia, where his wife, Doris, cleans houses and cares for their two youngest children.

Since the family briefly reunited in the Ghana refugee camp, they haven’t lived together for 10 years, except for his two visits back to Liberia, whose second civil war ended in 2003.

“It’s been so hard,” he said. “I miss them; they miss me. We just talk on the phone. The process is too long to get them over here. However, we are getting to the point of them coming. Immigration just emailed me.”

That reunion is expected this summer.

“Another reason to celebrate,” he said with a laugh.

Now, he has five children, ages 14-22, two in Columbus and three living with Doris in Liberia.

Yarwaye explained that he left his wife and young child in 1999 because he saw it as his only viable option.

“People were shooting, and we got separated and we couldn’t get back together because of the fighting,” he said. “It was too dangerous. There was no way I could help anybody at home. … It was so terrible, a quarter of a million people died from that war.”

After reaching the Ivory Coast border, Yarwaye and the family members on this journey took a bus farther east to Ghana. They lived in a refugee camp for six years, until gaining permission in 2005 to resettle in the United States. They moved to Columbus to join his sister, Benita, and her husband, an American soldier stationed at Fort Benning.

Yarwaye earned an associate’s degree in pharmacy technology from Columbus Technical College and started attending CSU in 2013. That’s when his first adviser, Dustin Worsley, became his mentor.

“He put me on the right path,” Yarwaye said.

Worsley also is helping put more of Yarwaye’s family on the right path. Through the Columbus Church of Christ, he is raising money to buy plane tickets for the rest of Yarwaye’s family to move here.

“He has been so great to me,” Yarwaye said. “I really appreciate it.”

"I am grateful and honored to have crossed paths with Paul,” Worsley, assistant director of CSU’s Academic Center for Excellence (ACE), said in a news release. “His determination and persistence have been incredibly inspiring over the past few years.”

ACE helps nontraditional students such as Yarwaye. It contains CSU’s Adult Resource Center, open year-round to provide services and support.

“No matter the challenge or barrier, Paul has always met it with a smile and a positive outlook,” said Worsley, who also is CSU’s adult re-entry coordinator. “I expect Paul to be successful no matter what road he takes in life.”

Yarwaye is grateful for CSU welcoming him.

“Columbus State University is incredible, really, really incredible,” he said. “I learned a lot from people. There are good people there. I enjoyed the teaching and the fellowshipping, and everything has been so nice.”

The gratitude is similar to his feelings about this city and country. He called Columbus “a great place.”

“Columbus is quiet,” he said. “The crime rate is low, and you can do anything here in Columbus. People are friendly. The city is clean. I love that.

“… Above all, I am grateful to the United States. The United States is a wonderful country. It opened the door for me, and I just walked through it.”

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 1:08 PM with the headline "America ‘opened the door for me, and I just walked through it’."