Posted on 05/17/2004 4:43:55 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Refugees from a persecuted Somali Bantu tribe find homes, help and hope in Columbus
Monday, May 17, 2004
Encarnacion Pyle
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Crouched on the floor of a dollar store on the North Side, Fatuma Sheikh suspiciously eyed the hot-pink clothes hangers a social worker had handed her. "Whatever these are, I don’t need them," the Somali Bantu woman said in Maay Maay, her native tongue. "Oh, but you do. All of your clothes are on the floor now," Nadia Kasvin told Sheikh, 38, and four other Bantu women in English. "They’ll help you keep your clothes clean and last longer."
Sensing the women’s continued confusion, Kasvin tucked a hanger into her shirt to show how it is used. When that didn’t work, she draped a toddler’s T-shirt on it.
"Ohhhh," Sheikh said in a fit of giggles. "This really is a wonderful — but very strange — country."
The women and their families are among the first wave of as many as 14,000 Somali Bantus, a persecuted African tribe, whom the federal government is resettling into Columbus and around the country during the next two years.
The journey has not been easy.
Red tape instituted after the Sept. 11 attack delayed the tribe’s resettlement and stemmed the flow of other Somalis into the United States, from 5,000 in fiscal 2001 to 239 in 2002, said Kelly Gauger, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department.
Refugees now must be fingerprinted and pass health, political and psychological requirements before entry because of terrorism fears.
Since mid-March, 11 Bantu families totaling 56 people have arrived in Franklin County. At least 100 more people are expected by October 2005.
Columbus is considered an ideal city for resettlement because of its inexpensive housing, availability of entry-level jobs and growing population of Somali immigrants, who now number more than 27,000, said Beth Gerber, associate director of Jewish Family Services.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has a partnership with Jewish Family Services, is one of 10 social-service groups nationwide that have federal contracts to help Bantu refugees adjust to life in the United States.
Poor, uneducated and marginalized, the Bantus will face different struggles from many of their predecessors who left Somalia and settled here.
Descendants of slaves from Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique who were taken to Somalia in the late 19 th century, the Bantus cannot return to the homes they fled. In Somalia, they are rejected for their darker skin and are often called jareer, which means "kinky hair," and adoon or habash, references to their slave origins.
Denied schooling, land ownership and everyday rights, the Bantus remain pariahs, even though most are Muslim.
Few speak English. More than half are children. And most have kept time by the position of the sun in the sky and are not familiar with using dates, which is why everyone in the refugee camps is assigned a birthday of Jan. 1 of the year they were born.
A majority of adults have never attended school and do not read or write in their own language. Some have never seen a building that wasn’t made of mud. Running water, telephones, TVs and kitchen and laundry appliances are foreign to most Bantu refugees.
"Flush toilets instead of latrines. Beds instead of straw mats. A modest apartment sparsely decorated with secondhand furniture seems like a miracle," said Mussa Farah, a Bantu who came to the United States from a refugee camp in Kenya in 1998 and is working as a translator for Jewish Family Services.
Even a quick trip to the Dollar Tree Store on Morse Road revealed many wonders as the women shopped for cleaning and household supplies they never knew existed.
"Ahhhh, I need this," said Batula Hussein, 35, holding up a canary-yellow feather duster. "I like how it feels."
"I thought you said curtains were for windows. Why is this for showers? And what is a shower again?" asked Hajiya Juma, 22.
"Now, ladies, remember: Don’t buy food with your money," Kasvin instructed as they marched past aisles of Cheez-Its, Oreos and peanut butter. "That’s what food stamps are for."
The outing became equally educational for other shoppers as they asked the women about their colorful shaash dangos (head scarves), cambuur-garbeets (blouses) and gonfos (wraparound cloths).
One little girl peeked around her father’s leg to watch as Atika Musse, 40, balanced a cleaning tub filled with bottled water on her head.
But of all the wonders the Bantu refugees have encountered, what they treasure most is the sense of security they’ve found.
"We no longer have to live in fear," said Ali Ibrahim, 39, who resettled March 24 in Columbus with his wife, Batula Mohamed, 32, and their four children, ages 1 to 9.
Before fleeing Somalia in 1992, Ibrahim, a truck driver, witnessed the execution of his mother and father by marauding militias during the civil war.
"I could never go back," he said through an interpreter while sitting on a neighbor’s floor at Breckenridge Apartments on the North Side. "The memories would kill me."
Like many others, Ibrahim and his family fled the fighting and famine to the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, where more than 130,000 refugees still live. Without clan protection, many were robbed, raped and murdered by rebels and rival clansman during the long journey across the windswept desert.
United Nations reports show that bandits attack the Bantus more frequently than they do the other Somali refugees, said Hassan Omar, who heads the Somali Community Association.
At Dadaab and later Kakuma, a Kenyan refugee camp on the other side of the country, families such as Osman Muso’s huddled in mud huts as bullets whizzed overhead.
"Even in the refugee camps, we did not find refuge," said Muso, 26, whose face has been sculpted by sun, wind and rain during 12 years of camp life.
They endured relentless dust storms, triple-digit temperatures and malaria outbreaks. And their history of marginalization, slavery and victimization has left many Bantus with low self-esteem and other mental-health problems, said Enid Fisher, who manages the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ refugee program.
"They escaped their oppressors in Somalia only to live among them in Kenya," Fisher said.
Suspicion and resentment might await some Bantus being resettled in the United States.
Several of the Bantu refugees said they’ve been called names, slapped and stoned by blacks in their apartment complexes in the past weeks.
"We thought America was a land of peace," said Mohamed Shoble, 23. "I don’t understand it. Our skin color is the same as our African-American brothers."
Others, including several of the refugees, fear that the government isn’t doing enough to prepare the Bantus to succeed in America when federal and charity dollars run out.
"I’m supposed to start paying my rent on my own starting June 1, and I don’t know English or have a job yet," Shoble said through an interpreter. "I’ve never been so scared in my life."
But the Bantus are known as hard-working and resourceful, he said. "And America is the land of opportunity and good living."
epyle@dispatch.com
Words fail me.
"We thought America was a land of peace," said Mohamed Shoble, 23. "I don’t understand it. Our skin color is the same as our African-American brothers."
*** Oh dear.
Psst... Want to work the system? Check out Lewiston, Maine.
The author has a wierd name.
I don't get why they offer these people FOOD STAMPS. My best friend asked me one day why she keeps getting a case of milk, I explained what WIC was. She immediately recoiled in horror *LOL*
I read your post before I read the entire article and figured you were being humerous about the food stamps.
Unfortunately,you weren't-----your tax dollars at work,but not at work for you.
Can't other African countries take these people in? Why on earth are we doing it?
I don't get the food stamp thing. Again NYS started running food card commercials on the radio :sigh:
We are in the 12th year of the Clinton Administration.
There is one great thing about living in Washington DC. It such a certainty that the democratic nominee will carry the electoral votes here that there is no reason to ever vote for the GOP lesser of two evils. So I can safely vote for a third party candidate or not vote for President at all, and not dirty myself by casting a vote for a non-leader like G. Bush who would purposely inflict injuries, like the one described in this article, upon the US of A.
Hey, at least they are entering the country through legal means...
The Somali refugee population in Columbus is HUGE. If you live in the area, there are several somali restaurants and even some somali shops together in strip malls (Somali malls). I actually have visited a few places, had some Somali students last year. The food isn't all that bad, I liked Somali tea (like chai).
There is a charter school that was started for them, International Academy of Columbus.
They are taking menial jobs for the most part, since not many are educated.
Wonderful. This ought to get the country moving again. No, really, it will. In a downward direction, of course.
Bend over, America. While the Somalians might find more help, hope etc., life in these United States continues to go downhill for the American worker and taxpayer. Their social experiment isn't fairing very well in Maine. Towns are going broke and unemployment is rampant. Crime is up.
They are MUSLIM! Good luck Columbus, you will need it!
A nugget of good news.
These folks have been so under the radar of the system for so many years, it is scary.
No wonder my kids tell me they smell like hamsters at school...
Ahh...but hamsters on food stamps. Check out Tim Horton's at 161 and Cleveland Ave. They've taken over and run off American blacks and whites.
Our tax $'s at work.
Your kids say that?
I grew up in Needham. Have many relatives in Maine (Bangor to Caribou). I've followed the Lewiston story. They're far worse off than Columbus.
Yep, they are sick of tripping over them in the halls too...it really PISSES ME OFF that these people can take time out to praise Allah in our school systems while our own children can no longer pray.
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