“When you flee your country, you
don’t even know where you’re going, what direction you’re going. You say, ‘OK,
I need to save my life.'”
IsseAbukar pulls out a box of pictures, a postcard of Mogadishu,
Somalia, before it was
ravaged by civil war, and a business card, frayed and yellow with age. The box,
says Abukar — a former partner in his family’s
weaving company — contains everything he brought from his motherland.
In a classroom at the FamilyLearningCenter,
a city school district program that holds classes for non-native English
speakers, another Somali describes her family: herself, her husband, and three
children. American life is good, she says through a translator. She has, she
claims, never experienced much loneliness or culture shock or linguistic
barriers. Later in the interview, however, she breaks down and cries. There is
a fourth child left in Somalia,
a daughter that immigration services refuse to recognize as part of her family.
“Always, she calls and she’s crying,” the woman says. “And then I start
crying.” For the briefest moment, the woman’s pain takes shape, becomes
palpable. “I don’t want to talk about her,” she says, and she rises from her
seat. A door clicks.
A tiny box; a tiny
omission; a tiny store of memories containing only those things worth
remembering. There is no denying it: Compared to the dangers of living
in a refugee camp or hiding from rebel forces or wondering if there will be
enough water to last the day, this life is better. This is heaven. This is
home? Maybe.Sometimes. It
depends.
Those
unfamiliar with African culture and history tend to see all Somalis — and
indeed all Africans — as a single entity. But for Somalis, who watched their
country disintegrate into civil war 15 years ago, the lines dividing them run
deep. Clan loyalties dominate, and though many Somalis in America
and elsewhere are working to shed those distinctions, time beats to a slow
drum. Somalia
itself is in ruins. Anarchy reigns.
But if suffering could be measured,
few would know its depths as keenly as the Somali Bantu, a minority group that
has suffered centuries of social and educational marginalization. The Bantus
first came to Somalia
in the 18th century as slaves from Mozambique
and Tanzania,
but few of them managed to assimilate into mainstream society even after
slavery ended in the early 1900s.
The Bantus became especially
vulnerable when civil war broke out in 1991. Because agriculture networks
collapsed with the war, the largely agrarian Bantus were among the few with
stockpiles of food. Lacking clan protection due to their minority status, both
bandits and civilian Somalis robbed, raped, and killed Bantus with impunity. An
estimated 10,000 Bantu had fled to Kenyan refugee camps by 1994. In the camps,
however, Kenyans and Somali refugees continued to target the Bantus, who were
forced to set up along the compound’s dangerous outskirts.
Recognizing that Somali Bantus could
never return to their homeland, the United
States government agreed to let 12,000 Bantu
refugees resettle here about five years ago. It was among this country’s
largest relocation efforts in two decades, and its largest effort ever with
African refugees. The first wave of Bantu refugees began arriving in 2002.
Typical of refugees from other countries, most Bantus relocated to smaller
cities, where resettlement agencies hoped they would experience less
disorientation and culture shock.
In Rochester,
there are now more than 300 Somali families, of which about 60 are Bantu.
Ironically, as the two groups begin to reconcile their differences thousands of
miles from home, it is often the Somali refugee who is best equipped to help
the Bantu. Whereas most Bantus cannot speak Somali, the country’s main dialect,
many educated Somalis can speak at least a rudimentary form of the Bantu
dialect, MaayMaay. They
are also more likely to have acquired some English either during their time in America
or in Somali schools.
While
refugees in general face a host of challenges upon arriving in this
country, from securing a job to learning English, Somalis and Somali Bantus
often view their role in this country from different vantage points. What it
means to be Somali-American fragments, to some extent, along class lines.
For Abukar,
a senior member representative for the Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union, the
overarching goal has been to regain what he lost when he came to the United
States 10 years ago. “You see, when I start
I was working different jobs,” he says. “Any job I go, I don’t care, you know,
what I’m doing. But I was just looking about how I can support my family.
Second, I was thinking about how you can change your life. Right now, I have skilled
job. Still I’m not happy. You know why? Because I’m not free,
because I work for someone. I used to have my own business. I never
worked nobody; my father never worked nobody.”
Jennifer Carroll, a family doctor
with BrownSquareHealthCenter
on Lyell Avenue,
says Abukar’s attitude is typical of those who have
lost everything. “When you see that kind of dramatic drop in socioeconomic
status, in the best-case scenario you work really hard to get back to where you
were,” she says.
But for Somali Bantus, dreaming —
even the ability to dream — can be new and disorienting. Says 21-year-old Aweys Hussein, a Bantu who relocated here with his wife and
family three years ago: “We wasn’t happy. It was
difficult. We don’t know where we can go. It was a difficult life.” Hussein’s
come a long way, though. Aside from becoming a father, he managed to move into
his own apartment, find a job at Wegmans, and begin
working toward his GED. His 18-year-old wife, BisharaKasim, is in 10th grade at JeffersonHigh School. She wants to be a
doctor. And in a society that values large families, Kasim
is thinking the unthinkable: two kids. But they are young and less set in their
ways than their elders.
Through a translator, Hussein’s
father, AbdurahimMukumbira,
says he hopes to own a house in a few years. But with eight children, including
one just born a few months ago, limited English ability, and a job as a
dishwasher at an AIDS clinic, Mukumbira must still rely on food stamps, Medicaid,
reduced-price school lunches, and housing allowances. His wife stays home to
tend to the baby. Asked if he wants any more children, Mukumbira chuckles. “Only God knows that,” he says.
For
all their differences in social status, age, and upbringing, Carroll, who has been studying the
Somali community for a decade, says Somalis are bound by one of humanity’s
darkest and most powerful forces: trauma. “The cross-sectional studies that
have been done across a variety of refugee populations show routinely across
the board that over 85 percent to 90 percent have either felt their life
directly threatened or witnessed the life of a loved one being threatened,” she
says. “The scope of exposure to traumatic experiences is staggering.”
Dehydration, starvation, poverty, attackers in the bushes, unemployment, despair, nightmares:
This is a refugee camp. It is a place, says Abukar,
where air and waterborne diseases run rampant, where the line between life and
death dims.“If you need to survive,
it’s fine. If you need to die, it’s fine,” he says. “There’s
no medication. If you’re sick and you need to go to hospital,
and if you don’t have money, you will die. My mom, she died in the
refugee camp. Malaria. Not big disease. Malaria only.”
How one responds to trauma differs
from person to person, says Carroll, but she adds that many Somalis externalize
emotional concerns as physical ones. That means that joint pain can signify
muscle-clenching flashbacks; headaches, recurring nightmares. “There is some
stigma about which symptoms get expressed and which don’t,” Carroll says.
But refugees here know that they are
the lucky ones. That knowledge, however, carries with it the weight of
responsibility. Traumatic disorders compound present-day stresses: the guilt of
abandoning loved ones, the expectation of happiness, and the strains of
poverty. “Another cause of mental problems that emerged is the theme of
post-migration stress, such as protracted economic strain in the United
States with the pressure to provide for
family members remaining in Africa,” wrote Carroll in a
University of Rochester-funded study of how mental illness is understood,
expressed and treated among Somali refugees.
MuminaShangolo, a full-time student at the FamilyLearningCenter,
says finances are very tight these days. Her husband earns minimum wage and can
barely support his family of five, and Shangolo
periodically sends money to Africa so her father and
sister can buy their medications.
Many Somalis’ economic troubles are
exacerbated by their large immediate families — an asset turned liability. Abukar jokes that in Somalia,
children are like social security: The more one has, the better the retirement
options. Not true in America,
though, where the cost of living is among the highest in the world.
Despite their myriad pressures,
Somalis seldom receive private counseling, says Carroll. This disinclination
toward psychiatric care likely stems from several factors, from Somalis’
reluctance to discuss personal matters with a stranger to fears associated with
riding public buses where signs are entirely in English.
Moreover, one of the greatest
challenges for both psychiatric and medical practitioners is finding
translators who speak English, MaayMaay and Somali. As it stands, many Bantus struggle to
communicate through their former persecutors. “The Somali Bantus were a slave
class. I’ve had Somali Bantus look at a translator who’s more of a Somali
background and say, ‘Every time I look at that guy I see the guy who shot my
father and raped my sister,'” says Louise Bennett, a family doctor with
Westside Health Services on Genesee Street.
NibhanGudle, a Somali translator at Westside, says the need for
both Bantu and female translators is essential to meet the needs of his
community. He has, he says, seen many cases where patients respond to doctors’
questions based on what they think he would expect to hear. Others simply never
come back. “They say, ‘OK, thank you very much. We’ll be back to you.’ That’s
it, they’re gone,” he says.
“Gone.” These
anonymous patients fade into Rochester
life, much as they would have faded into life at a refugee camp, or hidden from
rebels on the long trek to the Kenyan border, or, for women, shielded sexual
assaults or rapes from family members.
The silent and the invisible — few
fit this definition better than Somali women. Born into a traditional Muslim
culture, Somali women seldom receive education or work outside the home.
Virginity at marriage is sacrosanct and most sexual crimes go unreported, says
Carroll, who has spent the last year interviewing 34 Somali women with funding
from the Department of Health and Human Services. “A lot of women who had been
raped or sexually assaulted and several of whom had acquired HIV as a result
didn’t want that information included in their asylum claim even if it would be
their ticket to freedom to the US,”
she says. “To them it would be better to have their asylum claim denied than to
let people know what happened.”
In addition, while female
circumcision is a taboo here in America,
some studies report that more than 90 percent of Somali women undergo the
procedure, which ranges in severity from removal of part of the clitoris to
excision of all of the clitoris and labia minora.
“When I first started taking care of this community, I didn’t know how to
approach the issue,” Carroll says. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t address
this because it’s part of women’s health.”
While most Americans’ reaction to the
procedure is one of shock, even revulsion, many Somali women think that in
light of current hardships, now is not the time to attack the time-honored
tradition, Carroll says. So her approach has been to ask women if they have
been circumcised, if they’re experiencing any difficulties, and then move on.
“Keep the moralizing, keep the political stuff out of
it. Just focus on what is the meaning of this for this particular person right
now. That’s how I think about it,” she says.
One of the greatest challenges of her
project, says Carroll, was simply convincing the women that their stories were
worth telling. “One of the lessons we learned as part of our project was that
in certain countries or backgrounds where women don’t have the same role as
men…and often don’t have the same educational opportunities or opportunities to
become independent outside the home, they’re not used to people asking their
opinions about things. A common answer that we would get is, ‘Well, I can’t
tell you anything that you don’t already know. You’re the doctor.’ So engaging
women in ways that would really allow them to speak freely and comfortably
about their own experiences was actually harder than it might seem,” says
Carroll, who relied on female interpreters only.
HassanAbdi, an Ethiopian-born Somali who has been in America
for 15 years, says Somalis must also re-evaluate gender roles. “It’s not hard
to change,” he says. “It’s a matter of not knowing how to change.” Often, he
says, men tell their wives that it’s OK if they don’t work or get a driver’s
license or learn English. The thought process, he says, goes like this: “I tell
my wife not to drive. I’m thinking I’m doing positive. Now, 10 years, five
years later, what I’m thinking now? ‘Oh shit, she can’t drive.'”
Ironically, says AbdullahiJama, a Somali case manager for CatholicFamilyCenter,
a long history of subjugation actually helps Bantu women adjust to life in America.
Compared to Somali women from more advantaged backgrounds, these women are more
willing to use public transportation and get jobs, however menial, he says.
This role reversal is evident at the FamilyLearningCenter,
where most of the Somali students are of Bantu origin. “Bar, car, F-F-F, fff, faaar,” enunciates ESL
teacher, Robert Shaver. The class repeats after him. A few giggle as Shaver
feigns falling off the desk, saying: “Don’t ffffall
off the desk.”
Surrounded by their peers, their kids
safe in the day care center downstairs, the women appear relaxed, at ease.
Asked why she wants to learn English, HawaMsanda, a mother of five, says through a translator that
then she will be able to do everything: drive a car, buy groceries, maybe even
get a job. Her days before the learning center, she says, consisted of getting
the kids ready for school and housekeeping. Even that was OK, though, she says
— much better than the 15 or so years she spent at the refugee camp.
For the women and men who spend seven
hours a day, five days a week in a classroom, the struggle to learn English is
admirable. Spoken fluency can take years; written ability even longer. But if
before the future was too bleak to ponder, now it can at least exist. Carroll
says that the move from thinking entirely in the present to pondering the
future is a subtle but powerful shift. “We talked about this a lot when we were
doing our analysis,” she says. “When you’ve had a life that was so marked by
uncertainty and day-to-day survival, how do you change your life framework to
start to think about future-oriented goals?”
As
Somalis begin to envision new possibilities in their own lives, they often
look to their children to fulfill the American Dream — to go to college or
buy a house or get off welfare.
The truth is, some will and some
won’t. Many Somali children, especially those whose entire life was spent in an
refugee camp, have
never known what it’s like to feel safe, or to have enough food, or to view
themselves as anything but outsiders. What these children have experienced,
says Mike Boucher, a social worker with St. Joseph’s
NeighborhoodCenter
who has worked closely with Rochester’s
Somali community, confounds comprehension. “When I hear the word ‘camp’ I don’t
know what that means,” he says.
Despite America’s
luxuries — water fountains and escalators and textbooks for all — many of
these children find this country disorienting. They must struggle to belong,
for the most part, in difficult urban environments without English fluency or
even a basic understanding of this country’s social norms. And, says Boucher,
the onus is on Somali children to preserve their traditional Muslim roots,
which can mean eschewing everything from alcohol to dating to premarital sex.
Compounding the problem is the fact that few Somali parents — particularly
those of Bantu origin who themselves never learned to read, write or complete
basic math equations — can help their children adjust academically.
That presents a huge problem because
many refugee children’s education already lags behind that of their American
peers, says Bennett, who visited Kakuma Refugee Camp
in Kenya a few
years ago. While the majority of children went to school in the camps, she
says, their training “looks good on paper.”
Aside from being behind academically,
many Somali children wind up in special education classes, Bennett adds,
because English as a Second Language tests typically rely on Western concepts.
For example, some tests ask children to identify fruits that don’t exist in
their native desert climate. “If you talk about African foods or African
backgrounds they might be able to test better than if you put them into an
American urban setting,” she says. “They should be tested in their own
language, and they should be tested using some non-written and verbal
materials.”
Under the current system, adds Abukar, children are placed in grades according to their
age, which means that a 15-year-old who has never even held a book will become
a high school student. And with interpreters in short supply, Abukar and other English-speaking Somalis often translate
at parent-teacher conferences, or help these children with their homework.
American educators must create special programs for Somali refugee children, Abukar says.
Educating Somali children, however,
is a challenge facing communities across the country. The federal Education
Department recently determined that public schools in Springfield,
Massachusetts, failed to provide Somali
students with adequate educational services, the New York Times reported earlier this month. Although Springfield public schools will soon expand their
tutoring services and concentrate Somali students in fewer schools, Mary Beach,
assistant to the superintendent of the Springfield schools, said in the Times articlethat the biggest challenge is finding enough translators to meet
demand.
Abdi
worries that as parents and educators work out these kinks, Somali kids are
getting lost in the shuffle. And increasing numbers of Somali children are
getting involved with drugs, alcohol, and crime, he says.
Formal
support systems for Somalis do exist, but that help typically lasts for
only a few months. Most Somali families are initially paired with representatives
from CatholicFamilyCenter, a nonprofit organization
that receives federal funding to help refugees. CFC case workers help Somalis
acclimate to all aspects of daily life, from academic placement services to job
skills training to everyday logistics, such as finding the nearest grocery
store or using public transportation. The goal, says Jim Morris, CFC’s
resettlement program manager, is to help refugees become self-sufficient as
quickly as possible.
That’s partially because federal
funding for everything, save employment services, dries up after half a year.
“Within six months, to buy a car, to get a driver’s license, to get insurance
— it’s hard,” says Abdi. Many Somalis who have been
in the States longer help newcomers with transportation, paperwork, tutoring
and other daily challenges. But most Somalis interviewed agree that there is
great demand for long-term assistance.
Abukar
notes that very few Somali families — even those who have been here for
several years — own a home. “To own house, some people they scared. You know
why they scared? Because of mortgage payments. They
scared about the long-term payment. Some people they don’t have credit score.
Some people, right now they need to buy a house but when you save $30,000 and
you have to pay $38,000, they say ‘Wow, I don’t want to buy a house,'” he says.
“If the government supports those families, then they can afford to live.”
Aside
from serving as role models, interpreters, and ad-hoc taxi drivers, Somali
immigrants who arrived in America
years ago have also become social educators for newcomers struggling to belong
in a foreign culture. Abdi, for example, encourages
parents to support their children in activities outside of academics. They have
to realize that their children’s sports and hobbies are important, too, he
says. “I know one guy in HoneoyeFalls.
This one guy, he is very good with soccer, but I asked his father, would you
ever go to his game? He said, ‘No,'” Abdi recounts.
But in the perpetual tension between
assimilation and preservation,identity
means different things to different people. Where Abdi
emphasizes parental involvement in sports, others emphasize Islam or
traditional dance or the virtues of respecting your elders. Or
all of the above. What does it mean, really, to become American? Or more specifically, to become Somali-American?
For many children, home is a dusty
field in a Kenyan refugee camp or a foggy memory or, possibly, here. America.
The land of immigrants and second chances. And, for
the Somali, a place where one can begin to consider the future. How awesomely frightening.
There are certain questions we must
all ask, says Bennett. Not just as health-care professionals or social workers
or church leaders, but as individuals. As Americans.
“There is the myth of the great American melting pot. Come to the United
States, the land of opportunity. This is
what the United States
has stood for — opportunity and freedom,” she says. “The question is, What is the reality for people when they do actually come
here? What is their happiness level?”‘
For the 20 or so members of the
Somali Bantu Soccer Team, happiness is this: a bitterly cold February Sunday, a
concrete floor inside the South Avenue Recreation Center, one soccer ball, a
handful of shin guards, basketball shoes, soccer cleats, green and yellow
jerseys, and a wild “Ruuun!” shouted in English.
“Soccer,” jokes AwesoMkomuu, “is in our blood.”
For another group, happiness is knowing that in its own conflicted way America
will provide. “In the camp, you wake up in the morning. You don’t know where
you’re going. Your kids crying, they need milk. You don’t have money. You don’t
have charcoal. You don’t have furniture. You don’t have bed to sleep,” says Abukar. “But United States,
even if you don’t have insurance, you can go to a doctor. The government, they
will cover. You don’t have food, you go to social service, you
apply. If social service doesn’t give you food, you go to Open Door Mission.”
For others, though, happiness still
waits behind a closed door. Hidden in a gap in the floorboard, or tucked out of
sight in a refugee camp half a world away. If you ask Somalis if life is good,
they will always say “Yes,” says Jama. Do they mean
it, though? Maybe.Sometimes.
It depends.
But if attitude is survival, does it
matter?
SIDEBARS:
How to Flee 101
When IsseAbukar
and his wife, Khadija, fled Mogadishu,
Somalia, they left just
about everything — including each other. Isse
carried a camera, Khadija their daughter.
They made a choice, Isse explains.
“This militia, when they see all family together, they feel that this family is
together because they have money,” he says. “They will kill you,” adds his
brother, AbukarAbukar. The Abukars
share their story one wintry night from the comfort of their Northeast
Rochester home. The walls are decorated with maroon tapestries, Khadija’s favorite color. The kids are watching Cartoon
Network and drinking mango juice out of plastic glasses. It all feels a little
surreal.
Isse and Khadija
found each other at a Kenyan refugee camp a year and a half later. It was luck.
Or God.Or both. Both recount
stories of families who never discovered various members’ whereabouts. During
the Abukars’ four years in the camp, their hut burned
to the ground. Isse’s camera was spared. He took a
picture. The background is brown; dust swirls in the air.
AbdurahimMukumbirasays
when he fled, he was convinced his family would all be
killed by armed militia, or perhaps hungry animals. It took him three weeks to
get to Kenya.
He languished in a camp there for more than a decade. How one survives in a
camp varies, says BisharaKasim,
Mukumbira’s daughter-in-law. Example: Refugees with
bikes transport people back and forth; on an average day they earn about 40
Kenyan Shillings, or 50 cents.
Mukumbira
and Kasim arrived in Rochester
three years ago. Kasim’s five siblings and parents
stayed behind. Kasim would like to sponsor them to
come over as soon as she can. “They will come now,” she says. “I hope.”
Somali Relocation in Rochester
YearSomalisBantusTotal (people)
200035N/A35
200120N/A20
20023N/A3
200333538
200419147166
200531940
Note: These figures were provided by the CatholicFamilyCenter.
The actual numbers might be higher, since CatholicFamilyCenter
does not include Somalis who first immigrated to a different part of the United
States and then moved here. It also does not
take into account Somali families who moved here before 2000. Somalis in the
community estimate that about 500 to 600 families — or 3,000 Somalis (of both
Somali and Bantu origin) — currently live in the Rochester
region.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2006.
