An article worth reading in its entirety in today's Hartford Courant (12/26/2004), it is condensed here.Their New WorldRefugees Of Faraway Wars Are Being Resettled Here.
They Have Hope And Fear, And Feel Very Blessed.December 26, 2004
By RACHEL GOTTLIEB
Courant Staff Writer Some of the food is looking a little past its prime at the Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services food pantry on Market Street in Hartford. Some boxes of pasta are ragged, many tomatoes and bananas are well past ripe, some cans badly dented.
But Sister Dorothy Strelchun is handing it out to the Somali and Liberian refugees like it's manna from heaven. And the refugees accept it like the treasure it is. Sometimes, she says, they even horde it - keeping pounds and pounds of pasta or rice under their beds or in a closet....
...Viewpoint colors the immigrants' definition of danger, too. Ibrahim Omar Abdi, a 16-year-old freshman at Hartford Public High School, watched his mother die of stab wounds in the Kenyan refugee camp where he lived from the time he was 4 years old. His father died in Somalia....
...The U.S. Department of State is settling 12,000 Somali Bantus throughout the nation. It chose Hartford as a destination for some of the refugees "based on the comprehensive program we have here," Sister Dorothy says. "We have a very good track record in terms of employment and we have youth activities for the children and offer educational support. Many volunteers assist in mentoring and tutoring."...
...The Liberians are Christian, speak English and French and wear mostly Western dress. Liberia was formed in the 1800s by freed American slaves, so some of America's ways are prevalent there.
The Somalis, from the Bantu tribe, are Muslim, speak Somali and a little Swahili; the women and girls wear long drapes of fabric and cover their heads with flowing, colorful scarves. The Bantus, originally brought to Somalia from other East African countries as slaves two centuries ago, were caught between warring clans when war broke out in Somalia 14 years ago.
Dress, language and culture aside, the Liberians and Somalis blend as a single people as they sit together in the waiting room at the food pantry, scarred by years of war and facing years more of a new struggle to find their way in America....
...No one in the family has ever been to school. Maryan says that years ago, she tried to send her son, Mohamed Ahmed, to school in Kenya. He is 11 now, the child of her first husband, who died in the Kenyan refugee camp from wounds he suffered in Somalia. But Mohamed was having nightmares and screamed through the nights so he was too tired to go to school. Maryan withdrew him. But as soon as he gets his immunizations here, she will enroll him in school in Hartford....
...Laughter And Remembering
The Somali teenagers are spread out in a makeshift classroom in the state's former Democratic headquarters on Franklin Avenue. It takes about a month or so for the students to get all the immunizations they need for school and since most of them have never attended school, Catholic Charities set up these classrooms to get them acclimated to Western education.
Some of the students, along with their parents, arrive without ever having held a pencil. The Liberian students enroll immediately in neighborhood schools and so do some of the Somalis who know a little English. The rest of the Somalis attend a new arrival center set up for them at Martin Luther King Elementary School so they can study in Somali and learn English together. Principals say the elementary-age students adjust well and may catch up with their peers, but the high school students struggle, particularly in math because they never learned basic arithmetic.
As they reflect on their lives, the distance between the kids melts and they are sitting close to each other....
...Mohamed Omer tells his story first. He's a strapping 14-year-old with a long, rough scar on his neck. His mother was killed in Somalia before he fled, he says, and he doesn't know whether his father is alive or dead. An uncle brought him to Kenya...."If I think, I cry."
Bali Ahmed induces nervous laughter, too. "They killed my father and my grandfather in front of me," the 17-year-old says through an interpreter, recounting the day in Somalia when a band of rogue killers came to his house.
"They said, `You have money and a gun,'" Bali says, giggles spreading through the group. His father denied having either. "They beat him up to see if he was telling the truth. Then they shot him."
Bali says he was too young at the time to remember the event, but his uncle keeps the story alive for him....
Overwhelming Need
Robert E. Long is sitting at a Farmington Avenue coffee shop sipping a cup of tea. He's the chairman now of the city's school board and he's worrying about how to make the state legislature understand the demands on his teachers, the money he needs....
...They're respectful and eager to learn. But they're years behind their peers and everybody's watching those almighty standardized test scores to see if the school district is worthy of extra infusions of cash, to say nothing of keeping the funding it already receives....
...Long was incredulous.
How to make the suburban neighbors who help control the purse strings understand that Hartford has hundreds of new refugees, with more to come after New Year's Day?...
...If only the suburbs could understand Hartford's challenge, the city might get the help it needs, Long says. "They don't understand the scope of what we're dealing with."
On Darkness And Taxes
Alice Danso sighs as she opens her apartment door on the third floor. Her despairing breath is audible in the first-floor entry, her pain palpable and worthy of the dread it evokes....
...Alice's thoughts are thousands of miles and years away, dwelling on the last time she saw her husband, Foster, before he disappeared in the Ivory Coast....
...In Liberia, she was a happy bride. The framed picture from her wedding is testament to that. So are the four children she bore there. Her fifth, Junior, came later.
But Alice's father worked for the government and when war broke out, he was among the first killed. Insurgents then set his house on fire and her younger brother and sister died in the blaze.
She and Foster gathered their children and her mother and younger sister and fled on foot in 1990. They made their way to a refugee camp in Guinea. They were sheltered there for six years, but then war broke out in Guinea, and the Liberians were blamed. "They were hunting Liberians to kill them," she says.
They took off again, this time for the treacherous journey to the Ivory Coast... Mardea, a sophomore at Bulkeley High School. "Sometimes we had no food. We had to eat sweet potato leaves that we found on the farms just to survive."
In the Ivory Coast, the family found shelter in a United Nations refugee camp. They lived in a large, single-room building with about 100 other people. Residents couldn't leave their clothes or bed mats unattended or they would be stolen. The room was loud and privacy nonexistent....
...When war broke out in the Ivory Coast, residents were warned to stock up on enough food to get them through at least a month without going outside. With little food or water, the Dansos were bracing to die.
"My father said, `I cannot watch my family die,'" Mardea says.. "He went out to find food and it was the last time we saw him." That was Oct. 16, 2002....
...Until [this] November, that is. That was when word came that he was alive, in Ghana. It took some weeks more to get a phone number for him. Then, on Dec. 4, Alice and her children heard a voice they long thought was gone....
...Foster told the family that a group of men abducted him and drove him a long distance to fight in the war. "He had a little money in his pocket," Alice says, and bribed them for his freedom. But he was too scared to travel back through the country to the refugee camp and went instead to Ghana.
Alice is desperate to bring her husband to Hartford, but she can't think of how to do that....
...Alice gets up every day to go through a training program she found to be a home health aide. She looks forward to working. But for now she frets about how to repay the $4,000 loan she took out to pay for her family's airfare to America and worries that no one will lend her husband money if she doesn't begin making her payments.
While she worries about money, Alice can't help enumerating little miracles in her life. There are the food stamps and $800 a month in government aid. And Hartford's free public schools - a godsend. She even looks forward to paying her taxes once she begins working as a home health aide. "That is the main way to contribute to the welfare of this country, through taxes," she says. "I want to contribute to the welfare of this country. They did so much for my family."
Though the family's getting accustomed to their new home, it's hard for Alice to let go of her fears....
Anyone who wishes to volunteer their time or donate items can call 860-548-0059. Ask for Sister Dorothy. Copyright © 2004 by The Hartford Courant
