March 10,
2003
Africa's
Lost Tribe Discovers American Way
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
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AKUMA, Kenya — The engines
rumbled and the red sand swirled as the cargo plane roared onto the dirt
airstrip. One by one, the dazed and impoverished refugees climbed from the
belly of the plane into this desolate wind-swept camp.
They are members of
Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of
Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia
two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil
war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's.
Yet on this recent day,
the Bantu people were rejoicing as they stepped from the plane into the
blinding sun. They were the last members of the tribe to be transferred
from a violent camp near the Somali border to this dusty place just south
of Sudan. They knew their first trip in a flying machine was a harbinger
of miracles to come.
Over the next two years,
nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya — about 12,000 people
— are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest
refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the
mid-1990's, State Department officials say.
The refugees will be
interviewed by American immigration officials in this camp, which is less
violent than the camp near Somalia. The interview process has been slowed
by security concerns in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Despite the repeated
delays, the preparations for the extraordinary journey are already under
way.
Every morning, dozens of
peasant farmers take their seats in classrooms in a simple one-story
building with a metal roof. They study English, hold their first notebooks
and pens, and struggle to learn about the place called America. It is an
enormous task.
The Bantu, who were
often denied access to education and jobs in Somalia, are mostly
illiterate and almost completely untouched by modern life. They measure
time by watching the sun rise and fall over their green fields and mud
huts.
As refugees, they have
worked the soil, cooked, cleaned and labored in backbreaking construction
jobs, filling about 90 percent of the unskilled jobs in the camp in Dadaab,
Kenya, where most Bantu people lived until they were transferred here last
year. But most have never turned on a light switch, flushed a toilet or
held a lease.
So the students here
study in a classroom equipped with all the trappings of modern American
life, including a gleaming refrigerator, a sink, a toilet and a bathtub.
They are learning about paper towels and toilet cleanser and peanut butter
and ice trays, along with English and American culture.
Refugee officials here
fear that the Bantu's battle to adjust to a high-tech world will only be
complicated by American ambivalence about immigrants since the terrorist
attacks in the United States.
The Bantu are practicing
Muslims. Women cover their hair with brightly colored scarves. Families
pray five times a day. In Somalia, they were in a predominantly Muslim
country often described as a breeding ground for terrorists.
The American government
requires refugees from such hot spots to undergo a new series of security
clearances before they can be resettled in the United States. The new
system has delayed the arrival of thousands of refugees, leaving them to
languish in camps where children often die of malnutrition.
But most people here are
willing to do what it takes to live in a country that outlaws
discrimination. While they wait, they learn about leases and the
separation between church and state, and they practice their limited
English.
About 700 Bantu have
gone through this cultural orientation. By the end of September, State
Department officials say, 1,500 are expected to be resettled in about 50
American cities and towns, including Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; San Diego;
and Erie, Pa.
In America, the refugees
tell each other, the Bantu will be considered human beings, not slaves,
for the first time.
"It's scary,"
said Haw Abass Aden, a peasant farmer still trembling as she stepped off
her first flight through the clouds. She clung tightly to a kerosene lamp
with one hand and her little girl with the other. But she regained her
composure as she considered her future.
"We are coming here
to be resettled in the United States," said Ms. Aden, 20, speaking
through a translator. "There, we will find peace and freedom."
After centuries of
suffering, they are praying that America will be the place where they will
finally belong. The United Nations has been trying to find a home for the
Bantu for more than a decade because it is painfully clear they cannot
return to Somalia.
In Somalia, the
lighter-skinned majority rejected the Bantu, for their slave origins and
dark skin and wide features. Even after they were freed from bondage, the
Bantu were denied meaningful political representation and rights to land
ownership. During the Somali civil war, they were disproportionately
victims of rapes and killings.
The discrimination and
violence continues in the barren camps today — even here — where the
Bantu are often attacked and dismissed as Mushungulis, which means slave
people.
But finding a new home
for the Bantu refugees here has not been easy. First Tanzania and then
Mozambique, the Bantu's ancestral homelands, agreed to take the tribe.
Both impoverished countries ultimately reneged, saying they could not
afford to resettle the group.
In 1999, the United
States determined that the Somali Bantu tribe was a persecuted group
eligible for resettlement. The number of African refugees approved for
admission in the United States surged from 3,318 in 1990 to 20,084 a
decade later as the cold war ended and American officials focused on
assisting refugees beyond those fleeing Communist countries.
"I don't think
Somalia is my country because we Somali Bantus have seen our people
treated like donkeys there," said Fatuma Abdekadir, 20, who was
waiting for her class to start. "I think my country is where I am
going.
"There, there is
peace. Nobody can treat you badly. Nobody can come into your house and
beat you."
The refugees watch
snippets of American life on videos in class, and they marvel at the
images of supermarkets filled with peppers and tomatoes and of tall
buildings that reach for the clouds. But they know little about racism,
poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them
by refugee resettlement agencies.
What they know is this
flat, parched corner of Africa, a place of thorn trees and numbing hunger
where water comes from wells when it comes at all — a place of fierce
heat and wind that whips the sand into biting and blinding storms.
In the classes, the
teachers try to prepare the Bantu for a modern world. Issack Adan
carefully guides his students through the lessons, taking questions from
older men with graying beards, teenage girls with ballpoint pens tucked
into their head scarves and young mothers with babies tied to their backs.
The lesson of the day: a
white flush toilet. "Come close, come close," Mr. Adan said as
the women approached the strange object doubtfully. "Mothers, you sit
on it, you don't stand on it."
The women nodded,
although they seemed uncertain. Mr. Adan showed them how to flush the
toilet and how to clean it. "You wash with this thing and you will
have a good smell," he said.
"A very nice
smell," the students agreed.
Then Abubakar Saidali, a
30-year-old student, looked closely at the odd contraption and asked,
"But where does that water go?" For an answer, Mr. Adan took the
refugees outside to show them the pipes that carry the sewage.
Back in the classroom,
the students spent the next few hours learning about the refrigerator, ice
cubes and strawberry jam. They watched eagerly as Mr. Adan washed dishes
in a sink and admired the bathtub and shower. One woman demurred, however,
when he invited her to step into the tub.
"It is so
clean," she said shyly. "Can I really step in it?"
Some students grumbled
that the American appliances seemed more complicated than their ordinary
ways of living. Why worry about cleaning a toilet, some refugees said
aloud, when the bushes never need to be cleaned?
But Mr. Saidali said he
was thrilled to learn about modern toilets after years of relying on
smelly pit latrines.
"This latrine is
inside the house," marveled Mr. Saidali, a lean man in tattered
sneakers. "It's better than what we are now using. It has a seat for
sitting and the water goes down.
"Even this sink —
it's my first time," he said. "This sink is for washing. It
cleans things very nicely."
Even with the lessons,
some Bantu are worried about how they will cope in America. They know that
blacks and Muslims are minorities there. Will Americans be welcoming? Will
they learn English quickly enough? Will they find jobs and housing and
friends? Some officials here worry, too.
"These people are
from rural areas," Mr. Adan said. "They don't know much about
modern life."
But the refugees who
arrived on the plane here said they were eager for the challenge.
Uncertain of what might
be needed in the United States, they carried most of their precious
possessions — broken brooms, chipped mugs, metal plates — as they
boarded a rattling bus that roared deep into the camp as the sun sank
beyond the horizon.
The refugees knew they
would be sleeping on the ground again and going hungry as they have often
done. But they also knew that this was only the first phase of an
incredible journey.
First stop, Kakuma. Next
stop, America.