"None of my children have cried of hunger here"
Posted: 2003-12-27 06:07pm
For your reading pleasure.
http://tennessean.com/local/archives/03 ... D=44590957
http://tennessean.com/local/archives/03 ... D=44590957
Members of the Bantu tribe in Somalia find their transition to America more difficult than that of many immigrants because they've never had electricity, running water or TVs.
Suleiman Ader's journey began on the farm where he was born when he, as a young man, was struck in the face by men who then forced him to watch the rape of his sister.
It was during the civil war in Somalia. To escape, Ader, his wife and child walked for days to reach the Kenyan refugee camps where two more children were born and another conceived.
Last month, the family became among the first of his tribe — called the Somali Bantu — to arrive in Nashville.
The Bantu are among the least acclimated to modern life of any immigrants to the United States, and by the end of next year Nashville will be home to 400, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Before the civil war in the 1990s, most Bantu, as did Ader, eked out an existence as farmers living in huts without running water, electricity, flush toilets or televisions. Few ever attended school. The Aders are among many who have arrived malnourished.
Ader's wife, Fatuma Abdi, has had to learn how to use a stove instead of firewood and a dishwasher for plates, frying pans and forks the family never owned before. Her children have overcome their suspicions of packaged pretzels. Abdi, 24, who keeps her father's name in Bantu tradition, says she felt like crying with joy when she first understood disposable diapers never had to be washed.
Outranking all of those modern novelties, however, is this one:
''None of my children have cried of hunger here,'' said Ader, 36, through a translator as he watched his boisterous 2-year-old son wrestle an older brother to the carpeted floor of their two-bedroom apartment near Murfreesboro Pike.
By 2005, the United States plans to resettle about 12,000 Bantu across the country, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Bantu are vastly different from most other refugees who have landed in Nashville in recent years, and refugee agencies have had to take a new approach, said Jennifer Schamel, resettlement director for World Relief.
World Relief, along with Catholic Charities, is charged with assisting all new Bantu arrivals to Nashville.
''With the Bantu, we never take anything for granted,'' she said. ''There's so much they're not familiar with. Any small thing could become a big thing.''
Usually, Schamel said, World Relief staff members greet refugees at the airport and take them to their own apartment, where they are given a brief orientation.
With the Bantu, however, the staff quickly realized that wouldn't work.
''Our very first family had a lot of difficulty,'' Schamel said. ''We showed the woman what we normally do as far as showing the hot and cold water.'' And then she left the woman alone.
Schamel ran back into the bathroom when she heard the woman's 1-year-old baby scream after being plunged into too-hot bath water.
''For the Bantus, there is regular water, and there is hot water boiled on the fire,'' Schamel said. ''She just didn't know that water could come out of the tap so hot.''
There have been other missteps: one Bantu woman poured dish soap over the surface of her stove, including the burners, in an effort to follow cleaning instructions. Another man rolled deodorant on from wrist to shoulder; two young children spit out their first taste of vanilla ice cream, shocked at the cold in their mouths.
Now, instead of leaving families alone in their first days, World Relief takes them to a brick house at Dalewood United Methodist Church in east Nashville where they live with a Somali ''house parent'' for a few days.
Ahmed Jama, who is Somali but not Bantu, teaches families how to use the stove, the thermostat and the knob to turn on the shower. Jama has tacked up labels all over the house that say ''curtains'' and ''picture'' to introduce the arrivals to written English.
Beyond the gadgets, Jama says there is one question all of the refugees ask: ''They want to know about racial discrimination'' on the part of Americans and Somalis in Nashville.
The Bantu have suffered a long history of discrimination, according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. They are a minority brought to Somalia in the 19th century as slaves and have since been denied education and job opportunities by the Somali majority.
They speak a different dialect and are ethnically distinct from an estimated 3,000 other Somali who have arrived in Nashville over the past decade.
''The tribe issue is sometimes a big issue to the new arrivals, but we visit them and talk to them and tell them this is a different world and what tribe you are in doesn't matter,'' said Abdirizak Hassan, director of the Somali Community Center.
A south Nashville Somali mosque has raised money and gathered clothing for the new arrivals.
It's more difficult, however, to learn how Bantu refugees such as Ader feel about being expatriates with other Somalis because the only translators available are non-Bantu.
Ader said through his Somali interpreter that he isn't interested in racial or ethnic divisions. His priority is first to get a job and then learn English. World Relief has already helped him get driving lessons. The roads, he says, are extremely confusing.
He's not sure what kind of work his life has prepared him for. For the past several years, his job has consisted of waiting in long lines in a Kenyan refugee camp for basic food supplies and seeing his family through periods of ''donor fatigue'' when rations were so low they went hungry for days.
At an orientation at the Kakuma refugee camp, Ader remembers only this lesson: ''You cannot hit your children, and when you go, you have to smell good and be happy.''
Before then he farmed mango, tobacco and sesame oil crops.
World Relief helps refugees get jobs. Many of the Somalis who have arrived earlier work now in manual labor jobs at Dell Computer Corp. in Nashville, the Tyson Fresh Meats factory in Goodlettsville, Walden Books distribution center in La Vergne, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and in area hotels as janitors and maids, Schamel said.
Jama, the house parent, says the early months are difficult for refugees such as Ader.
''They have expectations,'' he said. ''They want to work. But it takes time, and many get frustrated and bored. And there is no job training for us.''
But Ader has just been here a month. He anticipates learning English and getting a job before his next child is born in May. This one will be Bantu-American. The child can be president, Ader said.
Ader will take any job. He's willing to work hard.
His children will go to Glencliff Elementary School just down the street and get an education.
Right now his wife is in the kitchen frying potatoes and brewing tea with cardamom. His daughter is eating a sugar cookie, and the cupboards are full. So there is much more reason to hope than ever before, Ader says.
