Fatuma and Luley

Forced to flee Africa only a few years ago, Luley and Fatuma have spent most of their young lives fearing for their lives. They are Somali Bantu and, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s 2005 annual report, they are some of the more than two million refugees that have come to America since 1983. Of those two million, nearly 65 thousand refugees have come from Somalia – many of them within the last five to ten years. Indeed, from 1997 to 2002 Virginia accepted more refugees from Somalia than any other country. And according to the Virginia Department of Health, Virginia resettled an estimated 1,257 Somali refugees during this time period.

Amina, Said & Luley

Fatuma and Luley’s family have been in America for the past three and a half years. Before they fled to America they lived in Kenya. Luley explains that in 1992 their family was forced to abandon their home in Somalia and flee to Kenya because of the war. At first she and her sister Fatuma are understandably reluctant to talk about their experiences in Kenya and Somalia. They tell me that they don’t remember anything of the violence or why they left; but, as we spend more time together they begin to try to explain the war to me, and the terrible atrocities that forced them to seek refuge in America. It is visibly hard for them to talk about their past. They struggle with finding the words in English to express what happened to them, and their struggle is further compounded by memories they’ve clearly worked to block from their minds.

Fatuma was not yet born when her family lived in Somalia, but she remembers the violence in Kenya and tells me that both her grandparents died in the war. She describes her experience living in Kenya as “a little bit weird” explaining that “there was a lot of fighting and it was not a good place.” When I ask her why people were fighting she tells me that they were fighting for land. Luley lived in Somalia until she was two years old, and because she is several years older than Fatuma, she seems to have a better memory of the deadly conflicts in Africa. She tells me that in Somalia there is fighting between two groups of people, the Somali Bantu (which she says she and her family are) and the Somali. She describes these different tribes as having different hair and explains that the Somali are angry with the Bantu because they get to come to America while the Somali are not allowed to come because they are blamed for the killings.

The Bantu’s history in Somalia is tragically similar to the history of African Americans in America prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Like the ancestors of many African Americans in this country, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries an untold number of Bantu men, women, and children were captured by Arab slavers and shipped via Zanzibar’s great slave market to the Persian Gulf and Middle East, with some Bantu ending up in Somalia. It wasn’t until the colonial era, in the late 1800s, that the Bantu obtained a degree of freedom. Yet, much like the African Americans prior to the 1960s, the Bantu continued to be treated like second class citizens as compared to the Bantu who had arrived during the early migrations and were, by this time, fully integrated into Somali society. The UN Refugee Agency notes that:

“Cultural, linguistic and sharp physical differences still set the two groups apart. The Somalis are lighter skinned and with sharply angular faces and bodies, the Bantu darker and with heavier features. There has been no comingling or intermarriage. The Bantu were discouraged from sending their children to school, denied any meaningful land tenure or political representation.”   

Somali Bantu woman and chidlren

Tragically, Somalia fell apart in 1991 with the overthrow of the government, and the Somali Bantu became particular targets because they were “despised, defenseless, and had ownership of vital food stocks.” Tens of thousands of Bantu were forced to flee to Kenya with no food, no clothing, and no money. This sudden influx of Somalians in Kenya forced the Kenyan government to find homes for tens of thousands more people and so they decided to build refugee camps on the coast, near the Indian Ocean, and by the tiny village of Dabaab. These camps eventually became refugee cities with schools, markets, and bars that housed 120,000 mainly Somali and Somali Bantu. Unfortunately, for many of the refugees the camps seem less like cities and more like prisons. Refugees survive on official food handouts consisting of corn, oil and sugar. They must request special permission to leave the camp and sadly, Somali Bantu claim they are still treated liked second class citizens, often working for the more wealthy Somali refugees. According to the UN, the Bantu claim the Somalis “still expect them to ‘know their place’ in camp – at the back of the queue at the water point, shopping or boarding a bus.”

The Somali and the Somali Bantu formed a fragile truce from violence which has slowly dissipated as Somali Bantu have had the opportunity to leave the camp in Kenya and seek refuge in America. The UN explains that the Somali Bantu “believe they are victims twice over-having fled the same violence as the Bantu, but now being discriminated against in the resettlement process.” Such is the jealousy Luley describes when I ask her why there is fighting in Kenya. She explains the Somalis are,

“fighting because they want money and they want food. They think like why you move, you are going to the United States and we are not going to the United States. That’s why they have war…they want to come to United States but the IOM [International Organization for Migration] they don’t let them come to the United States.”

Luley says she likes it in the United States but remains worried for members of her family who are still in Kenya. She tells me that her father is trying to return to Kenya to bring the rest of their family to America but thus far has been unable to return because “he is not in the system.” It is likely that, like many of the Somali fleeing Somalia in the early 1990s, Luley’s parents tried to protect the family by leaving behind any and all forms of identification to keep from being tracked. Unfortunately without these records it would be very difficult for Luley’s father to return to Africa for the rest of the family.  

Despite the history of persecution that was their childhood, Luley and Fatuma seem to be doing very well with their new home in America. Maggie Pondle, President of Bridging the Gap (a program at the University of Virginia where undergraduate students mentor and tutor refugee children), says that the refugee children who are being mentored through Bridging the Gap have come very far but still really struggle with speaking English. The language barrier, she says, is in her experience the greatest challenge for the refugee children. 

Luley and Fatuma also face great economic struggles in America. While the children may struggle with learning English, for the parents it is often an impossible feat to learn a new language. This communication barrier and the limited schooling received in Somalia limit the job opportunities available to them. In 2006 the Office of Refugee Resettlement reported that their average wage was only $8.82 – hardly enough to feed a family of four, much less their family of eight. And while some of the older children work alongside their parents, and the government does provide some benefits, such as food stamps, they are a very large family crammed into a very tiny house. Additionally, the long hours that their parents must spend at work to pay for their home and expenses, drastically limits the amount of time they can spend teaching and nurturing their children to help them blossom in their strange and new environment.

Amazingly, despite the incredible obstacles that refugee children like Luley and Fatuma face, Blair Bjellos, a volunteer with Bridging the Gap, describes them as “just really happy,” she goes on to say that “they’ve gone through so much that we probably will never have to deal with in our life and they are still happy every single day so it really shows us that we really don’t have any problems. ” Indeed, their enthusiasm,strength and love for each other is evident from the moment you meet them. They are, in many ways, what every American should strive to be.