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Somali Bantu in the United States: On the road to self-sufficiency

Asha Noor with Heidi Mills of Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church, Lexington, S.C., which served as cosponsor for Noor's family. Photo: LFS Carolinas

In May 2003, the U.S. refugee assistance community undertook what would prove to be one of its biggest challenges ever: the resettlement of more than 13,000 Somali Bantu. By May 2006, all but a few will have arrived.

Nearly 1,000 have been resettled through the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program and 14 of its local affiliates. The resettlement has demanded the best of both the refugees and those welcoming them, and they have reached out to each other over a vast cultural divide.

In interviews with the CWS/IRP newsletter "Monday," staff of CWS/IRP affiliates described the multiple challenges and long work hours of the past three years. Then, for the most part, they took a deep breath and added, "We feel like we've made it!"

As a people, the Somali Bantu have brought with them to the United States a strength and resilience honed by a long history of hardship.

Descendants of slaves taken to Somalia from southeastern Africa in the Indian Ocean slave trade, they constituted the backbone of southern Somali agriculture as field workers, and often were exploited as cheap labor.

Following Somalia's independence in 1960, the Bantu people increasingly were denied land tenure, educational and political opportunities, and civil rights. Few had opportunity to learn to read or write, and, by and large, they had no contact with modern conveniences.

When civil war broke out in 1991, the Somali Bantu were terrorized by militia groups and fled to refugee camps in Kenya, where they continued to endure discrimination and bandit attacks at a disproportionately high rate.

The U.S. government recognized the Bantu as an extremely vulnerable refugee population, unable to safely return home to Somalia even if peace should be restored there, and undertook to resettle 13,000 of them.

Community-wide collaboration

Meetings, and lots of them, were convened well before the first Somali Bantu arrived. For example, Refugee Services of Texas was part of a Dallas-Fort Worth taskforce with other resettlement agencies that briefed "schools, police, the health department -- everybody," said RST Executive Director Carol Roxburgh.

In Atlanta, Georgia, "the voluntary agencies came together locally in an even stronger way than before," said Leanne Rubenstein, Associate Director of Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA).

Work groups were formed, and participants divided up such tasks as community orientation; home safety training, and employment, health, and education services. "We created a confidential database to track which schools and apartment complexes had a lot of Somali Bantu, so we didn't have families that were isolated," Rubenstein said.

Abukar Said of Columbia, S.C., proudly affixes his new car tags. He arrived in March 2004 with his wife and children, and "bought the car before he could drive it, keeping it parked until he could get his license," said Michelle Adkins, a caseworker with CWS affiliate Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas. Photo: Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas

"Arrival" has meant a whole new set of challenges both for the Somali Bantu and those who are helping them establish their new lives in the United States. Things others take for granted were unfamiliar to many Somali Bantu -- not just refrigerators, doorknobs, and traffic lights but also closely supervised eight-hour workdays, budgets, and bills.

"If someone dropped me in the middle of the desert, how long would I survive? I have a lot of respect for them, given what we had to expect of them in such a short period," commented caseworker Chris Shull at Kentucky Refugee Ministries in Louisville.

"We had been warned that this would be a very challenging group to work with, so we were surprised that a lot of them were educated, spoke English, and were very quick to get on their feet," said Aaron Tate, Director of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, Texas, who handled the agency's Somali Bantu casework for the first year.

"I'd say half of our Somali Bantu clients were independent within six months," he said. "But the other half are still coming to us with the same basic problems."

Struggling the most are single mothers with several children -- most of them the former second wives of men who had to break with Somali Bantu culture and divorce them in order to qualify for U.S. resettlement.

Extra help for single moms

"It's hard to be a single mother in America, period," Tate observed. "These women come from a culture where single motherhood is not an option because, with polygamy, there's always a man there. There's a bitterness, because single motherhood was never in their plan."

CWS/IRP affiliates have responded with extra help for single mothers. For example, Lutheran Social Ministry of the Southwest in Phoenix, Ariz., "has done countless workshops on household management and parenting, and started a women's support group for Somali Bantu, subsequently opening it to all refugee women," said Director Craig Thoresen.

"Women can get isolated," he said. "It has been really helpful for them to get together." The agenda includes issues from hygiene and health to parenting.

"We provide transport and childcare. The meetings give women a chance to get out of the house and to see that they are not alone, and that not only Bantu but also other women are having some of the same issues," he said.

"In some families, the husbands take their children out that same evening," giving them "some good time with the kids," he added.

CWS/IRP affiliates also have developed innovative programs to help Somali Bantu children catch up and keep up in school. And they have enlisted volunteers in a big way. For example, the Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Program in Concord, N.H., "has matched every family that has come in the past year with a cluster of volunteers," said Program Manager Amy Roach.

"We would have been lost without congregational cosponsors," said Jim Morris, Director of the Catholic Family Center Refugee Resettlement Program in Rochester, N.Y., where 23 of 40 cases were fully sponsored.

Somali Bantu beginning their new lives in Atlanta, GA. Photo: Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta

Many Somali Bantu resettled by CWS already are self-sufficient -- more and more of them day by day. They are working, and their children are in school. Now Somali Bantu are forming mutual assistance associations in many cities, through which they increasingly tackle challenges together.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, the association just got a state grant to fund employment services for people who've been here up to five years, said Roxburgh. And, with a community-building grant from Episcopal Migration Ministries, the Interreligious Council of Central New York has helped Somali Bantu in Syracuse apply for 501(c)(3) status and to rent office space in a church.

Looking back over the past three years, Thoresen reflected, "The Somali Bantu came from long, long periods in refugee camps. Everything was new. It probably was the longest adjustment period of any refugee population. But did they learn? YES! Very quickly."

Read more about Somali Bantu resettlement.

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