31
V O L U M E 3 • N U M B E R 1 2 8 • 2 0 0 2 here we America come
V O L U M E 3 • N U M B E R 1 2 8 • 2 0 0 2
here we America
come
3R E F U G E E S
2 E D I T O R I A LA few lucky refugees.
4TThhee SSoommaallii BBaannttuu..Last days in Dadaab.
12 H i s t o r yThe slave trail.
16 E x i l eA decade in a refugee camp.
22 T h e s e a r c hTrying to find a solution.
25 T h e ‘ o t h e r ’ B a n t uA second group finds a differentsolution.
26 S a l v a t i o nFlight to freedom.
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4After a lifetime asfeudal serfs and adecade as refugees,
nearly 12,000 so-calledSomali Bantu are preparingto leave for a new life in theUnited States.
26After several failedattempts to find anew, permanent
home, the Bantu set out onthe first stage of a new lifein the United States.
16A Bantu womanprepares a traditionalbasket in front of her
mud-plaster home where she hasspent 10 years as a refugee in aKenyan camp.
EEddiittoorr::Ray WilkinsonFFrreenncchh eeddiittoorr::Mounira Skandrani
CCoonnttrriibbuuttoorrss::Linmei Li, Andrew Hopkins,Sasha Chanoff
EEddiittoorriiaall aassssiissttaanntt::Virginia Zekrya
PPhhoottoo ddeeppaarrttmmeenntt::Suzy Hopper,Anne Kellner
DDeessiiggnn::Vincent Winter Associés
PPrroodduuccttiioonn::Françoise Peyroux
DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn::John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot
MMaapp::UNHCR - Mapping Unit
HHiissttoorriiccaall ddooccuummeennttssUNHCR archives
RReeffuuggeeeess is published by the PublicInformation Section of the UnitedNations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily thoseof UNHCR. The designations andmaps used do not imply the expressionof any opinion or recognition on thepart of UNHCR concerning the legalstatus of a territory or of its authorities.
RReeffuuggeeeess reserves the right to edit allarticles before publication. Articlesand photos not covered by copyright ©may be reprinted without priorpermission. Please credit UNHCR andthe photographer. Glossy prints andslide duplicates of photographs notcovered by copyright © may be madeavailable for professional use only.
English and French editions printedin Italy by AMILCARE PIZZIS.p.A.,Milan.Circulation: 224,000 in English,French, German, Italian, Spanish,Arabic, Russian and Chinese.
IISSSSNN 00225522--779911 XX
CCoovveerr:: Somali Bantu: Heading for anew life.U N H C R / R . W I L K I N S O N / C S • K E N • 2 0 0 2
UUNNHHCCRRP.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.org
N ° 1 2 8 - 2 0 0 2
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When the nation-state of Somalia collapsed
into a series of warring fiefdoms in the
early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of
civilians fled for their lives.
Some have since returned home, but many are still
refugees, principally in neighboring Kenya, with little
idea of when, if ever, it will be safe for them to return
home.
A lucky few, however, will soon be starting an unbe-
lievable journey, swapping a lifetime of poverty and
semi-slavery and years of exile in a refugee camp for a
new and totally different life in the United States.
For a decade the U.N. refugee agency tried to find a
new country for approximately 12,000 so-called Somali
Bantu, a group whose ancestors were seized by Arab
slavers from their ancestral homelands, who continued
to be widely discriminated against and victimized in
their ‘new’ home in Somalia prior to the war and who
vowed they would not return to that country even if
peace is restored.
After two early attempts to relocate the Somali Bantu
failed, Washington has now agreed to take the bulk of
the group—subject to final vetting which is currently
underway.
Seventeen countries annually accept for permanent
resettlement around 100,000 particularly vulnerable
people from among the 12 million refugees UNHCR
cares for, but who, for various reasons, cannot go home
whatever the state of their country.
Traditional ‘hosts’ such as the United States, Canada,
Australia and the Scandinavian countries accept the
bulk of the resettlement cases, but increasingly states as
diverse as Iceland, Brazil and Benin have also partici-
pated.
Resettlement can be both highly prized and highly
politicized. At the height of the Cold War, for instance,
refugees fleeing the Soviet bloc were openly welcomed
in the West which also underwrote a worldwide pro-
gram to resettle Indochinese refugees in the wake of
the Viet Nam war.
Encouragingly, resettlement countries recently
became more flexible in responding to the needs of less
high profile groups, especially from Africa.
But these resettlement programs, no matter how wel-
come, cannot accommodate every deserving case. In
Kenya’s Dadaab and Kakuma camps, Somali refugees
who fled the same conflict as the Bantu have watched
the resettlement process with both anguish and anger, a
single question burned into their faces: “Why can’t we
go too?”
The Bantu now face a frightening cultural chasm.
Most cannot read, write or speak English. They are
sturdy farmworkers with few other skills, who have
never turned on an electric light switch, used a flush
toilet, crossed a busy street, ridden in a car or on an ele-
vator, seen snow or experienced air conditioning.
But as one said in the following report on the Bantu,
their history, years in exile, and now this incredible new
adventure, the choice between America and Somalia is
“between the fire and paradise.”
A lucky few
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Looking forward to freedom.
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T here is a frisson of both excitementand fear in the air. Families cluster noisilyaround a row of rickety field tables answer-ing last minute questions, surrenderingcrumpled scraps of paper—dirty and dog-
eared—but which have effectively defined who they are,what they can eat and where they can live for years.
Hordes of children are slung casually on the backsof their mothers or tug at their brightly colored dressesof swirling yellows, blues, reds and orange.
One group of women squats under a tree, carefullywatching, rarely speaking, as the line moves slowly for-ward through an open-sided shed, its tin roof the onlyshade against a fierce equatorial sun.
A young man, despair etched clearly on his face, ap-proaches any muzungu (foreigner) he sees and pleads:“My sister has already been selected to go. I have been re-jected. Why? I must go with her. Please help me.” Hecircles the compound incessantly.
6 R E F U G E E S
Andrew Hopkins, a UNHCR resettlement officer whohas been heavily involved in this process for manymonths, abruptly calls everyone together feeling he mustonce more explain, cajole and reassure an anxious crowd.
Local policemen, dressed in military fatigues andarmed with ancient rifles, stand guard amidst clouds offine red dirt flung up by the constant movement of hun-dreds of people.
Outside the barbed wire fence surrounding the en-closure other small groups watch intently, their sullenexpressions delivering a clear message: Why them? Whynot us?
HIGH STAKESThis could be a typical scene on any given day in any
refugee camp in any part of the world.Today’s gathering, however, is something special—
the stakes for the people inside the barbed wire unimag-inably high.
daysLastSOMALI BANTU
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inDadaab
7R E F U G E E S
For a decade officials of the U.N. refugee agencyhave been trying to find new homes for thousandsof people whose ancestors were ripped out of cen-tral Africa as slaves in the 18th and 19th centuriesand who spent their own lives in feudal bondage inSomalia.
When that state collapsed in an orgy of bloodlet-ting in the early 1990s they, along with hundreds ofthousands of other civilians, fled to neighboringKenya. But even here, in thesemi-arid wastes of the com-plex of refugee camps knowncollectively as Dadaab, amongother peoples who have alsolost their country, their homes,families and possessions, thisparticular group says it has notbeen able to escape history,continuing to be treated asserfs by their neighbors.
But this is about to change,and in the most dramaticfashion, for these people whoare referred to simply as theSomali Bantu.
Today is D-day minus two.Tomorrow, on D-day minusone, they will transfer to atransit center for anovernight stay and early thefollowing morning, barringany last minute setback, willboard buses, and for the sickand pregnant a battered, an-cient Andover aircraft, on thefirst stage of a breathtakingjourney from a semi-slavepast to a future of unlimited freedom and choice.
Incongruously, the first stop is yet another refugeecamp called Kakuma, in the northwest part of Kenya,chosen because Dadaab is considered too insecure toprocess such a large number of people. In Kakumathe Bantu will be vetted by immigration officials,medically examined, receive a crash course in cul-tural orientation and what officials describe as ‘ba-sic survival skills’ on how to adapt in their new home.
In early 2003, nearly 12,000 people will begin to
fly to cities and towns across the United States inthe largest ever resettlement program undertakenout of Africa.
Refugees moving to a strange land must alwaysmake major cultural adjustments. But rarely is thegap as wide as the one the Somali Bantu must nowbridge on their way to North America.
All of them, until this moment, have lived livesof feudal serfs. Democratic choice, cultural freedoms
are alien concepts. FewBantu can read, write orspeak anything other thanlocal dialects. They must betaught the simplest ofthings—how to use electricallight switches, flush toiletsand operate cookers.
The Bantu live in squatmud-plaster huts. Most havenever even been in a townand the tallest building mosthave seen is two storeys high.Few have ridden in a car andeven fewer in an aircraft.They have no knowledge ofwhere America is, what itsclimate, food, schools or la-bor markets are like.
With charming naivety,the Bantu are undaunted bysuch obstacles. “Take us toAmerica. We will learn toadapt,” a group of elders tellsa visitor with confidence.
The alternative is ap-palling, especially with such amagnificent and unexpected
prize now within reach. For those refugees in Dadaabwho have been rejected or, in the case of the majoritywho have not been offered the chance, the future isbleak. They face years more in a fly-blown refugeecamp or, if Somalia is ever patched back togetheragain, the return to a grinding existence in one of theworld’s poorest and most inhospitable regions.
The people on both sides of the barbed wire areonly too aware of this massive divide, that the luckof the draw has dealt them very different futures.
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TENSION MOUNTSD-day minus one. Before dawn the Bantu scheduled
to leave the following day stand or sit in an orderly lineoutside a transit center. The police are present in force.
Refugees have stacked the few goods they will takewith them on the first leg of their journey—pots andpans, yellow and white jer-rycans, bedding and insome cases old bicycles—neatly against the barbedwire perimeter.
One by one the familiesare admitted to the com-pound where they undergoyet more ‘final’ checks be-fore spending the night onthe hard dirt floors of tran-sit sheds built of burlap andtwig sidings and tin roofs.
Tension is high. Thou-sands of non-Bantu havetried to gate-crash the vet-ting process in the last fewmonths bribing and bully-ing genuine applicants, try-ing to infiltrate their ownrelatives into the procedure.Some continue to prowl theoutskirts of the compoundaware that an approved sloton the list is beyond price toany refugee who has spentyears in such a place.
To forestall trouble, the perimeter has been reinforcedwith a double barbed wire fence. Floodlights have beenadded. Guards patrol 24 hours a day.
A Somali threatens to kill a Bantu, apparently be-cause one of his own family has been rejected. The scuf-fle is broken up.
After years of living in a mind-numbing limbo,the Bantu now just want to be rid of Dadaab. One el-der causes hilarity among his friends when he re-counts a nightmare the previous evening: “I begandreaming—of tall buildings and then of buses pullingup and leaving without me. I woke up, shook my wifeout of bed and told her ‘Everyone is leaving. Let’s getout of here.’”
The laborious processing continues throughout theday until officials receive an emergency telephone callfrom Kakuma. There has been an incident there. Atleast one Kenyan has been shot dead in a clash with po-lice and officials at the camp in a business dispute. It isdecided that tomorrow’s movement of Bantu to Kakuma
will be cancelled, hopefullyonly for a couple of days.
Elders are summoned.The postponement is trans-mitted to the waiting Bantu.At the last minute, theymust leave the heavilyguarded transit center andreturn to their homes—someof which have already beendemolished in anticipationof their leaving—to oncemore mingle with poten-tially hostile neighbors andawait further word.
People recall the Septem-ber 11 terror attacks in theUnited States, word of whichfiltered down even to thecrowded alleyways of Dadaab.Refugees are well aware thatthose attacks severely dis-rupted America’s policy of ad-mitting as many as 70,000refugees for permanent re-settlement this year. Could
this be another major setback, a sad case of ‘So near andyet so far.’
“Yes we have heard of those events,” says 40-year-oldMohammed Yarow, a former subsistence farmer witha wife and five children. “We are worried it will destroyour dream.”
Fifty-two-year-old Mussa Kumula Mohammed ispartly paralyzed from an attack by Somali militias dur-ing the collapse of that country and says he will never,under any circumstances, return there. But like many ofthe Bantu, he is sanguine and shrugs at the latest news,“We have been waiting for this for so many years. Wewill be patient for another few days. We do not feel bad.”
He limps painfully back to his abandoned mud-brickhouse, uncertain once more what the future holds.
8 R E F U G E E S
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Processing begins.
Just a few belongings.
10 R E F U G E E S
Lining up for a new life.
SOMALI BANTU
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Ration cards: amost invaluabledocument for a
refugee.
The
12 R E F U G E E S
C enturies ago, in one of Africa’s major mi-grations, Bantu-speaking peoples trekkedfrom west and central parts of the conti-nent, eastwards toward the Horn of Africaand south through modern day Tanzania,
Mozambique and Malawi.In the 18th and 19th centuries, Arab slavers armed
with muskets and whips plundered those southern re-gions, capturing and shipping untold numbers of Bantumen, women and children via Zanzibar’s great slavemarket to the Persian Gulf and Middle East.
Some ended up in Somalia, but without a written lan-guage, today’s Somali Bantu retain only patchy memoriesof their early history, told to them through song, danceand oral history.
The Arabs apparentlytried to entice the nativesaway with promises of a bet-ter future before resorting tobrute force, according to theBantu in Dadaab. There wasgreat famine abroad at thetime and the slavers intro-duced them to the date fruitwhich they had never eatenbefore and promised to takethem to a land where there
trailslavewas plenty of food and work. The name Said Berkash isrepeated in many of these tales as one of the leadingslavers.
The whip soon replaced persuasion and snippets ofsongs from that brutal era remain. One Arab refrain be-gan:
These are our slavesLet us make use of themLet them not escapeFor if they unite, they will be stronger
The slaves responded in a local tongue not understoodby the slavers:
This slaveryWe pray to God to free usfrom itWe pray to God to get us to abetter placeMay God protect usThe slavery you subject us toYou will be subject to it oneday
The slaves, principallyfrom six southeast African
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tribes including the Yao, Makua, Nyanja, Ngidono, Ziguaand Zaramo, were settled primarily in Somalia’s lowerJuba River valley.
They eventually obtained a degree of freedom duringthe colonial era, but continued to be treated as second-class citizens, unlike the Bantu who had arrived duringthe early migrations and who were by this time fullyintegrated into Somali so-ciety.
Cultural, linguistic andsharp physical differencesstill set the two groupsapart. The Somalis arelighter skinned and withsharply angular faces andbodies, the Bantu darkerand with heavier features.There has been no co-mingling or intermar-riage. The Bantu were dis-couraged from sendingtheir children to school,denied any meaningfulland tenure or politicalrepresentation.
They were not allowedto become officers in thearmy or police. Parentsriding a bus say they re-member ethnic Somalistaunting them, “You stink.Get away from here.”Though highly industri-ous, they filled only themost menial jobs, princi-pally working on the land,only occasionally owningtheir own property. Ironi-cally, their existence had many parallels with formerslaves in America’s deep south until that country’s 1960scivil rights movement changed history.
SPECIAL TARGETSAll civilians in Somalia suffered terribly at the hands
of gunmen from various clans when the country fellapart following the 1991 overthrow of former dictatorMohamed Siad Barre. The Somali Bantu—also known
by the all-embracing word Mushungulis commonlytranslated these days as slave people—were particulartargets for the marauders—despised, defenseless and of-ten owning vital food stocks.
Five gunmen visited Mohammed Yarow’s small-holding at 8 one morning in 1992 demanding money.When he told them he had only the pot of beans cook-
ing over an open fire, theystripped him, tied him upand told his wife theywould kill him. Instead,they also stripped his wifeand raped her in front ofhim. A neighbor who triedto intervene was shot dead.
The gunmen f inallyleft, but MohammedYarow refused to allow hiswife to untie him until thefollowing day, fearful thethugs might return andkill the entire family.
They spent weeksroaming the countryside,begging for food and scav-enging before f inallyreaching Kenya.
Another group attackedAbdullahi Ali Ahmed’shome town in Jubaprovince the same year.“We were good targets forall the warring militias,” hesaid. “We did not have anyclan to protect us and wehad food. They shot deadmaybe 20 people in frontof me. Three were my rel-
atives.“I escaped, but I had no food, no clothes and no money,”
he said. Abdullahi spent four days on the road, also beg-ging and watching old people and children die by thewayside, before crossing the border.
Thousands of Mushungulis, with tales similar to Ab-dullahi’s to tell, eventually reached Kenya. But thoughthey may have escaped the terror of Somalia, a new chap-ter of misery was about to begin.
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Waiting anxiously to begin life afresh.
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F atumo Arbo Ambar says she is 70 years old.Her face carries wrinkles even deeper thanthat, but when a visitor arrives unexpectedlyshe bounces up from the wooden plank in frontof her home and
thumps out a traditional‘bump and grind’ dance as awelcome, much to the de-light of her neighbors.
Her husband died in 1990shortly before total war en-gulfed Somalia. Her eightchildren followed one byone. Four were murderedduring ‘the troubles’. Fourdied of illness.
She must now help tosupport nine grandchildrenalmost single-handedly.This improbable group—anelderly grandmother andher ‘family’ ranging in age from a one-year-old girl to a30-year-old granddaughter—are all ticketed to makewhat for them will be the incredible journey to the
LifeexileUnited States within a few months.
For now though, home is a traditional tiny mud-plas-ter hut measuring nine feet by six feet containing a fewblackened pots and pans and a large rickety bed frame.
Many refugees like Fatumo escapewith virtually nothing—a batteredsuitcase, a few pots and pans, perhapsa bedroll. The great majority antici-pate, or perhaps simply hope, they willreturn home within a matter of weeksor months once their emergency ispeacefully resolved. Many, however,may spend a lifetime in exile.
The Somali exodus has turned intowhat is officially called a ‘protractedcrisis’—a crisis seemingly without end.
As thousands and then tens ofthousands of Somalis poured intoKenya from their collapsing nation-state in the early 1990s, the govern-ment in Nairobi, in consultation with
UNHCR, faced the tricky dilemma of where to housethis human flood.
Security is always a major concern in such cir-
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cumstances. Host countries themselves can be destabi-lized by the sudden arrival of huge numbers of people,especially if they include escaping armed militias as inthe case of Somalia, or a few years later, Rwanda.
The welfare of local communities, their jobs andfarms, must be protected. At the same time, basic facil-ities such as water and shelter, must be made availablefor the refugees. Balancing all of those considerationsalways involves a delicate compromise.
Kenya established a series of camps near its IndianOcean coastline and another center near the tiny vil-lage of Dadaab, a wild, semi-desert region of tiny sand-blown settlements, nomads,camels and goats and searingsummer temperatures.
REFUGEE CITYDadaab eventually bal-
looned into three separatecamps sprawling for miles overthe flat landscape, housing120,000 mainly Somalis andSomali Bantu—a refugee citycomplete not only with an ex-tensive humanitarian infras-tructure, but also its own localbars, hotels, schools, clinics,banks, markets, mobile phoneindustry and small-scale farm-ing plots.
This has become home or, assome refugees prefer to call it,their ‘prison’, for a decade. It isa stultifying existence eked out in one of the most in-hospitable environs on earth. Daily life is strictly regi-mented and boredom is a way of life (some entrepreneurspiped in satellite television and during the recent WorldCup, a group of Somali Bantu with access to the smallscreen made a point of cheering for the U.S. team in an-ticipation of their new home).
Refugees cannot travel outside the camps withoutspecial permission. Like all of her refugee neighbors,Fatumo survives on official food handouts consisting ofa little corn, some oil, sugar and a few other condiments.Nevertheless, despite her age and the harshness of herlife, Fatumo is a born actress with a determined joie de
vivre. She gestures dramatically emphasizing every-thing she says. “This is because of hunger,” she cackles,pulling at the loose flaps on her arms and coughing vig-orously.
If she, or any other refugee, wants a few witheredvegetables or a little meat, she must buy them in a lo-cal market. Each day she hauls buckets of water from acommunal water point a half-mile away for more afflu-ent Somali refugee neighbors. She weaves traditionalmats in front of her hut. Each takes 10 days to completeand fetches the equivalent of three dollars in the local
market.Other Bantu earn a few Kenyan shillings employed in
menial work. Some dig latrines. Others scour pots at a lo-cal market ‘restaurant’, sew garments on old-fashionedSinger machines in the noisy side streets or help builddukas (small shops).
In an effort to bring a degree of order into their chaoticlives, the Bantu drafted a constitution, directed princi-pally by 27-year-old Abdullahi Ali Ahmed. He is al-ready a rare success story, having taught himself En-glish during his decade as a refugee and being nomi-nated as the secretary-general of the Bantu communityin Dadaab.
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Among other things, the constitution pledges to “pro-mote stability and harmony amongst the community,maintain law and order as well as respect for humanrights.”
It promises specifically to “pursue zero tolerance poli-cies” to eliminate corruption, help defend the commu-nity’s “sovereignty” against external influences,strengthen ties with the government and agencies suchas UNHCR to benefit the Somali Bantu and implementpolicies only after widespread consultations with mem-bers.
But one thinghas not changed,they say, fromtheir earlier life inSomalia—the socialpecking order.
The Bantu gen-erally work forwealthier Somalirefugees, but oftenreceive paymentfor their work, notin money but ‘inkind’, having toshop at designatedplaces in the mar-ket. Even there,Bantu say, they geta raw deal. “TheSomalis own allthe shops and they have three prices,” one said. “Thefirst is for the Somalis. One is for the muzungus (for-eigners) and then the last one is for the Bantu.”
Somalis, according to the Bantu, still expect them to‘know their place’ in camp—at the back of the queue atthe water point, shopping or boarding a bus.
A CONSTANT DANGERViolence is an ever-present threat. The young wife
of the partly paralysed Mussa Kumula Mohammed, wasraped two years ago by five men as she was collectingfirewood outside the camp. Sexual violence has been en-demic in Dadaab and is no respecter of ethnicity. Allwomen face similar attacks regularly, but the Bantu saythey are particular targets.
Communities have built barricades of high, thickprickly branches around their homes which offer lim-
ited protection. Lighting and site planning have beenimproved and UNHCR supplies some firewood directlyto the refugees to try to cut down on the number of sex-ual attacks on the fringes of the complex.
Each of Dadaab’s three separate camps is zoned intoblocs. In specially designated areas, groups of Bantu fam-ilies build their homes around communal courtyards,many of the buildings colorfully decorated with flower,animal and abstract impressions.
On the fringe of these blocks, Bantu and Somalihomes overlap,the round Somalitukuls built of treebranches andpieces of plasticc o n t r a s t i n gsharply with them u d - p l a s t e rBantu homes.
For a decadethere has been anuneasy truce,sometimes punc-tured by violence,between the twocommunities, butas departure dayapproaches, thefriction is obvious.
The Somalisare resentful that
the Bantu—second-class citizens at home after all—havebeen given perhaps the greatest prize a refugee can hopefor: a new life in a developed country. In the narrowlanes, Somalis accost a visitor with quizzical, harshglances and an occasional, soft query “Why can’t we goto America as well?”
They believe they are victims twice over–having fledthe same violence as the Bantu, but now being dis-criminated against in the resettlement process. Theiranger and frustration are barely contained.
The Bantu are anxious to leave before any furthertrouble develops. One elder tells UNHCR protectionofficer Linmei Li urgently “This is a bad place. It is dan-gerous. Even if we cannot go to the United States, getus out of here.” The officer tries to reassure the group,but acknowledges that not all the Somali Bantu will beaccepted. Some must remain.
Fun in a refugee camp.
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Camp life:preparing food.
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Camp life: preparing food,studying, basket weaving, a
neighborly chat.
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F rom the moment the Mushungulis arrived inKenya, they made it clear to refugee officialsthey would never return to Somalia, insist-ing they wouldface continued
persecution and possibledeath there.
UNHCR agreed. In suchcircumstances, the refugeeagency attempts to f indhomes in new lands for suchgroups.
In the case of the SomaliBantu, it turned into an un-usual and tortuous decade-long search.
The agency first turnedits attention to the Bantu’sancestral home in south-eastern Africa. A Tanzaniagovernment delegation vis-ited the refugees in 1993, confirming cultural similar-ities in music, dance, hunting, harvest, circumcision
and religious ceremonies with some of its own tribes.Three years later, however, Tanzania declined to ac-
cept the Bantu because the country had its own troubles.In 1994 the East Africancountry was swampedwith hundreds of thou-sands of other refugeesfleeing the genocide inneighboring Rwanda.The El Niño weatherphenomenon was batter-ing the country’s agricul-ture.
The Tanzanian deci-sion, having very little todo with the Bantu them-selves, underlined the va-garies of refugee life andthe sometimes thin di-viding line which can sep-arate a new beginning or
condemnation to a lifetime of exile.“We felt so helpless when we heard the result,” re-
solution
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Searching
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calls Abdullahi Ali Ahmed. “The Tanzanians lookedlike us. We felt like brothers. And then we were aban-doned.”
In 1997, the refugee agency tried again, this time ap-proaching the government of Mozambique. An officialdelegation spent three daysin Dadaab querying theBantu on issues such as lan-guage, their ethnic historyand how the refugees markthe occasion of a girl’s matu-rity.
Two years later the Bantureceived Mozambique’s an-swer. It was the same as theTanzanians. According to anoff icial UNHCR account,Maputo “withdrew its inter-est, citing the acceptance ofsuch a large number ofrefugees would give thewrong political signal, espe-cially given the unresolved,postwar circumstances of itsown displaced population”following a brutal civil war inthat country in the 1990s.
The report added that apositive decision would “setan unwelcome precedent thatmight encourage a flood ofpersons of Mozambican ori-gin wishing to return fromneighboring countries.”
In Africa, that is not an idleconcern. In the last two centuries millions of peoplehave been uprooted by conflict and natural disaster.Some have been assimilated, but many remainmarginalized minority groups and one day may alsoconsider trying to return to their ancestral roots.
That was little consolation for the dispirited Bantu.“We were rejected by the Tanzanians. Now by Mozam-bique,” Abdullahi said. “Now we felt totally adrift,homeless, without any future.”
When UNHCR next approached the U.S. govern-ment “We didn’t have much hope,” the Bantu leadersaid. “Our brothers had rejected us. Why should theAmericans want us? What were our ties with that coun-try?”
Washington is one of 17 countries worldwide whichannually accepts agreed numbers of refugees for per-manent resettlement, in addition to individuals orgroups who may independently seek asylum. A majorcriteria for these resettlement countries is the extreme
vulnerability of refugees andtheir inability to return safelyand peacefully to theirhomes.
In recent years as part ofthis ongoing program, theUnited States acceptedmore than 3,000 so-called‘Lost Boys’ of the Sudan(Refugees N° 122) andagreed to examine the case ofthe Somali Bantu on thesame basis.
HUMAN TRAFFICKINGDespite this breakthrough,
the road ahead remained un-certain and difficult.
Human trafficking has ex-ploded into a global, multi-billion dollar business andthe refugee resettlement pro-gram itself became a targetwhen several scams were ex-posed in which officials wereselling coveted places to thehighest bidder.
Washington and UNHCRunderstood only too well thatanother high visibility pro-
ject involving so many places would attract the attentionof potential traffickers and untold numbers of ‘un-qualified’ refugees.
How to decide who was really eligible for this newlife on offer?
When refugees flee they rarely carry original pass-ports or identification documents because these couldcompromise their already precarious safety. That prob-lem was compounded in Somalia where few civilianshad any official papers to begin with.
Once they reached Dadaab they had to begin to re-construct not only a new life, but also a new identity.Registration lists were compiled. Ration cards becameinvaluable, not only to obtain food, but also to act as a ba-
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sic identity card. Both, of course, might be easily doc-tored or forged if such a valuable prize as a new life inAmerica was at stake.
Late last year an intensive one-month long verifica-tion process was launched by UNHCR to identify who,among the tens of thousands of refugees in Dadaab,was really eligible for relocation.
When it seemed possible that Mozambique wouldaccept the Bantu in 1997, field officers laboriously drewup three hand written lists of refugees wanting to go.
It was decided to make these original lists the start-ing point of the verification process for the UnitedStates, partly on the assumption that the original ap-plicants were trulyBantu and not ‘fake’refugees now seek-ing a much moreattractive home inAmerica.
A 50-strong ver-if ication teammoved into Dadaab.Extra police weredrafted in to keeporder. The team’sfirst task was to siftthrough thousandsof tattered, handwritten controlsheets. The originalMozambique lists,now consolidatedinto a master list,had to be upgraded,newly born children added, the names of the deaddeleted.
In Dadaab, the targeted Bantu community was told:“Bring all of your family members and documents; beprepared to answer specific questions regarding eachmember of your family; don’t replace family memberswith others; don’t sell ration cards.” Every applicantwould be individually verified.
Starting as early as 3 a.m. each morning, an estimated1,000 persons began lining up for processing. “At leasthalf the group waiting for transport to the verificationsite were clearly Somali refugees and not Bantu,” UN-HCR’s Andrew Hopkins who headed the project, re-calls. Around 10,000 people were subsequently ejectedfrom the verification process at this stage.
Others insinuated themselves into the process. Bantuwho had previously left Dadaab sold their ration cardsto anyone willing to buy the precious documents. Fam-ilies with several separate ration cards sold some of these‘extra’ documents to Somalis. Several Bantu elders triedto manipulate the process and cash in on the bonanza.
Somalis attached family members to large Bantugroups. The Bantu would later claim they had been co-erced into this action and had denounced the scam to of-ficials at the first opportune moment. But some obvi-ously had willingly participated.
Couples posed as husband and wife, but when ques-tioned separately they reported having different sets
of neighbors, eat-ing different foodfor their last mealand other differ-ing activities.
False claimswere sometimes“so rudimentary itwas not uncom-mon to encounterpersons who couldnot even remem-ber or pronouncethe name of a per-son they were at-tempting to im-personate,” an of-ficial report of the
exercise reportedlater. “Interviewsoften ended in
tears.”Andrew Hopkins added laconically, “These peo-ple were very poor liars.”
The process took its toll on everyone—the anxiousBantu, the excluded Somalis, and the verification teamitself which became “totally exhausted.”
In the end, nearly 14,000 persons were interviewed.At the time of this article going to press some 11,585people had been approved for submission to U.S. au-thorities and nearly 2,000 had been excluded after theirclaims were examined.
“We didn’t have much hope when this latest processbegan,” said Abdullahi. “But it is true and there hasbeen lots of dancing. Oh, we have danced so much.”
Many loose ends, remained, however, with hundredsof persons still uncertain about their ultimate fate.
The Bantu have undergone years of processing.
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A s the majority of refugees from Somaliafled to Kenya in the early 1990s, severalthousand other Bantu were retracing thesteps of their slave ancestors.
This second, smaller group escaped the war in flotil-las of ships, fleeing to an area around the northeasternTanzanian port of Tanga, the very region from whichtheir forefathers had been shipped into bondage inthe 18th and 19th centuries.
Today, the two groups of Bantu in Kenya and Tan-zania are preparing for a very different future.
While nearly 12,000 Bantu who have lived inrefugee camps for a decade are now looking forwardto a new life in the United States, an estimated 3,300relatives in Tanzania are following a rural lifestyle lit-tle changed for hundreds of years.
Their fortunes diverged from the moment theywere uprooted by the brutal civil chaos in Somalia.
The Bantu who reached Kenya were moved intosprawling but isolated camps where they moulderedfor a decade, wards of the international communitybut seemingly without any realistic future—twice re-jected for settlement by Tanzania and Mozambique,until the American dream dramatically came along.
Shortly after, the ‘other’ group of refugees arrivedin Tanzania, the government moved them to Mkuyu,a former settlement for local civil servants. The ma-jority of the new arrivals were descendant from theZigua tribe which still lives in the region, but therewere also some non-Bantu Somali Wamahais who didnot have any historical links with Tanzania.
These refugees were allowed to assimilate with thelocal Tanzanian population, slipping easily into an un-changing rhythm of life dominated by the annualrainy seasons, growing maize and cassava, collectingwood for the cooking stoves and herding goats.
The Somalis still speak Zigua, also spoken by theTanzanians, as well as the coastal Swahili language.All are Moslems and share many similar cultural prac-
tices, including female circumcision and the right ofmen to marry up to four women.
These refugees appear ‘blissfully unaware’ of thestartling change in fortune for their Kenyan relatives,but they are also looking forward to a better, albeit to-tally different, future.
The Tanzanian government has allocated the Bantuan area of some 5,100 acres of woodlands, rivers,streams and arable land in the Chogo region, around80 kilometers away from their current site—at thevery center of where their ancestors were seized asslaves.
For the last two years local authorities and the U.N.refugee agency have been developing the site in a twomillion dollar project, building health and police cen-ters, schools, playgrounds, shops, markets and waterpoints for both refugees and the local population.
An advance group of farmers will begin cultivat-ing the land in time for this year’s autumn rains andthe majority of refugees will move before the end ofthe year, at approximately the same time the SomaliBantu in Kenya are starting their long journey to theUnited States.
For one group, a centuries-old cycle of displace-ment will have come full circle. For the second group,a fascinating new life style is just about to begin.
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M onday. The countdown to theKakuma transfer has resumed at D-day minus one. The ‘f inal, f inal’Dadaab checks begin again. One fam-ily is listed with nine members, but
the father then announces a tenth, a niece. He refuses totravel without her. Unless the problem is solved, none ofthe family is likely to go. In this case, the issue is resolvedwhen her name is found on a separate list.
One name is missing from another family. That prob-lem, too, is resolved when it is realized one person diedrecently, but no one informed the officials.
Most Bantu, like the Somalis, are Moslems and menare allowed several wives, a situation which is againstAmerican law. Some of the refugees have already made‘private adjustments’ to overcome this problem.
Abdi Fatah Nour’s wife and child are already on thelist to go to America. He is not. He was outside Dadaabwhen the verification process was held and his name isnot on the all-important master list. He has appealedbut does not know yet whether he will be allowed to goto Kakuma or have to stay in this camp.
Tying up such loose ends may take many moremonths of hard work, anxiety and heartbreak.
Officials from the United States Immigration andNaturalization Service (INS) will make the final deter-
mination of who is admitted in the coming months us-ing the UNHCR list as a starting point.
But because of Dadaab’s close proximity to the volatileSomali border and because of the potential for unrestamong the large Somali population in Dadaab itself, thislast screening will be held at the relatively safer Kakumalocation.
The transfer and processing will cost more than $5million. The International Organization for Migration(IOM) undertook not only the refugee transfer but alsooversaw the construction of 2,200 shelters of mud brickand tin roofs, each costing $150, to house the Bantu inKakuma. The structures are tiny, cramped and expectedto be only temporary homes, but they are a major im-provement compared with many other older dwellingswhere people have lived for years. The contrast is yetanother anomaly of life in a refugee camp.
Four buses arrive to transport the majority of theBantu to Kakuma, a bone-shaking three-day journeyover rough roads. It has taken 10 years for them to reachthis point, but families pack all of their worldly goodsinto the vehicles within 30 minutes.
Young mothers go through one last lecture—dia-per training—before boarding the buses. None of theyoung children have ever worn these strange itemsbefore and while many of the mothers giggle through
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the class, their children are clearly terrified.Officials accompanying an earlier convoy were mys-
tified to find the diapers totally unused at the end of thejourney. Mothers, still unfamiliar with the concept, hadremoved the diapers to preserve their cleanliness when-ever an impending ‘crisis’ became obvious.
Forty-four heavily pregnant women, their children,and other medical cases are being flown to Kakumaaboard an ancient propeller driven aircraft to avoid thelong journey by road.
None has ever seen an aircraft close up or been a pas-senger on one, but their reaction is one of mild curios-ity rather than apprehension. Conscious of the diaperlecture and the fact there is no toilet on board the plane,one pregnant woman asks: “What do I do if I need a toi-let?” “Hold it in,” suggests an accompanying nurse.
As the Andover rumbles down the dirt airstrip,women cover their faces with their headscarves, butotherwise react with aplomb. One woman cradles twinsborn only two weeks ago.
No one moves from their seats. One hour into theflight one woman volunteers: “The plane is making alot of noise but why haven’t we taken off yet?” Anotheragrees that “We are still on the ground.”
None can relate to what is passing below themthrough the aircraft windows, that they are flying overhills, rivers and lakes.
“Oh, we must be so far high,” one exclaims at last. An-other is full of wonder that, “You can walk around uphere, just like on the ground.”
When the aircraft lands in Kakuma, young childrenare manhandled through the rear of the aircraft to wait-ing officials. The women clamber down a rickety ladderand walk jauntily toward a very different future thanthe life they left behind just a couple of hours earlier.
AMERICA, AMERICA“We are all illiterate, but we will learn,” says 40-year-
old Mohammed Yarow in discussing his future in Amer-ica. What will he do there? “I will do anything,” hereplies. I will live wherever they put us. We will eat whatyou eat,” he responds to further questions.
“We are very adaptable,” he adds. “In a few monthswe will fit in to any new life. Our ancestors had to changefrom being Bantu to being Somali. We can do it again.”
His wife is shown a picture of a kitchen cooker. Sheshakes her head and asks, “Who would give us some-thing like that in Somalia?” No, she says, she has never
heard of McDonalds, pizza or Coca Cola but, “I will learnto cook the food I am given there.”
Another refugee is asked about flush toilets andreplies “They are only for rich people in Somalia. Wewill get used to them.”
Perhaps like earlier immigrants, the Bantu dreamsimilar dreams and have a very firm conviction thatthey will overcome any new obstacles.
Mohammed Yarow wants to become a pilot, or at least“I want my sons to become pilots.” Another father hasheard of a black man who is an American leader (Sec-retary of State Colin Powell) and of Kofi Annan and hewants his son to become Secretary-General of the UnitedNations.
All of the Bantu talk about security, freedom and ed-ucation for their children—things they have never en-joyed before. The partly paralyzed Mussa Kumula Mo-hammed is delighted with the idea that there are doctorsthere who may be able to help his wounds.
Children are beginning to join the general excitementand when an aircraft flies high overhead, some ask, “Isthat our plane for America?”
Some of the Bantu caught their first ever glimpse ofsnow on their journey from Dadaab to Kakuma when they espied the white capped Mount Kenya in the distance.
That may be a harbinger of the harsh winters somewill face in the United States—they will only be toldwhere they will live shortly before leaving Kenya–butthe concept of snow drifts, blizzards and temperaturesplunging many degrees below zero is one they still can-not fully grasp.
“It is like writing on a blank page,” one refugee officialsays in amazement. “At this moment, America is justone big black hole for the refugees.”
There are far fewer Somalis in Kakuma than Dadaaband they appear resigned rather than resentful that theyhave lost this latest throw of the dice for a better life.Khalif Hassan Warsame, the acting chairman of the So-mali community in Kakuma says sadly, “We don’t holdanything against the Bantu getting this opportunity.But we would like the same thing. We also have to lookto the future, but for us there doesn’t seem to be any fu-ture.”
In contrast, Abdullahi Ali Ahmed sees a future henever dared think about before. “Going back to Soma-lia would be to plunge back into the flames,” he says.“Going to America is a dream. It is the choice betweenthe fire and paradise.”
28 R E F U G E E S
Undergoing last minute diaper training.
Baby weighingat Kakumarefugee camp.
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Boarding thebus for the
long journey to a new life.
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The first everflight for theSomali Banturefugees.
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Contemplating a new life.
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