Somali Bantus

[Waaq]

Despite the bias in the article, the holier than thou attitude of the writer. It is nevertheless about an important topic.

 

 

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Africa's Lost Tribe Discovers American Way

 

March 10, 2003

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

 

 

 

 

KAKUMA, 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.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/international/africa/10BANT.html?ex=1048268013&ei=1&en=0a3aa2daae430f6a

[Che -Guevara]

we don't think like to be reffered to as somalis.

Many hate somalis which is understanble considering how we treated them back home.

[Reality Check]

You know what...I agree with one thing: Somalia is a very racist country and mistreated these people. I wasn't aware that these misfortunes were happening in Somalia...It's a shame really!

 

Did y'all find the following quote funny?

In Somalia, they were in a predominantly Muslim

country often described as a breeding ground for

terrorists

:confused:

[Blessed]

It is really disgusting to see Muslims mis-treat others on tribal lines. The other day I've come across this website called www.midgaan.com which highlights the hurt main somali clans cause to minority clans. It is really sadenning walahi and really hope we change our attitudes towards each other.

[Paragon]

From www.somalilandforum.com

By Roda A. Rageh

 

Reflections on a Midgan

 

Recently many intellectuals from Somaliland seem to have recognized the need to correct some of the enduring ills of our society especially on the issue of the gabooye community. However, as the discourse rages from shifting blame and building awareness of “yassid” to weak promises of support for the cause of the Gabooye community, and manifestoes from them suggesting proper political participation, I deliberate on the problem itself and wonder if there is actually an issue to support. Anyone who succeeds in identifying the problem has to at least begin by putting his own bigotry aside before he or she attempts to right the wrongs of this baseless misconception. We have degraded a vital organ of our society, have deformed its vitality and have subjected a group of people who has willfully and diligently participated in every level of building our society to be treated with serious discrimination. Our collective behavior calls for a more serious reflection than overdressed speeches and entertainment programs.

 

What basis do we discriminate against them? Where do our differences lay and how important or even true are these legendary differences? I have heard many implausible legends justifying why we had or should eschew them. Yet the worst I have encountered is the ugliest truth that glares shamelessly at every intelligent person: our collective punishment exacted on the group and the cruelty heaped upon anyone who had crossed this artificial barrier. Our prejudice against them is neither racial nor religious, but a useless defense to cover the harassment of people which are founded on fanciful notions of clan superiority. The blight is not limited to how we have isolated them but our inability to recognize and overcome uncritical myth that have had serious consequences. We were and perhaps still are inept to see how our own fiction has trapped our minds without ever pondering on the effects it had on others. Our actions have been a constant tragedy for some of our citizens but the real tragedy is our inability to rise above our own fabrication.

 

If we have now gained the genuine conscience, the road out of our inadequacies should begin with personal reflection. Anyone who is genuinely willing to disassemble this nonsense should exercise individual freedom to cross the clan barrier. The easiest and quickest way to remove this label is by practicing what we preach: marry from them and allow our family members to marry from them without punishment. Our society knows how destructive the very few inter-clan marriages were. The problem is not to support a cause that doesn’t exist. It is to bluff a useless discrimination. The Gabooye community, as it calls itself in this vast pool of clan society, suffers from none other than the label we placed on it. Our mythology holds no truth; but to unravel it needs serious minded intellectuals who should act upon their convictions. Our bigotry goes against our Islamic teachings, we should eliminate it by modeling freedom for those chained by prejudice. This will put an end to it. We do not need cloaks of political correctness but the genuine desire should be to lead our minds and others from darkness to light. Political participation should not be requested by manifestoes but should be guaranteed and welcomed as citizenship right. What is there other than to look inward into our own deficiencies that can solve this problem?

 

Rhoda A. Rageh

[Paragon]

I have to say i enjoyed reading the above article. The author addressed the issue very precisely, thankz to her.