EVERETT – When a donated chicken arrived in a plastic bag at Mako Kujande’s doorstep one July evening, she thought she knew how to cook it.
Just a few weeks before, refugee workers in Kenya had shown her what a stove was. The previous day, a volunteer had come to her Everett apartment to explain how to work the knobs.
But no one told her to take the food out of the bag before cooking it. The plastic bag caught fire, and a terrified Kujande fled her apartment screaming. A neighbor ran in with a fire extinguisher and doused the stove-top blaze.
Nonprofit groups spent months preparing for the arrival in Everett of up to 50 refugees from the Bantu region of Somalia. Yet, it’s impossible to teach everything about day-to-day Western life to people who typically grew up without light switches, doorknobs or clocks, and who cooked over open fires.
“The first week they were here, you could see the fear in their faces,” said Van Dinh-Kuno, executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Forum of Snohomish County. “Every step was a baby step.”
Never has there been a group of immigrants in Snohomish County with as little exposure to modern life as the Bantu. At first, Dinh-Kuno even questioned whether it had been a mistake to settle them here.
Today, Kujande, 31, and other refugees laugh at their early battles with modern Western conveniences. They instead think of how lucky they are to have escaped the hell of 12 years in Kenyan refugee camps and the horror of witnessing the rape and pillaging that other Somali tribes inflicted on their villages.
“I was reborn when I came here,” said Rashid Muya, another Bantu immigrant. “God will help us here.”
A long history of persecution
Twenty-eight Bantu live in Everett, and about 20 more are expected by the end of the year. They are part of the resettlement of more than 13,000 refugees in 55 cities across the United States – the largest relocation in U.S. history of a single African tribe or ethnic group. They will be eligible for citizenship in five years.
The U.S. State Department agreed to help resettle them because of the persecution the Bantu have historically faced in Somalia, said Kelly Gauger, the State Department’s program officer for admissions from East Africa.
The Bantu families here are descendants of slaves who were captured in Tanzania and Mozambique in the 18th and 19th centuries and brought to Somalia.
In modern times, they have endured political, educational and job discrimination, said Dan Van Lehman, co-founder of the National Somali Bantu Project at Portland State University in Portland, Ore.
When civil war broke out in Somalia in the early 1990s, other clans plundered and seized Bantu farms and homes. Thousands of Bantu were murdered or raped. About 20,000 fled Somalia for Kenyan refugee camps. Bantu refugees face a bleak future in Africa without U.S. help, Van Lehman said.
“They could stay and languish in a refugee camp, which is not all that different from a prison. Or they could go back to Somalia, where they would face something that’s between slavery and sharecropping,” Van Lehman said.
Muya hopes never to return to Somalia.
“It’s trouble over there,” he said through a translator.
Muya, 36, recalled that in the early 1990s marauding gangs from other tribes ransacked his village and the farm where he grew rice, sesame, corn and sorghum.
“They raped my sisters and stole everything we had,” he said.
They also gang-raped and beat his wife. She died from her injuries five days later.
Muya and his son Ali, then 3, walked for about 14 days until they reached a Kenyan refugee camp run by the United Nations.
Muya said there was so little food in the camps that he was sometimes anemic. Crime was rampant. While there, he married Habiba Mohamed, now 25. The couple have three children together. The family, including Ali and Muya’s daughter from a previous relationship, now lives in Everett.
Before leaving Africa for America, the Bantu are taught the differences between the U.S. and Bantu cultures. For example, they learn that in the United States there are laws against female circumcision and polygamy, which are common practices among the Bantu and other Muslims in Somalia.
They tour a home in Nairobi where they are introduced to an array of modern conveniences, from flush toilets to ATM cards. In contrast, most Bantu homes in Somalia are thatched mud huts with dirt floors and no running water.
Muya laughed as he recalled how he stared in wonder at the strange sight of a doorknob, and how he carefully walked up stairs for the first time.
In Everett, the Bantu attend workshops to learn American survival skills, such as how to open a checking account and how to pay a utility bill. They also learn to avoid becoming victims of scams. The Bantu are so grateful to be here that they are sometimes too trusting, Dinh-Kuno said.
Every day brings a new lesson. As a refugee worker demonstrated to Mako Kujande how to put a shoe on her 3-year-old son Yahya, Kujande looked on with a puzzled expression. The Bantu are accustomed to bare feet or flip-flops. Kujande tried over and over to get Yahya’s foot in the shoe but finally gave up.
The donated televisions the Bantu watch provide endless hours of entertainment. Ali laughed hysterically and jumped up and down playing an air guitar as he watched Keith Urban singing “Days Go By” on Country Music Television.
As he changed the channels, Ali laughed nearly as hard at what he thought was the ridiculous sight of grown men tackling each other in a football game.
The Bantu have already formed a tight-knit community here. About half live in northeast Everett and half in the Glacier View neighborhood near Forest Park. They take the bus to visit each other.
Some rely on church volunteers to take them on longer trips. Mohamed prefers Wal-Mart over nearby supermarkets because it sells whole tilapia, a fish she ate in Africa.
Food is one way Mohamed and other Bantu preserve their culture. As she sat against a wall in her north Everett living room, the snowcapped Cascade Mountains visible from her window, soor, a thick corn porridge and a staple of the Bantu diet, simmered on the stove.
The colorful long dress Mohamed wore is one of the few possessions she brought with her from the refugee camp. On other days, she wears clothing donated by local church groups.
Unaware of the rules of American fashion, she likes wearing a pink nightgown from Kmart when she goes shopping.
Tension with Somalis persists
Although the Puget Sound area is home to thousands of immigrants from other parts of Somalia, the Bantu in Everett say they want nothing to do with them. Some Somalis from Seattle have asked for the addresses of the Bantu, saying they want to help. The refugee forum won’t give them out. The Bantu aren’t ready to mix with members of tribes that persecuted them for so long.
In King County, Bantu and non-Bantu Somalis mix easily, said Bob Johnson, regional director of the International Rescue Committee, which has settled 65 Bantu in Tukwila. Somalis have donated food and clothing to the Bantu and made friends with them. The difference between Tukwila and Everett may be that, with such a large Somali community in south King County, the two groups have no choice but to mix and put old prejudices and fears behind them, he said.
More than 300 Bantu are being resettled in the Puget Sound area.
Most of the Bantu in Everett are sponsored by Lutheran Community Services Northwest. The group chose Everett because of reasonable rents and the positive experiences that Ukrainian, Iraqi and other refugees have had here, said Jan Stephens, coordinator of the agency’s refugee resettlement program.
The group gave each refugee $400 to tide them over before they started receiving food stamps and welfare. Volunteers from Lutheran churches and refugee workers help the Bantu apply for government aid, drive them to appointments and advise them how to manage their money. Nonprofit groups and churches have donated food, clothing, furniture and toys.
The Bantu are grateful. But they’re frustrated because they can’t start working yet.
Muya wanted to get a job from almost the day he stepped off the plane. The refugee forum wants to first make sure he and other refugees are better immersed in U.S. culture and know enough English to start taking classes in welding, automobile repair and other skilled professions, Dihn-Kuno said.
Muya, for example, will probably attend English as a second language classes at Everett Community College for nine more months before he’s ready to apply for a job.
Although the Bantu are the least educated refugees Dinh-Kuno has helped in 20 years of refugee work, they’re also the most highly motivated.
“They’re just like a sponge,” Dinh-Kuno said. “Everything is new to them. They want to learn and retain it. The challenge is they give themselves high expectations. If they don’t achieve them, they’ll be disappointed.”
The Bantu’s past will probably always haunt them, Dinh-Kuno said. Some may suffer from nightmares, flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Others may develop feelings of guilt for leaving loved ones behind.
But that same scarred history is what likely pushes the Bantu to aim so high, she said. As a people accustomed to having so little, they don’t take anything for granted.
“They’re down at the bottom, so they’re willing to take chances,” Dinh-Kuno said. “They have nothing to lose.”
About the Bantu
* Bantu tribes make up much of the population of nearly all sub-Saharan African countries, but they are a minority of about 600,000 in Somalia, a country of about 7.5 million people. Some Bantu are indigenous to Somalia but are integrated into Somali society. Others are descendants of slaves seized from Tanzania and Mozambique in the 18th and 19th centuries. That group of Bantu has faced two centuries of persecution.
* About 20,000 Bantu fled to Kenyan refugee camps when civil war broke out in the early 1990s.n In 1999, the U.S. State Department granted refugee status to the Bantu living in the camps. The first Bantu refugees arrived in the United States in 2003. About 13,000 will be resettled here by 2005.
* Most Somali Bantu live in the fertile valleys of the Juba and Shabelle rivers in southern Somalia. The majority are farmers.
* Most Bantu speak either Af Maay, one of the two main languages of Somalia, or one of several ancestral Tanzanian tribal languages, most commonly Zigua. Many also speak Swahili.
* Somali Bantu generally practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam.
Sources: The Cultural Orientation Resource Center, The Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, U.S. Department of State
About the Bantu
* Bantu tribes make up much of the population of nearly all sub-Saharan African countries, but they are a minority of about 600,000 in Somalia, a country of about 7.5 million people. Some Bantu are indigenous to Somalia but are integrated into Somali society. Others are descendants of slaves seized from Tanzania and Mozambique in the 18th and 19th centuries. That group of Bantu has faced two centuries of persecution.
* About 20,000 Bantu fled to Kenyan refugee camps when civil war broke out in the early 1990s.
* In 1999, the U.S. State Department granted refugee status to the Bantu living in the camps. The first Bantu refugees arrived in the United States in 2003. About 13,000 will be resettled here by 2005.
* Most Somali Bantu live in the fertile valleys of the Juba and Shabelle rivers in southern Somalia. The majority are farmers.
* Most Bantu speak either Af Maay, one of the two main languages of Somalia, or one of several ancestral Tanzanian tribal languages, most commonly Zigua. Many also speak Swahili.
* Somali Bantu generally practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam.
Sources: The Cultural Orientation Resource Center, The Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, U.S. Department of State
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