Who Are the Somali Bantu? |
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July 13th, 2007 - 03:06PM |
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Photo: Somali Bantu kids are often the welcoming committee during IRC home visits./ Roberto 'Bear' Guerra Anne Richard, IRC's vice president of advocacy, testified about the plight of Africa’s refugees before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 20, World Refugee Day. In her testimony she also spoke about groups of refugees the IRC is now helping to resettle in the United States: As of the end of May 2007, the United States had resettled 8,276 African refugees during the 2007 fiscal year. The IRC was responsible for 970 of these refugees. In recent years, perhaps the most talked about groups of refugees coming to the United States have been the Lost Boys of Sudan and the Somali Bantu. The Bantu were brought to Somalia as slaves in the 1800’s from Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. After slavery was abolished in Somalia, the Bantus still lived on the margins of society. When Somalia descended into anarchy in 1991 and many Bantus were killed, raped or beaten, they fled to refugee camps in Kenya where the same kind of abuse and persecution continued. After Mozambique and Tanzania refused to resettle them and with no chance of safe repatriation to Somalia, the US government agreed to resettle 12,000 to 13,000 Somali Bantus in the United States on humanitarian grounds, starting in 2003. By September 2002, more than 12,000 Bantu refugees had been transferred from the Dadaab Refugee Camp to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where the IRC manages the health care system and provides adult education services. Kakuma was a safer location for US authorities to conduct an application and screening process. The IRC quickly constructed new sanitation and bathing facilities, and our clinics and feeding centers soon filled up with the new arrivals, many suffering from malaria and malnutrition. We also created a special “survival” literacy course to help introduce the Bantu refugees to the language, culture and practices of a place vastly different to the one they would be leaving. The IRC trained some 85 teachers from the Bantu community and within two months, nearly 5,000 Bantus, almost the entire adult population at the camp, were enrolled. For most of the Bantu, illiterate and unexposed to modern conveniences, the classes were both bewildering and exciting. They learned the English alphabet and how to write the kind of family information that would be required on many US forms. They learned basic salutations, how to ask for directions, and how to report an emergency. And then one day, after a year of seemingly endless interviews, checkups and vaccinations, they started coming to the United States. Soon after their arrival, resettlement caseworkers and volunteers took the families on shopping excursions and gave lessons on food preparation, storage and clean-up. They showed the family how to lock doors, turn on sinks, stoves and lights, and use a washing machine and vacuum cleaner. They explained the concept of banks and paying bills. They registered the children in local schools, arranged for tutoring and enrolled the family in English classes. In as little as two months, and sometime less, many of the Somali Bantu had secured entry level jobs and began working their way up the economic ladder and achieving independence. Since 2003, IRC has resettled 1,766 Somali Bantu. Most arrived in 2004 and 2005. Only a few new cases have been added to this group since that time, however some continue to arrive. For example IRC had a new Somali Bantu case allocated to us only a couple weeks ago that we resettled in Baltimore. The generosity of everyday Americans has contributed to the successful resettlement of many resilient Somali Bantu families. Posted By: theirc | Refugees in the U.S. Permalink |
