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Refuge Fragments, Fragmentary Refuge

By Catherine Besteman

Forthcoming in Ethnography

Keywords: refugees, Somali Bantu, fragment, literary ethnography, immigration,

xenophobia, refuge

Abstract: This experimental essay shows the ways that Somali Bantus refugees’

experiences of resettlement, especially their encounters with the bureaucracy of

immigration and resettlement, fragment what for the refugees are meaningful wholes

(such as families), as well as the sometimes creative, though often frustrated, ways they

work to re-create wholeness and meaning in their new context. Revealing cognition and

feeling in the moment, these fragments challenge the conception of refuge as relief or

resolution, the end of the journey. Instead they expose just how fragmentary refuge is,

where the fragments, like the experience of refuge, take the form of a puzzle that shows

the precarity and uncertainty of refuge. But the stories told in these fragments also push

back at their fragmentation by revealing how refugees puzzle through and attempt to

control fragmentation, demonstrating the strength of refugee agency and the beautiful

potency of their resistances.

Bio: Catherine Besteman is Professor of Anthropology at Colby College. She is author of

Transforming Cape Town and Unraveling Somalia and coeditor of The Insecure

American and Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong.

Contact Info: clbestem@colby.edu and 4702 Mayflower Hill, Colby College, Waterville

Maine 04901.

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Acknowledgments: For their comments and encouragement with this essay, I am grateful

to Chandra Bhimull, Angelique Haugerud, Janelle Taylor, those identified here as

Ibrahim and Sadiq, the six anonymous reviewers for this journal, and, of course, the

people whose experiences are recounted here.

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At a 2006 community meeting in Lewiston, Maine, I had the happy shock to

encounter Somali Bantu refugees from the small village (called Banta) in Somalia where

I had lived and conducted fieldwork in 1987-8. During the upheaval of Somalia’s civil

war we had lost touch, and I was unaware that many refugees from Banta had resettled in

Maine, just as they were unaware that I, too, was living in Maine. Following our

surprising reunion I began working with resettled Somali Bantu groups in several

American cities on a variety of community based initiatives as well as an ethnographic

book project.1 As I listen to their stories, I have been persistently startled by the poetic

beauty of small memories and moments, which, in my book project, necessarily merge

into an articulated narrative of resettlement and refuge. In an effort to capture something

of the fragmentary sensations of resettlement and refuge, this experimental essay features

some of the fragments from my notebooks and memories, mostly events or feelings

recounted to me as snippets, as parts of longer personal life stories retold in fragmented

memories rather than linear narratives, or as suddenly remembered funny anecdotes, as

well as some fragmented memories and observations of my own.

The fragments are important to recognize and acknowledge: they force us to

pause, listen, feel, imagine. As stand-alone moments they tell profound stories on their

own terms, yet as fragments they can be lost in the creation of an ethnographically

coherent story with a linear arc. Fragments stimulate and provoke and refuse neat

resolutions, whereas books and linear narratives typically bind and hold. Fragments have

the power to shock and disrupt, to reveal bursts of emotion that contextualization can

smooth over.2 My desire in producing an essay of fragments is to emphasize the ways

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that refugees’ experiences of resettlement, especially their encounters with the

bureaucracy of immigration and resettlement, fragment what for the refugees are

meaningful wholes (such as families), as well as the sometimes creative, surprising,

though often frustrated, ways they work to re-create wholeness and meaning in their new

context.

The form of the fragment helps demonstrate the violences of refugee resettlement

in a way that standard narratives often miss. Revealing cognition and feeling in the

moment, these fragments challenge the conception of refuge as relief or resolution, the

end of the journey. Instead they expose just how fragmentary refuge is, where the

fragments, like the experience of refuge, take the form of a puzzle that shows the

precarity and uncertainty of refuge. But the stories told in these fragments also push back

at their fragmentation by revealing how refugees puzzle through and attempt to control

fragmentation, demonstrating the strength of refugee agency and the beautiful potency of

their resistances. Each time the person trumps the moment, the fragment illuminates

human creativity at its most powerful.

My ethnographic research with Somali Bantu refugees stretches across several

cities, including Lewiston (Maine), Hartford, Syracuse and Seattle.3 Some of these

fragments indicate a geographical location and some are left unidentified. As an

experimental essay of creative non-fiction, I have opted here to use pseudonyms and, for

reasons that should be obvious, to strip some of the fragments of names and locations.

Almost everyone included here has used a number of different names over his or her life

history, such as birth names, new names chosen after surviving a major illness, names

used in the refugee camps, adopted names used for resettlement purposes, and/or new

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(and sometimes old) names acquired after receiving US citizenship. Decisions about

which names to use in the book manuscript are still in flux, so it is possible that any of

these fragments that reappear in the book manuscript may contain different names. The

text thus follows a normal feature of refugee life.

Imagining refuge

Because of their minority status, history of exploitation, and vulnerability, in 1997 the

UNHCR designated Somali Bantu refugees living in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya

as a group of special humanitarian concern. The refugees had tried and failed to

negotiate resettlement opportunities in Tanzania and Mozambique. As a result of these

efforts, a list of Somali Bantu refugees eligible for resettlement was created in 1997. In

1999, under pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus to address the historic racial

imbalance in US refugee admissions, the US government agreed to accept the group of

Somali Bantus for resettlement. They were the largest group of African refugees ever

admitted to the US.

In 2002, in preparation for resettlement, IOM (International Organization for Migration)

and UNHCR staff reverified the Somali Bantu refugees from the 1997 list. Those who

passed were moved to Kakuma refugee camp, where they were screened again by the US

Department of Homeland Security. If they passed that screening they were sent to

Nairobi for their final screening. After signing a promise to pay back the cost of their

airfare they were put on a plane to the US. If they failed their screening in Nairobi they

were sent back to Kakuma and prohibited from appealing the decision or reapplying.

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Meanwhile, in the United States, media reports about the planned resettlement called the

chance to come to the US ‘The Holy Grail’, lauding the US as ‘The Place of Miracles’

for ‘the Lucky Few’ who passed the extensive screening process.4 Somali Bantus, who

had no relatives in the US and little knowledge about life in the US, had mixed reactions

about their resettlement.

Sadiq recalls his reaction when Andrew Hopkins of UNHCR came to the refugee camp

and announced that 12,000 Somali Bantus would be going to the US: ‘I did not know

anything about the US. I thought, If I’m going I’m just going. We had no relatives there

and didn’t know anything.’ He did hope for the chance to continue his education. He was

the second Somali Bantu to graduate from high school in the refugee camps, but had no

connections or funds to attend college in Kenya.

Osman recalls that people were unhappy about coming to America because they thought

they would have to convert to Christianity. ‘We were wondering who we were going to

become. Some stayed in the camps because they were struggling over this, because they

thought they would have to change their culture and religion. We knew that America was

made up of Christian white people, and we wondered, what are we going to look like

there? Those who decided to come to American thought, as long as we get peace we

don’t care what we look like.’

Mana refused to register herself or her children for the resettlement program. The US

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seemed very far away and she was uncertain about living in a Christian country. But one

day while she was at the market her daughter Mumina stole her ID card and registered

her for resettlement. Mana was shocked when she was called for the resettlement

interview, but her children, excited by the promise of continuing their education,

overcame her resistance. She remains uncertain whether moving to the US was a good

idea.

At their final US Department of Homeland Security interview Kenya, the interviewer

asked Sadiq’s small daughter, ‘Do you like video games?’ His daughter had no idea.

She’d never heard of them. Through this question Sadiq learned they were accepted for

resettlement to the US.

Scripting refuge

To be accepted for resettlement in the US, each Somali Bantu refugee had to prove his or

her ethnicity, have a story of persecution, be on the list created in 1997 for the failed

resettlement effort to Mozambique, and meet American requirements for family structure.

The assessment of ‘true’ Somali Bantu legitimacy often included a physical appraisal of

applicants to ensure they conformed to the predominant understanding of Somali Bantu

racial features. In addition, the American standard of ‘economic dependents’ defines who

can count as part of a family. Juvenile children are considered economic dependents and

parents can thus include them in their family unit for resettlement. Adult children, even if

unmarried, even if living in the same household, are not economic dependents and thus

must be considered separately. Siblings and cousins occupy the same relational category

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for Somali Bantu parents, but not for American interviewers, for whom one’s children

are one’s economic dependents but one’s nieces and nephews are not. Resettlement turns

extended families into nuclear families and lops off those family members who cannot fit

into the new model. The screening process demanded a reconfiguring of subjectivities

and kinship and required that many choose between family and resettlement.

Mumina and her husband, married for 20 years, with seven kids, appeared for their

verification interview in Kakuma. The American interviewer scrutinized their physical

features and announced that he did not believe Mumina’s husband was really a Somali

Bantu. While she was accepted for resettlement, the interviewer rejected her husband and

children. Mumina’s mother, Mana, and three of her four siblings were also accepted, but

one of her brothers was not. The family was forced to choose between splitting up and

sending some to the US or all remaining in the camp together.

Someone from the Australian government contacts me to ask if I will act as a consultant

regarding refugee resettlement applications by people claiming to be Somali Bantus. He

wants to fax me photographs of applicants so I can scrutinize their physical features and

offer my expert opinion on whether or not the person in each photograph is really Somali

Bantu. Apparently, someone in the Australian government thinks that refugees who apply

for resettlement on the basis of ethnicity must be able to pass a racial litmus test on the

basis of their physical appearance, which can be accurately assessed by an ‘expert

anthropologist’. I send the Australian government the AAA statement on race instead.5

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Khadija was not on the 1997 list for resettlement. She had no family, and no one had

signed her up. She had moved in with Mana, who presented her as at the resettlement

interview as a new, still juvenile, daughter-in-law. This came as a shock to Ibrahim, the

16 year old son who, during the interview, suddenly became a husband. It was the only

way to include Khadija in the family resettlement, or she would have been left behind.

Abdiya’s husband Ismail was also married to Binti. As a family the co-wives shared

domestic tasks and childcare, but since polygyny is illegal in the US. Ismail was forced

divorce one wife. Ismail and Binti were sent to Baltimore, but Abdiya became a single

mother and, with her five children, was sent separately to Denver. Within a few months

after resettlement, Ismail, Binti, and Abdiya all relocated to live polygynously together

again, although officially Abdiya remains a single mother because her marriage is illegal

in the US and members of polygynous marriages risk being deported.

Sadiq’s family knew many families had been sent back to Kakuma after failing their

Nairobi interview because different family members had given different answers to

questions, or because the interviewer decided they were lying about their family

composition. Since the 1997 registration, Sadiq had added to his family an orphaned

distant relative who was not on the 1997 list. For the final interview, Sadiq claimed

Qassim as his wife’s brother and their juvenile dependent. Because Qassim was a new

addition to the roster, the interviewer compared every feature - the shape of his eyes,

nose, ears – with Sadiq’s wife, who cried throughout the interview, distraught with

worry, ‘He is my brother! He is my brother!’ Two days after their interview they learned

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they had passed and would be leaving that night, after promising to repay the $3200 cost

of their airfare. When I asked why he was willing to put his family and his dreams of

education at risk for Qassim, who was not a brother in the American sense, Sadiq

shrugged and responded, ‘Qassim’s family was dead and he had been left alone. When he

got to the camps he lived with us. He became part of our family. There was no way we

could leave him’.

Orienting refuge

Following the announcement of the resettlement plan, news reports across the US

promoted the image of US humanitarian benevolence in choosing the Somali Bantu for

resettlement. Because of their illiteracy, lack of education, rural background as

subsistence farmers, large families, and history of persecution, Somali Bantu were widely

described as particularly needy and primitive. ‘Most have never seen a light switch or

telephone, or even a building that wasn’t made of mud’ (Newsweek); ‘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 elevator, seen snow or

experienced air conditioning’ (Refugees Magazine); they are ‘almost completely

untouched by modern life… They measure time by watching the sun rise and fall over

their green fields and mud huts’ (New York Times).6 Descriptions such as ‘Africa’s lost

tribe’ (New York Times), ‘feudal serfs’ (Refugees Magazine), and ‘among the most

persecuted people on earth’ (National Geographic) highlighted their vulnerability,

simple background, technological naiveté, and history of exploitation.7 In the camps, the

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refugees received cultural orientation classes from IOM to prepare them for their life in

the US.

Osman heard that everyone uses computers in the US, so he signed up for a computer

course in the refugee camp to ensure he would arrive prepared. The course, which ran for

five weeks, taught him how to turn the computer on and off and use the keyboard. But his

course neglected to teach him about the internet, printing, or word processing because the

teachers in the refugee camp who ran the private school had procured no internet

connection, paper or software.

Sadiq particularly remembers the emphasis on cleanliness and abundance taught in the

cultural orientation classes. He learned that everything in the US is very clean: ‘The

stoves were white and clean and beautiful. We were all amazed by how clean everything

was. And we learned there was plenty of food. They showed us an open fridge, and it was

full of food!’

Abdulle remembers learning to recognize ‘Help Wanted’ signs, being taught that such

signs indicated a place for resettled refugees to find a job. ‘But it doesn’t work,’ he says,

sadly, after eight years in Seattle. ‘There are never any jobs for us.’

Resettled Somali Bantus recite what they remember learning in the refugee camp’s

cultural orientation classes: ‘No polygyny.’ ‘No traditional healing.’ ‘No hitting your

kids.’ ‘No hitting your wife.’ ‘No marriage before age 16.’ Only after they arrived in the

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US did they learn about racism. That they would experience racist hostility as black

people was not part of their cultural orientation classes and came as a great surprise.

Arriving in refuge

While celebrating the ‘miraculous’ opportunity afforded by the resettlement plan, news

accounts and policy documents nevertheless predicted that the transition to life in the US

would be difficult and challenging for resettled Somali Bantu. Resettlement agencies in

the US are contracted to meet refugees at the airport, help settle them into housing and

enroll children in school, and provide further cultural orientation during their first six

weeks. Refugees ineligible for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) can

receive a small amount of federal support for eight months, after which they are

supposed to be economically self-sufficient and must begin repaying the cost of their

airfare to the Unites States.

Osman, age 15, or maybe 16, or maybe 17, arrived in Atlanta with his 21 year old

brother, who is really his cousin, as an independent family of orphans. (This was not

entirely true; Osman is an orphan, but the brother/cousin is not, but because the age of the

older brother meant he was not allowed to come as a dependent of his mother he instead

applied and was accepted for resettlement as the head of an independent household of

orphaned brothers.) After deplaning they were immediately whisked away by armed

police to a room for questioning. They were terrified, sure they were being arrested,

would be assaulted, sent back to Kenya. Osman could speak some English but could not

understand the questions posed by the police and there was no translator. Eventually they

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were released, confused but unassaulted, to find that the Somali caseworker sent to fetch

them had already left the airport because they spent so much time being interrogated in

security.

Bakar arrived in Atlanta with his wife and children. After deplaning they walked along

with everyone else and boarded a small train. Because they didn’t speak English and

could not read or write and nobody helped them, they remained on the train as it circled

the airport over and over and over. Eventually he realized that the train kept returning to

the place where they boarded. They exited and boarded the train over and over before

figuring out where to go.

Because he learned English in the camp and is intellectual and curious and adventurous,

Sadiq’s first priority after arriving in Syracuse was to learn about his new city. He had

learned about city buses in cultural orientation, but not about how to read bus routes. On

his first day he was determined to enroll in the local community college, so he walked

down the street and boarded the first bus and rode it all the way to the end of the line but

never found the community college. The kind bus driver explained to him that different

buses go different places and have assigned stops, and told him how to find his way back

home. To try to learn the routes, Sadiq spent the next month riding every bus in the city,

for its entire route, to memorize which buses go where and what exists along each route.

After our 2006 community meeting in Lewiston where the refugees from Banta and I

rediscovered each other, I went from family to family renewing old acquaintances.

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Shangole shames me when he asks, ‘When you lived with us in Somalia you used to be

able to talk to us. How come you’ve forgotten our language?’

Abdiya was surprised that people yelled things at her on the street when she was walking

her kids to school and doing her shopping in Lewiston. Only later, after she began

learning English, did she realize people were yelling ‘Go Home!’ and ‘Dress like an

American!’ Somalis in America are regularly told to ‘Go Home!’ by neighbors, people

in passing cars, people walking by on the sidewalk, people in checkout lines at Walmart.

‘Why did they bring us here if they don’t want us?’ she wonders.

Shortly after moving to Lewiston, Mana and Jama are chased through the city park by a

dog whose owner stands laughing and urging the dog on as, panicked, they try to outrun

it. Later, four Somali boys are arrested after they fight back against a white man whose

unleashed dog chased them in the park. The manager of the soup kitchen who witnessed

the incident and called the police is furious, wondering why the man with the illegally

unleashed dog wasn’t also arrested?

Roqiya reports that her fifth grade teacher in Lewiston says she shouldn’t have been

allowed to come to America because her parents are taking jobs and resources away from

‘real Americans’. She’s not sure what it means to be a ‘real American’ but she gets the

picture that the teacher’s definition doesn’t include her family.

Working for refuge

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The US Office of Refugee Resettlement is clear that economic self-sufficiency is the top

priority for refugees transitioning to life in the US. Federal support is provided for only a

few months, and only limited support is available for English languages classes, job skills

programs, or mental health support for managing trauma or PTSD. Every resettled

refugee over the age of 16 is expected to work, and a primary responsibility of the

refugee resettlement agencies is to send resettled refugees to job placement centers. No

support is available to help employers to hire refugees with limited English skills. In

many cities, non-working refugees are accused of illegitimate welfare dependency, while

working refugees are accused of taking jobs away from Americans.

Sadiq wanted to come to the US to continue his education, but went to work right away

as was expected of him. He worked at Stickley Furniture, milling trees into timber while

wearing earplugs, breathing filters and big goggles. One supervisor watched three

workers. Sadiq worked from 5 am to 3:30 pm. From work he went straight to community

college, where he took classes until 9 pm. Returning home at 10 pm, he slept from 11 pm

until 3:30 am. He rarely saw his wife and children when they were all awake. His job

required him to work 55 hours a week, Monday to Saturday. He made $420 per week.

After nine months he quit his job to focus on his studies, but his federal support ended

and he realized that coming to America did not really mean getting an education. It meant

manual labor.

Osman started high school in the US with hardly any previous experience with school.

His hope in coming to the US was education, but he was very behind his peers in reading

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and writing although his oral skills in English had progressed rapidly. But because

resettled refugees are supposed to get a job when they reach the age of 16, Osman headed

to LL Bean every day after school, where he worked the evening shift as a packer,

returning home at midnight. No time for homework.

Ahmed was so excited to attend high school when he arrived in the US. But his

resettlement caseworker in Hartford refused to enroll him in high school because as a 16

year old refugee he was required to get a job. He appealed, successfully making the case

to the school department that he should be allowed to enroll in high school, but because

American schools place refugee kids according to their age rather than their educational

level, he, along with nearly the entire first generation of Somali Bantu youth in the US,

fails to graduate.

Hussein gets a job at a health clinic, which he loves because he is studying to get a degree

in nursing. He is assigned to a unit with nine women, where he is the only man, the only

black person, and the only Muslim. Embarrassed, he tells me that the women repeatedly

file complaints against him for ‘refusing to be a team player’ and for ‘poor workplace

social skills’, but that he can’t find a way to connect with them. The women like to go out

for drinks together after work, talk about their boyfriends and what they did with them on

the weekends, and slap each other on the ass. He explains that he can’t participate in

these activities because he is a quiet, religious person who doesn’t drink, won’t share

private stories about his wife, and will never be able to slap his supervisor on her ass. I

giggle at the image, but he is utterly serious and is eventually laid off.

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Because Abdiya had left behind her eldest son in Kakuma, she was desperate to get a job

in her new home in Lewiston so she could send him remittances. She worked hard on her

English and literacy skills, enrolled in a work training program for refugees who have

never been part of the American work force, signed up for employment help at the local

CareerCenter, and worked with a job counselor through a local NGO. But she was

rejected by employers over and over again because of her broken English, lack of

computer skills, and lack of a high school degree, or so they said. She wondered, Why

must you have computer skills and a high school degree to be a housekeeper?

Alarmed at the high rate of unemployment among Somali and Somali Bantu refugees in

Lewiston, the Maine Department of Labor commissioned a study. Employers told

interviewers that they couldn’t hire Somalis because they would demand time off from

work to pray, because they wouldn’t handle pork, and because the loose clothing worn by

women would be hazardous around machinery. Somalis told interviewers they would

pray during regularly scheduled breaks, wear gloves to handle pork, and replace long

dresses with pants in the workplace.8 Less than 50 percent of Lewiston’s Somalis are

able to find wage jobs, and those Somalis who do have jobs earn far less than the average

non-Somali citizen. Racism, it seems, can trump exploitability.

Supporting refuge

Competing stories can be told about the experiences of refugees and hosts in the cities

where they have settled. Welcome and exclusion. Assistance and rejection. Friendships

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and racism. Economic revitalization and economic burden. A common refrain in

Lewiston is: they’re welcome to live here so long as we don’t have to change, pay for

them, or give them special favors. Articles in Newsweek, The Economist, and Mother

Jones suggest the arrival of thousands of Somali refugees ‘saved’ Lewiston by

revitalizing an economically depressed post-industrial city in decline, enraging local

citizens, who refuse to believe they have been saved by Somalis and who wish, instead, to

highlight the costs to them of absorbing so many unexpected newcomers. What does it

actually mean to offer support to newly arrived refugees?

In 2002, the mayor of Lewiston wrote a public letter telling Somalis to stop coming to

Lewiston because their financial needs were draining the city coffers. The accusation

prompted a massive demonstration against the mayor and in support of the refugees. Few

refugees attended the rally, frightened of the publicity and the arrival in town of members

of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator to demonstrate in support of the

mayor’s letter. Back in the refugee camps in Kenya, their relatives hear the news about

the upheaval in Lewiston and begin phoning to make sure their resettled relatives are safe

in their new country of refuge.

The Adult Education program invites a police officer to talk with parents about

appropriate and legal ways to discipline their misbehaving children. A Somali man says,

‘At home we used to hit our kids with a big stick, but we know we are not allowed to do

that here and we don’t know what to do.’ The other parents are visibly anxious about this

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admission until the police officer says, ‘Yeah, I have three teenagers and I’d love to be

able to hit them with a stick.’ The whole room relaxes.

The director of the Adult Education program compares her Somali refugee students with

her white students, many of whom are struggling with poverty and a lack of social

support structures. The white students jealously watch the way the Somali refugees

envelop each new Somali arrival to the community, offering childcare, transport, food,

and guidance in managing life in the city. If you’re a Somali refugee, the director says,

you’ve got people. That’s not true for the Americans. She wishes the Somalis would offer

the same kind of support to new white arrivals to the city as well.

Mana, who is a spiritual healer, was uncertain whether her personal spirits would make

the trip to the US with her. They do. She begins holding healing sessions in her small

apartment, calling on her spirits to help other refugee women who are struggling with

depression, parenting challenges, and distress over the challenges their kids face in

American schools. Realizing there are large numbers of refugees struggling with trauma

and mental health problems, the director of the local mental health agency wants to reach

out to Somalis, but many of the Somalis hired there as translators and caseworkers keep

quitting because of the hostile work environment, where they are treated as ignorant

about mental health intervention.

Two doctors convince a community hospital to open an International Clinic within an

inner-city health center where a large number of African refugees live. However, the

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hospital staffs the clinic with employees who are unhappy about adapting to work with

refugees. They grumble about refugees getting special treatment, are appalled by the

doctors’ suggestion to change the annual Christmas party to a holiday party, and are

incensed at the suggestion that pork be avoided at pot-luck employee gatherings. They

jealously gossip about the earnings of contracted African translators and cultural brokers,

who have no benefits. Some treat refugee patients with such disdain and condescension

that the doctors fear there may be a lapse in medical protocol. After several years of

battling with the administration and management for better staffing and training, both

doctors resign in frustration and the hospital closes the clinic. One manager is overheard

telling another, ‘Now we can get back to serving the people we’re supposed to be

serving’.

A local shoe store has donated hundreds of pairs of shoes to the downtown day

shelter/food pantry, and the room is packed with people going through the shoes to find

pairs that fit. I am volunteering alongside two white women who frequent the shelter but

today are volunteers, helping a half dozen Somali women look through the shoes. As she

watches the refugee women gather shoes, one of my co-workers grouses to the other,

‘They should have a special day just for us, so we don’t have to compete with these

refugees.’ I quietly offer to help her find a pair of shoes in her size but she responds,

‘These aren’t my style. I don’t want any of them.’

Over lunch at my house, an extended family of Somali Bantu refugees and I are looking

at some photographs from Banta in 1987. In the photographs I wear the brightly colored

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floor-length one-shouldered wrap dress that all women wore in the rural village. Fifteen

year old Xawo, who continues to wear ‘traditional’ Somali clothing, studies the

photographs and asks me, ‘If you dressed like that when you were living in Somalia, how

come you don’t still dress like that now?’

Competing for refuge

The US government fosters ethnic competition by awarding grants through a competitive

review process to ‘ethnic mutual assistance associations’. NGOs offer resettled refugee

leaders training in leadership skills, entrepreneurship, and organizational models so they

can build ethnic associations to compete for government and private grants to provide

services to new refugees. The goal is to support self help associations within refugee

communities, teach the benefits of competition, and support a privatization model for the

provision of services to refugees. The competition for grants exacerbates other fault-lines

within the refugee population as well as between non-Somali NGOs.

Sadiq, a leader in one of Lewiston’s ethnic mutual assistance associations, refuses to join

a protest by Somalis marching against a raid on a Somali store and money transfer

operation by the Department of Homeland Security. ‘Why should I go out and protest?’

he asks. ‘I don’t know anything about what those people are doing in their store.’ In

retaliation, other community members affiliated with a different community organization

file complaints against him with the police and break into his apartment to attack him.

The refugee community is riven by the divide.

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An anonymous letter is sent to all the area funding agencies and even to the US Office of

Refugee Resettlement denouncing one of the major ethnic mutual assistance

organizations in Lewiston, alleging corruption, nepotism, and mismanagement. When the

letter is investigated it turns out that half those who signed can’t read and had no idea

what they were signing. Accusations fly about who is to blame for the misunderstanding

and none of the local ethnic mutual assistance associations receive any grants.

The next year, another anonymous letter is sent to funding agencies denouncing a white

woman who is starting a summer program for Somali and non-Somali children. The

woman has close ties to many children and teenagers in the refugee community and

works tirelessly on their behalf as an advocate and caseworker. The letter accuses her of

undermining the parents’ authority and favoring kids who adopt ‘tough’ attitudes. No one

will admit to authoring the letter and many people in the refugee population suspect a

woman who works for a different non-Somali NGO is responsible.

While accusations and condemnations fly around town about which ethnic mutual

assistance associations are receiving money and who is benefitting, other service

providers cautiously extend bits of their programming to ‘the refugee community’, who

now comprise about a fifth of the population. One organization creates a parenting group

for twelve mothers of preschool kids to help them prepare for preschool. Another

organization invites ten young boys to participate in a one hour a week afterschool youth

development program. Another offers an afterschool book club to a few high school girls.

23

Only the public library, the local day shelter, and a federally-funded farming project open

their doors unconditionally to the entire refugee population.

Disciplining refuge

Although the stated goals of the US refugee resettlement program are economic self-

sufficiency and integration, the barriers to both are high. In Lewiston, local employers

are fearful of hiring Somalis, and the practices of local authorities and public institutions

highlight Somalis as different and problematic rather than as members of a shared

community. Somalis experience a wide range of disciplinary mechanisms designed to

‘help’ them conform, adapt, and progress.

Dahir says that in Somalia he was the head of his family, but in the United States the

Government is the head of his family. Caseworkers scrutinize family life, observing

interactions between parents and children, policing parental discipline, imposing

standards for hygiene and domestic cleanliness, recording births, deaths, marriages,

divorces and any other changes in household membership, monitoring wages gained and

lost. Resettled refugees who depend on social services during their adjustment to life in

the US are utterly exposed to the surveillance of government authorities in their lives.

Many families are mystified when the public health nurse who regularly visits their

homes berates them for eating with their hands from a communal bowl while sitting on

the floor. They have always eaten this way. One concerned father emails me to ask if it is

true that, in America, sharing food while sitting on the floor will hurt their children.

24

In a meeting of social services caseworkers who work with Somali refugees, the Somali

translators who accompany the caseworkers on home visits try to explain why refugee

clients sometimes cancel appointments at the last minute. Somali moms receiving home

visits for parenting support want to appear neat and in control to their caseworkers and

will cancel if they can’t get the house cleaned up or are dealing with emotional or

physical challenges. The translators were discussing the case of a woman who had

canceled her home visit from a parenting support service provider the previous day

because she’d recently given birth and was struggling with depression and felt like she

just couldn’t pull it together for the meeting. The translators know that the result of

trying to show only one’s coping abilities and not one’s struggles means being labeled

‘Treatment Resistant’ and ‘Non Compliant’.

School authorities in the public school system, which has expanded to include almost

1000 Somali-speaking children in ELL (English Language Learner) classes - about 20

percent of the school population - refuse to allow parent-teacher support groups despite

appeals from community members and teachers who argue that refugee parents would

benefit from such opportunities to talk informally with teachers. School officials fear that

such groups might create opportunities for ‘tribalism’ that non-Somali teachers and

administrators won’t understand and might be harmed by. The school board decides there

is no need to provide interpreters at school board meetings. A teacher suggests the

schools should forbid students from speaking Somali in the hallways since, as she

explains, ‘We won’t know what they’re saying about us’. When the local newspaper

reports on complaints by Somali parents at a community meeting that they feel excluded

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at the schools, they are roundly denounced in newspaper blogs as unappreciative.

Refugees are told that they should be consistently, persistently grateful for being allowed

to live in the city.

‘I only want to meet with one leader of the Somali community’, says the city official who

is responsible for managing refugee affairs in the city. He says it’s far too confusing to

have to meet with different factions, who may have contradictory views. Refugees cannot

have disagreements amongst themselves because dissension within the refugee

community is confusing to city authorities who wish to interact only with the ‘leaders’ of

the community, who are expected to speak with one voice and hold uniform views.

Refugees are held to a higher standard than other citizens because any mistake is

described in the newspaper blogs and private conversations as representative of the whole

population. A car accident involving a Somali woman provokes protests that Somalis are

allowed to have cars when they don’t know how to drive. A few kids who rough up some

drunks in the park results in an outcry for deportation. A teacher’s car is keyed in the

parking lot outside an elementary school with a high number of Somali students and,

although the culprit is never caught, a top school official insists that the city police focus

their attentions on the Somali kids walking home from school each day. Comments

posted online in response to news articles suggest that Somalis must be prone to violence

because they destroyed their own country and now they will destroy ours as well. Never

mind the fact that Somalis are about 20 percent of the population but only 1.5 percent of

the cases in the city’s District Court.

26

A Somali mental health caseworker gets upset because the school administrator

responsible for discipline in one of the schools tells Somali-American kids, ‘in this

country we don’t behave this way’. The caseworkers says, ‘I’ve lived in Somalia and in

the refugee camps in Kenya and there, if anyone was disrespectful or swearing or

misbehaving they were immediately reprimanded and punished’. He objects to the

school official’s implication that misbehavior is the norm in Africa by using a phrase that

the caseworker believes places the students outside American culture and in some other,

uncivilized culture, with the effect of enforcing bad behavior. The kids hear, ‘You come

from somewhere else where this is allowed. You don’t belong here and you don’t know

the rules here’. But, in fact, almost all the ‘Somali’ kids in the school were born in

America.

Statistics from the Lewiston school district reveal that Somali kids comprise 20 percent

of the elementary school enrollment but account for 50 percent of the out of school

suspensions, are 15 percent of the middle school enrollment but account for 33 percent of

the out of school suspensions, and are 12 percent of the high school enrollment but

account for 22 percent of the out of school suspensions. No one but the Somali parents

and some ELL teachers seems to think this lopsided application of discipline is cause for

alarm, but the absence of translators at school board meetings and parent-teacher support

groups deflects their objections.

Missing refuge

27

Resettled refugees must wait five years before they are eligible for US citizenship. To

acquire citizenship, they must be able to pass a civics exam in English, pay a substantial

fee, and have no criminal record. While they wait to become eligible, they cannot travel

out of the US.

A phone call from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya informs Mana that her daughter,

Mumina, has suddenly died. There is no explanation. She was exiting her hut in the

refugee camp and fell over, dead. She leaves a distraught husband and seven children.

Mana cannot stop crying. It has been seven years since she left Mumina behind when she

came to the US for refuge. Mana cannot qualify for citizenship because she has been

unable to learn enough English. She says she cannot concentrate in class because, as an

old woman, her head is back in Africa, with the children she left behind.

Khadija and Ibrahim get divorced. The strain of an early marriage to save Khadija is too

much for the young couple. Ibrahim becomes the first Somali Bantu to hire a lawyer to

represent him to ensure he retains some rights to his children. He gets them on weekends,

and a social worker checks in on them regularly to make sure things are OK at home.

Abdiya longs for her eldest son, Abdullahi, whom she left behind in the refugee camp

because he did not qualify for resettlement. As soon as she reaches the five year point she

studies constantly for her citizenship exam. She takes classes on Saturdays and Sundays,

and spends hours each day writing out phrases like ‘George Washington was the first

President of the United States’. As soon as she passes the citizenship test she buys a

28

ticket to return to Kenya for three months to visit her son in the refugee camp, leaving her

other five children in the care of her eldest daughter, who also has seven children of her

own. But while she is in Kenya, her eldest daughter has a nervous breakdown and is

confined to a hospital for a month. Abdiya’s time in Kenya with her son is punctuated by

frantic phone calls about her daughter’s mental illness and the care of her other children.

Because Bakar’s wife came to the US as the child of people who are really her aunt and

uncle, she cannot now file family reunification requests to bring her real parents, who

remain behind in the refugee camp. The process that offered her refuge simultaneously

cut her off from her dearest family members.

In school in Lewiston, the kids learn that no one can tell them what to do, and no one has

the right to make them do something against their will. They learn to call 911 if they feel

they are in danger. The kids begin calling 911 when they don’t want to obey their

parents, and the parents, many of whom cannot speak English, are terrified of disciplining

their children for fear they will be deported or their children will be taken away from

them.

Seeing a Somali Bantu boy standing on a street corner with a group of non-Somalis

smoking ‘funny stuff’, Sadiq phones the boy’s father to come get him. The father

responds, ‘He’s a gift to the state. The state can have him. They can take him. He’s not

my child anymore’. Some parents are at their wit’s end.

29

Reshaping refuge

The provision of refuge in a third country resettlement program, as with the Somali

Bantu resettlement in the US, is accompanied by an expectation of assimilation on the

part of the newcomers. But what does assimilation actually mean?

I take Abdiya’s 7 year old daughter Sahara to a big box store to buy her a toy promised in

return for a short essay. She really wants a Hannah Montana doll, but the only dolls on

display are rock star models in skimpy clothing and I get nervous she will pick one with

an inappropriate outfit, like a bikini or midriff top and miniskirt. Her eyes wander to the

play makeup, but there’s no way I’m taking her home with makeup. We move on to the

jewelry aisle, where she spots huge silver hoop earrings that say ‘Hannah’ in fancy script,

but acknowledges that her mother would not allow her to wear them. At last, an hour

later, we have chosen a Hannah Montana watch and small hoop earrings, and I’m

embarrassed for having subjected her to an array of choices so inappropriate for a modest

young girl.

The new mayor of Lewiston in 2012 visits a local afterschool program attended by many

Somali-American kids, complementing the young director on what a terrific job she is

doing. Then he asks if she’ll relay a message to the moms for him. ‘I can try’, she

responds. ‘Tell them to assimilate’, he says. Later, the mayor tells the BBC in an

interview that Somalis in Lewiston should leave their culture at the door because their

culture is one of failure and inferiority. Unlike the response to the mayor’s letter in 2002,

30

this time Somalis take the lead in organizing a public rally to denounce the mayor’s

comments.

When the city police department creates a new squad of community resource officers to

work with the Somali refugee population, one of their first initiatives is to enroll in

Somali language classes. At the public school I start to overhear local white kids chatting

with their friends - in Somali.

At a high school track meet in Lewiston I watch the high jump event with four Somali

girls, who, clearly freezing in their thin dresses and sandals, explain they are there only to

watch the girls compete, not the boys. Yet when the tall white male high jump competitor

from Lewiston keeps missing on his first attempt at each height, I hear the girls

mumbling prayers in Somali to boost his success at each second attempt. I wonder if he

has any idea they are praying for him.

Ibrahim and his family are coming to lunch at my house. In the morning he phones to say

another cousin wants to come too. At 12:30 two vans pull up outside my house, and 15

people pour out and head up our walkway. Ten are children under the age of five, who

occupy themselves during lunch playing our musical instruments, drawing pictures, doing

puzzles, dancing and running and giggling, while the five adults eat and talk. I’m

reminded again how child-centered Somali Bantu culture is, and how totally normal it is

to show up for a lunch invitation with ten children. During lunch Ibrahim mentions the

high volume – the kids are banging, squealing, giggling, shrieking, playing video games

31

– and I ask if it is too noisy for them. They laugh and say, ‘Not for us! We were worried

about you!’

Within a decade of their arrival in Lewiston, Somali refugees have opened 19 stores, a

mosque, two community centers, and two cafes on Lisbon Street, the main street through

the city’s downtown. The new additions transform the previously empty blocks of long-

shuttered storefronts and enable the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars in

remittances each year from Somalis in Lewiston to their relatives and friends in Kenya

and Somalia. Native Lewistonians complain that whereas they used to hear French in the

shops on Lisbon Street during their youth, it’s now becoming Little Mogadishu. ‘What’s

wrong with that?’ some of my refugee friends wonder.

At a Somali Bantu Youth meeting, the Director asks the assembled teenagers what they

know about their history. They respond that they know nothing about their history and

then offer a flood of questions: ‘Why did the 1991 war happen? Did white people come

and invade us?’ ‘Why did we come to the US?’ ‘Why are we called minorities?’ ‘Why

isn’t there a Somali Bantu language if we are called Somali Bantus?’ ‘What is qabil

[clan] and why does it matter?’ Many explain why they wish to reject the ethnic name

Somali Bantu, and some even express the desire to rid themselves of any association with

Somalia.

After the five-year waiting period, Lewiston’s adult Somali residents flock to citizenship

classes in order to pass the exam to become US citizens. Their top priority is returning to

32

the refugee camps to visit friends and family. A joke circulates in the community: One

person asks another, pretending to be the citizenship interviewer: ‘Why do you want to

become an American citizen?’ The applicant answers: ‘So I can travel to Africa.’ At that

everyone cracks up and yells, ‘Wrong answer!’

1 The book project is supported by grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim

Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, The Heyman Center at Columbia

University, and Colby College. The community initiatives included The Somali Bantu

Experience website (www.colby.edu/somalibantu), an ELL book called A Somalia Album

(funded and published by Maine Humanities Council,

http://mainehumanities.org/resources/somalia-album.html), op-eds and public reports, a

book of oral history compiled by Somali Bantu teenagers, and two museum exhibitions.

For a short historical study of Somali Bantu history and identity, see Besteman (2012).

2 For a seminal discussion of how the affect and emotion of violent experience are

flattened and homogenized in constructed historical meta-narratives, and what is lost in

this process, see Pandey (1991). Jackson (2002) writes elegantly about the implications

for subjectivity of the narrative fragmentation of refugees’ stories caused by experiences

of excessive violence and flight. Here, I do not intend to further objectify refugees by

telling a story constructed of their fragments, but rather hope to demonstrate how

fragmentation persists even in refuge, despite the absence of atrocious violence, by

juxtaposing and relating fragments drawn from several Somali Bantu friends across

different locations of refuge.

3 More precisely, the material gathered in this essay draws on ongoing ethnographic

fieldwork in Lewiston during 2006-11, as well as shorter periods of fieldwork of a few

33

weeks each in the other cities during that time period. In addition to the ethnographic and

collaborative projects noted in footnote 1, my activities in Lewiston also included

advocacy and volunteer work with schools and social services providers.

4 (Chanoff, 2002; Swarns, 2003b; Refugees Magazine, 2002).

5 (American Anthropological Association, 1998)

6 (Lorch, 2002; Refugees Magazine, 2002; Swarns, 2003a)

7 (Swarns 2003a; Refugees Magazine, 2002; Lovgren, 2003)

8 (Rector, 2008; Bates College Department of Anthropology, 2008)

References

American Anthropological Association (1998) Statement on Race. Available at:

http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm (accessed 5 July 2013).

Bates College Department of Anthropology (2008) Perceived Barriers to Somali

Immigrant Employment in Lewiston: A Supplement to Maine’s Department of Labor

Report. Available at http://abacus.bates.edu/pix/PerceivedBarriers09Jan20.pdf (accessed

1 August 2012).

Besteman, C (2012) Translating Race Across Time and Space: The Creation of Somali

Bantu Ethnicity. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 19(3): 1-18.

Chanoff S (2002) After Three Years: Somali Bantus Prepare to Come to America.

Refugee Reports 23(8): 1-11.

Jackson, M 2002 Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity.

Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Lorch D (2002) Following Freedom’s Trail. Newsweek, 2 September.

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Lovgren S (2003) Refugees in the US: One Family’s Story. National Geographic News,

20 June.

Pandey, G (1991) In Defence of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in

India Today. Economic and Political Weekly 26(11/12): 559-572

Refugees Magazine (2002) Editorial: A lucky few. 3(128), 1 September. Available at:

http://www.unhcr.org/3d9abfb6a.html (accessed 5 July 2013).

Rector AK (2008) An Analysis of the Employment Patterns of Somali Immigrants to

Lewiston from 2001 through 2006. Center for Workforce Research and Information,

Maine Department of Labor, Maine State Planning Office.

Swarns RL (2003a) Africa’s Lost Tribe Discovers American Way. New York Times, 10

March.

Swarns RL (2003b) US A Place of Miracles. New York Times, 20 July.