Will you please....go....the fuck.....back home.....
Refugees grapple with new home
By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter
HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Meynun Abdalla, 5, looks at American magazines during her first visit to a Safeway store. She is among Bantu refugees from Somalia being resettled in the Seattle area, where virtually all aspects of life are foreign to them.
The education of a Somali Bantu family began with the flick of a light switch in a modest little apartment in Rainier Beach.
Dark rooms suddenly brightened, revealing objects that put the newly arrived refugees in awe: a stove that produced heat without firewood; a toilet with water coursing through it; a refrigerator with more food than they'd seen in an entire African resettlement camp.
Haji Shongolo, who arrived March 31 with his wife and four children, lacked any frame of reference to describe it, other than to say through a translator: "It just seems new. I don't know anything about America."
Now, with the recent easing of State Department restrictions on immigration imposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, between 13,000 and 15,000 Bantus are being allowed into the United States this year. It's the largest group of African refugees to come to this country, and among the most primitive.
Eucation: Because Somalia provides few schools in Bantu regions, many Bantus are illiterate, their children working on family farms instead of attending school.
Sources: The Associated Press, the U.S. State Department and the Cultural Orientation Resource Center
Many Bantus don't know how to turn a doorknob, use a pencil, boil water or brush their teeth ??? let alone read, write or speak English. About 30 have arrived in Washington in recent weeks, with about 300 expected to settle here by fall, mostly in King County.
The influx is posing challenges for resettlement agencies here, and for the Bantus themselves, many of whom have spent years struggling to survive in crowded resettlement camps in Kenya.
"They also are more rural than the average Somali, and they have less education," said Robert Johnson, regional director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee agency in Pioneer Square that will resettle 70 Bantus.
Refugees grapple with new home
By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter
HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Meynun Abdalla, 5, looks at American magazines during her first visit to a Safeway store. She is among Bantu refugees from Somalia being resettled in the Seattle area, where virtually all aspects of life are foreign to them.
The education of a Somali Bantu family began with the flick of a light switch in a modest little apartment in Rainier Beach.
Dark rooms suddenly brightened, revealing objects that put the newly arrived refugees in awe: a stove that produced heat without firewood; a toilet with water coursing through it; a refrigerator with more food than they'd seen in an entire African resettlement camp.
Haji Shongolo, who arrived March 31 with his wife and four children, lacked any frame of reference to describe it, other than to say through a translator: "It just seems new. I don't know anything about America."
Now, with the recent easing of State Department restrictions on immigration imposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, between 13,000 and 15,000 Bantus are being allowed into the United States this year. It's the largest group of African refugees to come to this country, and among the most primitive.
Eucation: Because Somalia provides few schools in Bantu regions, many Bantus are illiterate, their children working on family farms instead of attending school.
Sources: The Associated Press, the U.S. State Department and the Cultural Orientation Resource Center
Many Bantus don't know how to turn a doorknob, use a pencil, boil water or brush their teeth ??? let alone read, write or speak English. About 30 have arrived in Washington in recent weeks, with about 300 expected to settle here by fall, mostly in King County.
The influx is posing challenges for resettlement agencies here, and for the Bantus themselves, many of whom have spent years struggling to survive in crowded resettlement camps in Kenya.
"They also are more rural than the average Somali, and they have less education," said Robert Johnson, regional director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee agency in Pioneer Square that will resettle 70 Bantus.
