Making Refuge by Catherine Besteman

8/20/2019 Making Refuge by Catherine Besteman

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M A K I N G R E F U G E

S O M A L I B A N T U R E F U G E E S

A N D L E W I S TO N , M A I N E

C AT H E R I N E B E S T E M A N


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MAKING REFUGE


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G L O B A L

I N S E C U R I T I E S

A series edited by

Catherine Besteman and

Daniel M. Goldstein


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MAK ING

R E FUGE

,

Catherine Besteman

201 6


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© 2016 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree paper ∞

Designed by Heather Hensley

ypeset in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Ser vices

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Besteman, Catherine Lowe, author.

Making reuge : Somali Bantu reugees and Lewiston, Maine /

Catherine Besteman.pages cm—(Global insecurities)

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

978-0-8223-6027-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-6044-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-7472-5 (e-book)

1. Somalis—Cultural assimilation—Maine—Lewiston.

2. Somali diaspora.

3. Lewiston (Me.)—Ethnic relations.

. itle. . Series: Global insecurities.

184.6747 2016305.893'54074182—dc23 2015026280

Cover art: Lewiston, 2008. Photograph by Caroline urnbull.


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Te writer and scholar A. C. Johnson insisted that

the idea o community should include strangers.

He said that interconnectedness is what takes place

between the community and the stranger. One not

only becomes a person through one’s community

but also through the stranger. o avoid the disasters

o the past, Johnson said, the gure o the stranger

ought to be continually reinvented, and it is the

specic task o the intellectual in a society to be an

advocate or the stranger—to insist on responsibility

or the stranger as constitutive o collectivity itsel.

— , Begging to Be Black


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ix List o erms and Abbreviations

xi imeline o Events

xv Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

PART I Refugees

35 1. Becoming Reugees

57 2. Te Humanitarian Condition

77 3. Becoming Somali Bantus

PART II Lewiston

103

115 4. We Have Responded Valiantly 139 5. Strangers in Our Midst

169 6. Helpers in the Neoliberal Borderlands

PART III Refuge

205

215 7. Making Reuge

243 8. Tese Are Our Kids

277 Conclusion: Te Way Lie Should Be

291 313 327

CONTENTS


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adoon Derogatory word or slave

Bartire Subclan o the Darood clan amily

clan Kinship unit o Somali society

Center or the Prevention o Hate Violence, based in

Portland, now closed

Dadaab Reugee camp in Kenya

Dagahalley Part o Dadaab reugee camp

Darood One o Somalia’s ve major clan-amilies

Department o Health and Human Services

Ethnic-based community organization

English language learner (used instead o English asa second language)

General Assistance

Hawiye One o Somalia’s ve major clan-amilies

Io Part o Dadaab reugee camp

jareer Literally, hard hair; racialized term that preceded the

creation o the name Somali Bantu

jileec Sof; used to describe non- jareer SomalisKakuma Reugee camp in northern Kenya to which Somali Bantus

accepted or U.S. resettlement were moved when conditions

in Dadaab became too dangerous or them

TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS


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x • Terms and Abbreviations

Maay Maay One o the two offi cial languages o Somalia

Mushunguli Ethnic group and language o minorities rom lower

Jubba Valley who are descendants o enslaved Ziguas

brought to Somalia

Nongovernmental organizationooji Derogatory word or slave

Offi ce o Reugee Resettlement, in the U.S. State Department

Rahanweyn One o Somalia’s ve major clan-amilies

Somali Bantu Youth Association o Maine

emporary Assistance to Needy Families

United Nations High Commissioner or Reugees

Voluntary agency, o which eleven are ederally unded to

resettle reugees


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1991 Collapse o Siad Barre’s government.

1991–93 Violence against civilians peaks in Jubba Valley region and

villagers rom Banta ee.

1992 Launch o Operation Restore Hope, a multinational

humanitarian military intervention, ollowed in 1993 by, a U.S.-led -backed intervention.

1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu and conclusion o

.

1995 Some reugees in Dadaab return to Jubba Valley but many

ee again or Kenyan reugee camps because violence is still

pervasive.

1994–97 Somali Bantu reugees in Dadaab attempt to negotiate

resettlement in anzania and Mozambique.

1999 United States agrees to accept 12,000 Somali Bantus or

resettlement as “persecuted minorities.”

2001 Reverication in Dadaab o Somali Bantu names on

Mozambique list or U.S. 2 resettlement.

Somali reugees already resettled in United States begin

moving to Lewiston.

Lewiston and Portland jointly receive an Unanticipated

Arrivals grant (2001–5) rom U.S. Offi ce o Reugee

Resettlement.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS


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xii • Timeline of Events

2002 Reveried Somali Bantus in Dadaab trucked to Kakuma.

Mayor Raymond writes the Letter to Lewiston’s Somali

community.

World Church o the Creator rallies to support Lewiston’s

right to bar entry or immigrants. Many and One Rally at Bates College opposes the Letter and

the World Church o the Creator rally.

2004 Catholic Charities agrees to provide ser vices to

reugees in Lewiston through the Unanticipated Arrivals grant.

Somali Bantus begin arriving in United States.

2005 Somali Bantu amilies in United States begin relocating to

Lewiston. rinity Jubilee creates afer-school homework help program

targeting children rom reugee amilies.

2006 Catherine and Jorge reconnect with old riends in Lewiston.

U.S. Department o Justice mandates creation o program

in Lewiston public schools.

Somali Bantu community association created.

2007 Somali Bantu wages campaign or sel-representationand translation with social ser vices providers.

Mayor Gilbert elected.

2008 Maine Department o Health and Human Ser vices assigns

a supervisor the responsibility or overseeing reugees’

benets.

Somali Bantu Youth Association o Maine created.

2009 International Clinic closed. Beth is hired by a local to work on child development

with ten reugee amilies.

Local agency in charge o million-dollar ederal

empowerment zone grant denies all grant applications

rom reugee-based community groups but then reverses

the denials and offers grant-writing workshops along with

unding.

Community collaborative subcommittee on parental

concerns is disbanded afer conrontational meeting between

parents and school administrators.


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Timeline of Events • xiii

Lewiston High School graduates the rst our Somali Bantu

students.

Museum Rivers of Immigration exhibit opens.

Local newspaper publishes article alleging Somali gang

attacks in downtown Lewiston.2010 Police department opens downtown substation with

community resource offi cers.

Grie counselor allowed to offer a ten-week afer-school

program with ten boys rom reugee camps who lost a amily

member.

Memo circulated to teachers and social ser vices providers

warning about Somali .

oral history project with Somali Bantu teenagers

and elders.

Advice or America conerence.

First arrests o Somali Bantu youths.

begins meetings between reugee parents, social

ser vices workers, and police about parental concerns.

2011 Robert Macdonald elected mayor.2013 Robert Macdonald reelected mayor.


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Many thanks, rst and oremost, or the riendship o and collaborative work

with many reugee riends in Lewiston, Syracuse, Hartord, and elsewhere

who so strongly encouraged this book project and who offered so much time,

trust, and aith in me to ensure its completion. Unbounded gratitude to Rilwan

Osman, Muhidin Libah, Abdulkadir Osman, Iman Osman, Asha Iman, Jimcoy

Salat, Amina Caliyow, Ambiya Bulo, Jama Mohamed, Abdirisak Malin, Mo-

hamed Farah, Abdi Maalin, Ibrahim Bashir, Bashir Osman, Nur Libah, Robiye

Nur, Abdullahi Nur, Sahara Mahamed, Shobow Saban, Abdi Abdi, Ibrahim

Abdulle, Mohamed Negeye, Abikar Gedi Gale, Haji Adan, Abdulkadir Matan,

Rahima Deekow, Mohamed Deekow, Fatuma Mohamed, Ali Shangole, Omar

Hussein Mayange, Hamadi Osman Mahamba, Abdullahi Mokema Mohina,

Mberwa Sadik, Fatuma Hussein, Ismail Ahmed, Sahal Nur, Gure Ahmed.

For teaching me about social ser vices and immigration policy in Maine

and or sharing their work in Lewiston, thank you to Anne Kemper, Kim

Wettlauer, Julia Sleeper, Marc Robitaille, Craig Johnson, Bill Rousseau, om

Murphy, Gillian Bourassa, Ellen Alcorn, Sherry Russell, Eileen Manglass, Gena

Wilson, Alice Haines, Casey Nguyen, Qamar Bashir, Luke Nya, Arabella Perez,

Mary Laontaine, Pedro Rojas, Ben Chin, Catherine Yomoah, David Maclean,

Holly Stover, Huda Daud, Inza Ouattara, Jeanne Hutchins, Lisa Sockabasin, Ron

aglienti, Noel Bonham, Danny Danorth, Rachel Degroseilleurs, Beth Stick-

ney, Elizabeth Eames, Gus Leblanc, Pamela Ericson, Shayna Malyata, Roger

Jack, Patricia MacKinnon, Caroline Sample, Cheryl Hamilton, Phil Nadeau,

Larry Gilbert, Steve Wessler, Nancy Mullin, Susan Martin, Sue Charron, Leon

Levesque, and others who will remain anonymous.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


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xvi • Acknowledgments

Many colleagues read part or all o the manuscript and kindly alerted me

to oversights, weaknesses, and slippages. I am indebted to Daniel Goldstein,

David Gordon, Rilwan Osman, Muhudin Libah, David Friedenreich, Mary

Beth Mills, Heath Cabot, Winired ate, Chandra Bhimull, Ushari Mohamed,

David Strohl, Britt Halvorson, Marnie Tompson, Erica Iverson, Dan Van

Lehman, Sarah Shields, and two anonymous reviewers. Tanks as well to

colleagues who talked through this project and associated papers with me,

especially Janelle aylor, Roger Sanjek, and Andrew Altschul. Remaining

inaccuracies are, o course, my responsibility.

Chapter 1 is a revised version o “A Reugee Odyssey: A Story o Globaliza-

tion and Somali Bantu Reugees,” Anthropology Now 1, no. 2 (2009): 96–108.

For ellowships, residencies, and support during writing, I thank Eileen

Gilooley and the Heyman Center o Columbia University, American Coun-

cil o Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation,

Bellagio Center o the Rockeeller Foundation, John orpey and the

Graduate Center, Colby College, Maine Humanities Council, Suzanne Cusick,

and the Princess. (And or the 1980s eldwork and archival work I acknowledge

with gratitude Sigma Xi, School o Advanced Research, National Endowment

or the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Wenner Gren Foundation,

and the Land enure Center at the University o Wisconsin.)

Tanks to audiences at Colby College, Bates College, Bowdoin College,

ufs, Harvard, Columbia, Graduate Center, University o Washing-

ton, University o Caliornia at Berkeley, American University, University o

ennessee, St. Mary’s, Bellagio Center, University o Colorado, School o Ad-

vanced Research, University o Caliornia–Irvine, Syracuse University, and

Middlebury College, whose comments and questions prompted rethinking,

revising, clariying, or tossing out bad ideas altogether.

My amily has been intimately involved in this book project in a multi-

tude o ways. Te love and support rom the Besteman/Lauderbaugh/Pike/

Wagenheim crowd is extraordinary. Jorge Acero, Gabriela Acero, and Darien

Acero, who live in my heart, make this work possible.


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Introduction

Somalia, 1988

As Ibrahim and I walked back to the small village o Banta on a narrow oot-

path through elds tall with corn, a low growl silenced our chatter about the

weather and the possibility o rain. We instantly ell silent and slowly turned

to see an adult male lion stepping out o the corn onto the path about a dozen

eet behind us, assessing us with what we hoped was little interest. We roze,

panicked, understanding the real possibility o attack and the utility o at-

tempting to run away. Afer looking us over, the lion tossed his head and

crossed the path into another corneld, disappearing rom view but leaving us

trembling with our hearts in our throats. Shocked, we exchanged astonished

glances and quietly agreed to move as quickly as possible without running to-

ward the village. en minutes later we came upon a village armer in her eld

and breathlessly described to her our adventure. Her kids ran ahead with the

news and by the time we reached the village our neighbors were gathering to

hear all about our encounter with the lion. Xassan, the government-appointed

head o the village and the patriarch o the amily compound where I lived,

was distinctly displeased and demanded that I stay within the connes o the

village until the lion had lef the area. We learned that the lion had already

killed a camel and damaged several arms beore our late afernoon ace-to-

ace meeting. Our assault by a lion would have been a major headache or him.


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2 • Introduction

Mogadishu

Jilib

Kismaayo

Baydhabo

Baardheere

Bu’aaleBanta

Afmadow

Dadaab

Kakuma

EthiopiaSomalia

Kenya

S h a b e l l e

J u

b b

a

I N D I A N O C E A N

1 Map o Somalia. Prepared by Manny Gimond.

Everyone recognized that my year-long presence in his village caused him

enough stress without having to explain to the government how he had al-

lowed the resident oreign anthropologist and her eld assistant to be mauled

by a lion.

Tat evening, our neighbors Caliyow Isaaq, Cali Osman, and Cabdulle

Cabdi came by to hear our story. Abdiya, who sometimes cooked our evening

corn porridge when we were out all day, offered her comments on our adven-


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Introduction • 3

ture. Within a ew days the lion moved out o the area and I was once again

allowed to roam through the armlands and bush areas outside the village.

Ofen my neighbors’ children, who normally spent their days playing in the vil-

lage and helping their parents in the elds, tagged along. Since the village had

no school, the kids led airly unstructured lives and put their time to good use

making up games and songs, and poking holes through the walls o my mud

hut to see what I was doing inside.

With my photographer husband, Jorge Acero, I lived in Banta, on the banks

o the Jubba River in southern Somalia, as an anthropologist in 1987–88 and

later published two books about lie there. Te books relied heavily on what

I learned rom village elders: my riends Caliyow Isaaq, Cali Osman, Sheikh

Axmed Nur, and those even older like the great historian Idow Roble and the

delightul storyteller and poet Daliya. When my husband and I lef Banta in

1988 to return to the United States, we promised we would revisit Banta in the

years ahead to see how the children had grown, to nd out who had married

whom, and to meet the new children and grandchildren. We never had the

chance because within three years the village was consumed by civil war.

Lewiston, Maine, 2010

Just over twenty years later, I attended an emergency meeting in a small dingy

conerence room in an ugly building in downtown Lewiston, Maine, to dis-

cuss claims in the local newspaper that violent gangs had ormed in the city’s

.1 Banta, 1988. Photograph by Catherine Besteman.


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4 • Introduction

downtown and public housing neighborhoods. Sitting around the table were

a Lewiston police offi cer, several social workers, and my old neighbors rom

Banta, whose children were those accused o orming the gangs. Abdiya,

who married Idow Roble’s son and now has seven kids, sat on my right. Cali-

yow Isaaq’s daughter Aliyah, who now has our sons, was on my lef. Daliya’s

daughter, a mother o ve, was next to Abdiya, and Abdiya’s sister-in-law,

mother o seven, was next to her. Other parents rom villages near Banta were

on the other side o the table. Cali Osman’s son Idris, the community youth

leader, had organized the meeting.

Te parents, distressed, were at the edge o their understanding about what

was happening to their children. Teir rustrations with navigating Ameri-

can society, their awareness that their children were stigmatized in Lewiston,

and their ears about the impact on their children o the grotesque aspects o

American culture lled the room. Sitting there, I couldn’t help but reect on

the strange and unexpected journey that had brought Banta’s war survivors to

Lewiston, turned subsistence armers into accused gang members, and unex-

pectedly reconnected Banta’s reugees with their ormer ethnographer twenty

years afer they lost contact.

In January 1991, as Somalia’s president-dictator Siad Barre ed the capital

in a tank to escape rom advancing oppositional militias, villagers in Banta

did not realize that the collapse o the Somali government would bring mur-

der, rape, starvation, kidnapping, and torture to their village. Tey did not

realize that within a year they would be eeing or their lives across hundreds

o miles o desert to Kenya. Tey did not realize that, afer enduring a decade

and hal in reugee camps, some o them would end up trying to rebuild their

lives in the United States. Te war arrived in Banta in the orm o weapons

acquired by some and used against others, o small bands o armed militias

entering the village and demanding ood, abducting youths, and raping and

orcing girls into involuntary “marriages.” Te war made arming risky and

ood production insecure because o the possibility o attack in distant elds.

It collapsed amily coherence as militia members carted off daughters, killed

athers in ront o their children, and raped mothers. It brought destruction

to closely knit communities, extended amily networks, subsistence arming

based in generations o deep environmental knowledge, and a social order

based on amily, aith, and coresidence.

How do people whose entire way o lie has been destroyed and who wit-

nessed horrible abuses against loved ones construct a new uture? How do

people who have survived the ravages o war and displacement rebuild their

lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? Tat is the story

o this book.


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Introduction • 5

Banta, 1980s

Since its collapse into civil war in 1991, Somalia has become the poster child

or every bad keyword in the contemporary political lexicon: ailed state,

tribalism, mission creep, civil war, warlordism, Islamic undamentalism, ter-

rorism, reugees, piracy. From the 1990s through the second decade o the

twenty-rst century, Somalia has regularly appeared in the news as the worst

humanitarian crisis in the world. Te 1993 Black Hawk Down debacle, when

eighteen U.S. troops were killed in a street ght in downtown Mogadishu by

supporters o the warlord they were seeking, was a dening moment in shap-

ing a more cautious uture or American military intervention in complex

political, military, and humanitarian emergencies. A decade and a hal later,

Somalia still capped the list o humanitarian disasters. Veteran political sci-

entist Kenneth Menkhaus noted that during 2007–8 Somalia was the most

dangerous area in the world or humanitarian workers, while Human Rights

Watch identied Somalia as the “most ignored tragedy in the world.” In 2008

and again in 2009, Foreign Policy magazine declared Somalia “Te #1 Failed

State” in its Failed States Index, a label echoed in a 2009 New Yorker article

on Somalia called “Te Most Failed State.” wo decades afer the collapse o

Somalia’s government, the advocacy group Reugees International and the

Center or Strategic and International Studies continued to call Somalia “the

worst humanitarian disaster in the world,” and journalist James Fergusson

labeled Somalia “the world’s most dangerous place.” Out o a very competi-

tive eld o collapsed states, civil wars, reugee crises, and centers o terrorism,

Somalia has topped everyone’s list o humanitarian disasters since its civil war

began in 1991.

Just a ew years beore Somalia’s collapse, Jorge Acero and I arrived in Banta

to begin our year o residence while I conducted the eldwork that I hoped

would result in my dissertation and PhD in anthropology. We were recently

married and Jorge had agreed to come with me to rural Somalia or a year so

long as we could squeeze in a side trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Seychelles.

Deal. We took up residence in two small mud huts included in the ring o small

mud huts that ormed the amily compound o Xassan Isaaq, the head o the

village. Our compound included Xassan’s two wives, their three sons and a

baby daughter, one daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter. Occasionally an-

other daughter or grandchild or two would move into the compound or a ew

weeks or months as well. Because Xassan was the village head, he made it clear

that we were living in his compound so he could monitor who had access to our

dwelling and attempt to ensure our saety. It was a busy compound, as much

village business took place in our courtyard and people regularly streamed in


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6 • Introduction

and out to discuss their troubles, euds, and gossip. Te village committee o

elders held their meetings in the courtyard, and the rare visiting government

offi cial was received there. While living in Xassan’s compound enabled him to

monitor my activities, it also ensured I stayed current with village events.

Village lie adhered to the rhythm o the seasons, arming, and religious

practice. Banta’s ve hundred residents lived in an assortment o small round

and rectangular huts made o grass and mud. Separated into two neighbor-

hoods by a central grassy eld where kids played, the village overlooked the

Jubba River, high and swif in the rainy season and low and muddy in the

dry season. Te river provided water or drinking, cooking, and bathing, and

its annual oods ertilized the small arming elds, although ood season

also brought the dangers o wandering crocodiles and hippos. As is typical in

many Arican arming villages, extended amilies shared living spaces, ood,

cooking, child care, work, and the ew material possessions owned by each

amily. Women hauled water rom the river, made charcoal rom branches

gathered rom the bush to uel the re or cooking pots, and wove the beauti-

ul palm mats that adorned most huts. Men and women armed their small

plots by hand, built their homes rom local materials, and bartered their

produce or meat and milk with nomadic livestock herders. Healers made

medicinal treatments rom local ora, and men carved the wooden vessels

villagers used or drinking and storing water, used alongside the ubiquitous

brightly colored plastic jerry cans imported rom China. Small children wore

.2 Xassan’s compound, Banta, 1987. Photograph by Jorge Acero.


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Introduction • 7

shorts or -shirts or loose rocks; adults had one or two outts that they wore

to shreds. Every household had a ew short-handled hoes, the primary piece

o arming equipment used by villagers, as well as a ew cooking and eating

utensils. Everyone subsisted on what they grew on their small arms, which

produced a modest and sometimes insuffi cient diet o cornmeal porridge,

corn kernels ried in sesame oil, corn kernels boiled with beans and served with

oil and sugar, cornmeal biscuits baked in underground ovens, wild greens and

volunteer cherry tomatoes sautéed in oil, and bartered camel and cow milk as

well as the occasional roasted camel, cow, chicken, or goat meat consumed at

easts and ritual events.

As the resident anthropologist and photographer, Jorge and I did our best

to adapt to local lie, conorming to village norms, eating a steady diet o corn

prepared in a variety o ways, drinking and bathing in the water hauled rom

the muddy Jubba River, and cultivating our own tiny garden. Every week we

would drive into Bu’aale, the local town and provincial capital, or provisions

like oil, sugar, pasta, rice, and coffee, usually bringing along a car ull o villagers

doing the same thing. Everywhere we went, small gangs o kids ollowed us,

since we were the only local oddities and undoubtedly offered comic appeal

with our novelty and awkwardness. Whereas the villagers’ lives ollowed the

demands o subsistence arming, ours ollowed the requirements o anthropo-

logical inquiry. Jorge documented village lie through his camera lens, gaining

minor celebrity status as the area’s sole photographer and producing a large

collection o ormal portraits, taken at the request o villagers, in addition to

hundreds o photographs o village lie. I spent my days walking the armlands

to map land use patterns, interviewing elders to chronicle local history o the

Jubba Valley, and chatting with neighbors to grasp local customs and social

relations.

A primary goal o anthropological eldwork is to gain an understanding o

how those being studied make sense o their world. My year in Banta taught

me a great deal about how a small community dependent on subsistence arm-

ing engages their environment and relies on networks o mutual care and sup-

port to weather the droughts and celebrate the times o plenty, how people

marginalized by poverty, history, and identity navigate the power hierarchies

that constrain their lives, and how people who live at the edge o material

destitution nd much to value, celebrate, love, and enjoy in their daily lives. I

learned about the power o kinship, the joy o religious belie and practice, and

the humiliation o racism. Most presciently, however, I learned how people

manage in a social and physical environment dened by proound insecurity.

During my stay, a brutal climate and total dependence on seasonal rains

or cultivation made ood production, and thus nutrition, insecure; a system


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.3 Handwoven

mats at Sheikh Axmed

Nur’s compound or Xawo’s

wedding, 1988. Photograph

by Jorge Acero.

.4 Pastoralist girl

bartering milk, Banta, 1987.

Photograph by Jorge Acero.


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.5 Te anthropolo-

gist in her kitchen, Banta,

1987. Photograph by Jorge

Acero.

.6 Jorge Acero

taking portraits in Banta,

1987. Photograph by

Catherine Besteman.


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10 • Introduction

o medical care dependent on local traditional healers and prayer made

childbirth and recovery rom everyday illnesses like malaria, gastrointestinal

troubles, and respiratory diseases insecure; a predatory military and urban

elite made sel-suffi ciency insecure; and the perilous creatures with whom

villagers shared their landscape—hippos, crocodiles, lions, pythons—made

mundane tasks like drawing water, bathing, weeding, and walking to the dis-

tant arms insecure. But these insecurities did not emerge rom the barrel o

a gun. Te invasion o the village by armed militiamen in 1991 destroyed the

ne balance o sel-reliance and reciprocity that had long sustained village lie.

Jorge and I were living in New Mexico when Somalia ell apart. As I was

nishing my doctoral dissertation about lie in the Jubba Valley, we watched

rom aar in 1990–91 as the government collapsed in the ace o growing op-

position and armed militias claimed control over large swaths o territory

throughout the country. Our only personal source o news about Banta’s ate

came in letters rom the ew international humanitarian workers who re-

mained in the area during the rst ew months o the war. Te nal letter

we received beore the relie workers evacuated reported that almost all the

children under the age o ve in Banta had died rom starvation, and that our

eld assistant Ibrahim had been shot trying to reach the relie center, which

had promised to evacuate him. He had not arrived at the relie center by the

time the nal relie workers lef. Afer we lost our last local contact, we ol-

lowed the reports rom 1992 to 1994 by human rights groups on the patterns

o genocidal violence in Jubba Valley villages by militias and the ight o tens

o thousands o survivors across the border into Kenya.

Unable to track what was happening in Banta and uncertain about how to

translate my intimate knowledge o lie in the valley into anything useul in

the ace o war’s wrenching violence, I wrote uriously or a decade, pouring

my knowledge into publications about the structures o inequality and rac-

ism that made the Jubba Valley villagers particularly vulnerable in the war

or territorial control that ollowed the collapse o the government. I could

not imagine how I might reconnect with the survivors rom Banta. Searching

the huge reugee camps or people I knew seemed voyeuristic and pointless,

as I had no ability to offer meaningul assistance or support. Writing became

my orm o activism and engagement, although it remained unclear whether

anyone cared or how my accounts might benet those eeing or their lives.

In early 2001, afer I had published my research on Somalia, taken up a

teaching position at Colby College in Maine, and temporarily relocated to

South Arica to begin a new research project on reconciliation and postapart-

heid transormation, a researcher and ormer staffer named Dan Van

Lehman contacted me with the inormation that the United States had decided


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Introduction • 11

to accept 12,000 Somali Bantus or resettlement. Since my publications had

been useul in making the case or their resettlement, he asked i I would con-

sult on a background report he and his colleague Omar Eno were writing to

educate the American reugee resettlement agencies that would be managing

the resettlement process. I was initially mystied by the name “Somali Bantu”

until Dan explained that this was the new name or the ormer armers rom

the Jubba Valley, created in the reugee camp or the process o managing

their resettlement process. Tis was stunning news, as I belatedly learned that

afer a decade in reugee camps, Jubba Valley armers who had ed the war

were coming to the United States under a brand new name! Afer returning to

Maine in 2004, I provided consultancy ser vices or several different resettle-

ment agencies across the country, hoping that these connections might help

me locate survivors rom Banta, but to no avail.

Lewiston, Maine, 2006

Every year or Martin Luther King Day, Bates College in Lewiston, Maine,

just an hour rom where I live, organizes panel presentations and other events

on diversity or the broader community. In anticipation o the 2006 MLK

celebration, Bates College anthropologist Elizabeth Eames phoned to ask i I

would join a panel o Lewiston’s newest immigrants, Somali Bantu reugees

who were just starting to arrive in town, augmenting the large population

o Somali reugees who had begun moving to Lewiston in 2001. My role on

the panel would be to provide a bit o historical inormation about Somalia’s

civil war, afer which several o the newly arrived reugees would share parts

o their stories. I eagerly agreed, hoping the new arrivals might bring news o

villagers rom Banta, although a amiliar eeling o bitterness complicated my

anticipation o the panel. I knew rom the human rights reports about the

horrors committed by Somali militias against Jubba Valley armers and sus-

pected it was extremely unlikely that I would ever again encounter anyone I

knew rom the middle valley, where Banta was located. Te reports rom the

resettlement agencies that contacted me in 2004–5 or background inorma-

tion about the Jubba Valley suggested that the majority o the 12,000 Somali

Bantu reugees accepted or resettlement came rom the lower Jubba Valley,

so I assumed ew reugees rom the middle valley, where Banta was located,

would be among them. While I wished to offer what I could to Somali Bantus

now living in the United States, I expected a amiliar pang o resentment that

the people I had known would not be among them.

On MLK Day I arrived early at Bates and went to the designated classroom

to wait or the appointed time, thinking over my commentary and steeling

mysel to remain in control o my emotions. Danny Danorth rom the Bates


29/48

12 • Introduction

Anthropology Department ound me sitting there alone and invited me out

to the building’s large atrium, where the other panelists were assembled. I

introduced mysel to the our men and asked one—Sadiq, who had the best

English—where he was rom in Somalia. “Bu’aale,” he answered, to my as-

tonishment. Bu’aale, a dozen kilometers away rom Banta and the regional

capital o the middle Jubba Valley, was the destination or our weekly shop-

ping trip or extra provisions during our stay in Banta. “Do you know Banta?”

I asked. “O course!” he responded. “I used to live in Banta.” Another o the

panelists excitedly said, “You know Banta? I’m rom Banta! I lived there my

entire lie!” I explained that I knew Banta because I had once lived there too,

in the late 1980s. Te men scrutinized me dubiously and said, “We don’t know

you, but we knew Katrine and Horay and we are waiting to nd them.” “But

I’m Katrine!” I exclaimed. Words came tumbling out as we claried who we

were. Te men had been teenagers when we lived in Banta: Jorge and I had

helped the mother o one o the men, who was ill during our stay. Te man

rom Bu’aale had been part o that small group o boys who used to ollow

us around town when we did our shopping. Tey protested that I looked so

much older—I now wear glasses! Tey had never seen my hair, which had

always been covered with a headscar in Banta. And, distressingly, they point-

edly noted how much weight I had gained. Within minutes it was time or our

panel presentation.

Te presentation passed in a daze. I introduced some Somali history and

the history o U.S.-Somali relations, and then each panelist spoke briey

about his experiences during the war. Te stories were horrible, o attacks

by militias and raiders, who separated the women and girls rom the men in

order to assault them; o amilies being separated as they ran through the bush

to escape rom attacks; o parents, siblings, children being murdered beore

their eyes or no reason; o the long, terriying trek to the Kenyan border. Te

packed room was captivated as each man told his harrowing tale and spoke o

the challenges o establishing a sustainable lie in the United States with lim-

ited English language and literacy skills. Driving home, I was almost numb.

It seemed cosmic that reugees rom Banta should end up an hour away rom

me, in central Maine.

Te phone calls began the next day. Abkow, the panelist rom Banta, and

Sadiq, the man rom Bu’aale, told me about all the other amilies rom Banta

now relocating to Lewiston. Cali Osman’s wie Isha had recently arrived in

Lewiston with her youngest son, Idris, and several other children. When they

heard the news that Jorge and I were also living in Maine, Isha said, “I knew

we would nd Katrine!” Abdulkadir, who had worked or me in Banta as a

eld researcher, was in Lewiston with his wie and children. Everyone was


30/48

Introduction • 13

asking about the baby I was carrying when I lef Banta in 1988. Tey had heard

rumors that it was a girl called Faduma Banta. “Bring her to Lewiston!” Isha

commanded through Sadiq. “I want to see that child!”

Te coincidence o this reunion brought me back into a new relationship

with the people rom Banta, 7,000 miles and twenty years away rom where

we rst met, and led to the work toward this book. Over the past decade I have

traversed the United States reconnecting with Banta villagers and others rom

the middle Jubba Valley in their new homes in Hartord, Syracuse, Seattle,

and Portland, Oregon. In Lewiston I have spent countless hours with Sadiq,

Isha, and especially her son Idris, Abdulkadir, and others, learning about what

happened to them in Banta during the war and in the camps afer they ed. I

have been reminded o Somali cultural practices like extraordinarily demo-

cratic community gatherings where people get to talk or as long as they

want about whatever is most important to them, and everyone listens with

respect—one dimension among many o a proound orientation toward com-

munal lie that is under siege in a country known or individualism. I have

witnessed countless struggles over the transormation o communal practices

and values: the bewilderment o parents bringing up children American

Style in a context o extreme consumerism, the concerns over transorming

gender roles as women gain independence rom male control and men’s un-

derstanding o their roles begins to alter, the new identity associations that

result rom being black in America, and the shifing o authority rom elders

to youths because o the latter’s vastly superior English language and literacy

competency.

My research has also made me a witness to the struggles and efforts o

many non-Somali people in Lewiston who now orient their lives toward

working with reugees, including doctors, social ser vices workers, and teach-

ers, as well as community police offi cers who, in the words o one o their

leaders, strive to “police rom the heart.” Teir belie that the uture o reu-

gees in Lewiston is the uture o Lewiston contrasts with the stolid insistence

by some in positions o power that they will not change their institutions to

accommodate reugees because o their view that reugees must ollow a path

o conormity and assimilation. My research reveals that assimilation is not a

one-sided affair, however, and that the reugees in Lewiston are changing all

aspects o the city or everyone.

“The Armpit of Maine”

Lewiston, Maine, seems like an unlikely destination or Arican reugees. A

postindustrial city, economically ravaged by the closure o mills that a century

ago drew tens o thousands o French Canadians to the area or work, Lewiston


31/48

14 • Introduction

has a recent history o population loss and economic depression. People leave

Lewiston rather than move there. Yet, beginning in 2001, thousands o Somali

reugees looking or saety, a low cost o living, nancial support, and a way

to re-create community support structures chose to move to Lewiston o their

own accord, dramatically transorming the city over the next decade. Teir

arrival provoked urious debates about the cost o poor immigrants to Lewis-

ton’s precarious economy and the impact o cultural and racial difference on

the city’s proud Franco-American identity. Beore the 2001 arrival o Somalis,

Lewiston was 96 percent white and “the most Franco city in the U.S.” By the

end o the decade, Somalis had become about 15 percent o the population,

and the changes they brought to the city were everywhere in evidence, rom

the school hallways to the city’s main street.

Lewiston was totally unprepared or the inux o Somali reugees since

city leaders had never indicated to anyone that the city wanted to become a

resettlement site or new immigrants. But afer arriving in the United States,

reugees are as ree as anyone else to move where they wish. When So-

mali reugees decided to move to Lewiston, arriving weekly between 2001

and 2006, their presence provoked massive controversy about economic

security, charity, moral responsibility, difference, and the boundaries o com-

munity, debates ueled in intensity by the bright lights o major media cov-

erage about the apparent incongruity o Aricans in Maine. Tat Lewiston

should become home to thousands o Somali reugees struck many observers

as incredible and astonishing, bringing the spotlight o national and interna-

tional media attention to a city unused to being the object o interest. Journal-

ists rom major news magazines such as the Economist , Newsweek, the New

Yorker , and Mother Jones, as well as rom leading newspapers, news pro-

grams, and National Public Radio programs, regularly showed up in Lewiston

to see the social experiment or themselves.

Te city o about 35,000 is an old mill town built largely by Catholic French

Canadians who came to work low-paid, physically demanding jobs in the tex-

tile and shoe mills over a century ago. Settling into an ethnic enclave o tene-

ment buildings that now orm the core o Lewiston’s downtown, the French

Canadian immigrants held the lowest-paid jobs, occupied the lowest economic

strata, and experienced persistent economic insecurity, discrimination, and

exclusion rom the local hospitals and schools that were dominated by the city’s

more prosperous Protestant population. Since the late 1880s, Lewiston has

been burdened by hostile and denigrating attitudes toward its mill-working

citizenry because o its relative poverty and the perceived ethnic insularity o

its Catholic Franco-American population. When the late twentieth-century

wave o deindustrialization closed the mills, Lewiston started losing its youth


32/48

Introduction • 15

to more prosperous places, and ew immigrants chose Lewiston as their new

home, leading to decades o population loss (a 15 percent drop between 1970

and 2000), a rise in apartment vacancies, a at-lining o the economy, and

the identication o Lewiston’s downtown area as the poorest census tract in

Maine, with a poverty rate o 46 percent. Prior to 2000, the city held the

dubious distinction o having the lowest amily and per capita income in

the state. Te arrival o thousands o reugees beginning in 2001 thus could

be viewed as an assault on an already struggling city or as a orce o renewal.

Despite the city’s waning ortunes, the people who lived there continued to

share a stubborn, tough pride about their community and its hardscrabble

history. During his tenure as the rst Franco-American governor o Maine,

Paul LePage ofen recounted his hard childhood as a boy living on the streets

o downtown Lewiston to escape his abusive mill-worker ather, whose

drunken rages became regular assaults on his wie and eighteen children. In

LePage’s account, his survival depended on the kindness o Lewiston’s prosti-

tutes, strippers, tavern keepers, and others living on the edge, reinorcing the

image o Lewiston as a place o rough living, marginal lives, and a dysunc-

tional Franco-American underclass while at the same time offering a model o

Franco-American assimilation and upward mobility through determination

and hard work. A teacher in Lewiston who doesn’t live there shared her view,

which I also heard rom many others, that downtown Lewiston has always

been a place o poverty, insularity, and expectations o ailure, suspicious o

outsiders, anti-intellectual, and resistant to ideas coming rom the outside, a

pattern reinorced generation afer generation and becoming the city’s ste-

reotype. Describing the experiences o her Somali junior high students who

come to school with tales o drunken ghts, domestic assaults, and middle-

o-the-night police raids in the downtown apartments o their non-Somali

neighbors, she worries that the historic cycle o downtown violence and ail-

ure will also engul them. Te principal o a downtown elementary school

tells me that Lewiston’s downtown has always had a terrible reputation or

“groups involved with drugs, having ghts, in the news. It’s always the down-

town. Tose ‘downtown amilies’ have always been in the media as an image

o disgrace and deviance.” Te schoolteacher wonders i the arrival o a large

Somali population might be the wedge that breaks the cycle, or i the new-

comers will be absorbed by old patterns o poverty, insularity, and ailure.

Lewiston’s strip malls tell the contemporary economic story o the city, an-

chored by Save-A-Lot, Chapter 11 Buy-Back Store, Dollar ree, Dollar Store,

Family Dollar, Big Lots, Big Bargains, and the Goodwill Store. Next to the

Save-A-Lot mall at the crest o the hill overlooking the downtown, the view

o the city is dominated by the huge cathedral, rising above the multitude o


33/48

16 • Introduction

houses like a gray anchor. A river weaves around downtown, giving the pan-

orama a serene New England eel. Continuing down the hill toward down-

town, one passes the Italian Bakery on the lef and Maillot’s Sausage Factory

on the right, incongruously stuck between the school bus yard and a new

mosque. Lewiston’s downtown tenements begin afer you pass Head Start and

the ri-County Mental Health building, evoking historic visions o industrial

workers crowded into derelict our- and ve-story walk-ups. Rows upon rows

o tenements are squeezed together, with listing ront porches and yards hold-

ing assorted broken toys, rayed and dirty blankets, and garbage. Every ew

blocks one or two tenements are boarded up as uninhabitable because o high

lead levels or massive disrepair, and vacant lots bear evidence o tenements

burned to the ground in recent arson attacks. In the morning or early afer-

noon, streams o kids walking to or rom school hold up traffi c, sometimes

walking alongside adults heading to Adult Education, which shares the build-

ing with the downtown neighborhood’s elementary school.

Te large park in the middle o the downtown neighborhood offers basket-

ball courts where lots o Somali and non-Somali kids play, a skate park where

no Somali kids play, and large grassy areas where groups o moms and kids

or men lounge in the warmer months. rinity Jubilee, the downtown soup

kitchen, ood pantry, help center, and day shelter, sits at one corner o the park,

its muddy courtyard lled with men and women smoking and hanging out

because they have no place else to be. Some o the city’s most derelict housing

neighbors rinity, with lthy windows, broken ront doors, perilously dipping

porches. Te city’s police station borders another side o the park, ensuring a

constant police presence in the densely settled neighborhood. In addition to

the two large public housing projects on the outskirts o the city, Hillview and

all Pines, the downtown neighborhood has the highest concentration in the

city o immigrant reugees and is the place where the newest reugees usually

settle while waiting or an opening in the nicer outlying housing projects.

Afer I began to spend several days a week in Lewiston ollowing the MLK

reunion to reconnect with old riends rom Banta and begin the research

or this book, acquaintances elsewhere in Maine offered a number o pithy

descriptions o my new eld site, the city colloquially called “the armpit o

Maine” by people who don’t live there. One incredulous colleague, shaking her

head at my plan to undertake a long-term study in Lewiston, warned, “Lewis-

ton is a snakepit.” Holding his hands together in a tight ball, another colleague

reminded me, “Lewiston is like this. It’s always been this totally closed place,

where people don’t want anything to do with outsiders. Tey want to keep

people out . It’s a place with a strong Franco history, very insular, sel-isolating.

Tey don’t want anything to do with the rest o the world. It’s like a little world


34/48

Introduction • 17

unto itsel.” Friends offered condolences that I had to spend so much time

there. But or Somali and Somali Bantu reugees looking to create a new com-

munity in an affordable place unmolested by the crime they experienced in

the large city public housing projects where they rst landed afer arriving in

the United States, Lewiston seemed to offer what they wanted.

By 2010, Lewiston’s main downtown street, Lisbon Street, offered a strik-

ing portrait o a city in the midst o transormation. Entering downtown, one

passes the Adult Bookstore, ironically located directly across rom the po-

lice station, and then a clothing store or outdoorsmen beore reaching the

rst o the business blocks, beginning with Smart Interpreters, which offers

English-Somali language translation ser vices, ollowed by the Saari Coffee

Shop and the Arican Immigrants Association offi ce. Te Mogadishu Store,

the Barawaka Store, and a dozen more Somali-owned stores take up the next

ew blocks, their entrances and sidewalks always lled with men chatting in

Somali. My avorite store, Aliyow’s, carries products available in many o the

nearly two dozen Somali-owned shops: coffee with ginger, samosas, spices,

abrics, colognes, halaal meat, and lots o packaged oods labeled in Arabic.

Across rom Aliyow’s, one o the Somali caés does a bustling business, scent-

ing the street with roasting vegetables and spices. Interspersed between the

Somali stores are older stores and offi ces: lawyers’ offi ces, the Lewiston-Auburn

.7 Downtown Lewiston, 2008. Photograph by Caroline urnbull.


35/48

18 • Introduction

arts collaborative, (ormer) U.S. congressman Mike Michaud’s offi ce, a pawn

shop, a Subway shop, Doucette Insurance, win Variety, New Beginnings Youth

Outreach offi ce, and Labor Ready training center. A large empty lot breaks

up the blocks o shops, adjoining a tall skinny building that houses all sorts

o community organizations and lawyers’ offi ces, including the Somali Bantu

community association.

Te corner in ront o the public library, across rom the vacant lot, is lled

every afernoon with boisterous high school kids—mostly girls in hijab spar-

kling with sequins and bright colors—making their way to their afer-school

homework help sessions. Te library is always ull o people, as it is one o the

only places in town that intentionally embraced Somali newcomers with a-

ternoon programming and a Somali-speaking outreach coordinator. All along

Lisbon Street women in sandals, long dresses, henna tattoos, and headscarves

.8 Lisbon Street, Lewiston, 2014. Photograph by Jorge Acero.


36/48

Introduction • 19

stroll along calling out to each other, chatting or snapping at the men gathered

in ront o every Somali store.

At the ar end o the street, past the Indian restaurant, the bank, the district

court, more lawyers’ offi ces, and several empty storeronts, is the anciest res-

taurant in town, next to the Somali mosque. White lawyers in business suits

pass Somali girls in hijab and white teenagers in tattered clothes and multiple

piercings, while bank workers in sensible pumps and raincoats walk alongside

men in sarongs or oor-length garments on their way to the mosque. Tere are

always lots o vans o Somali shoppers maneuvering the narrow street to reach

their destinations. Lisbon Street eels like the active main street o a small city,

with everyone going about their business in the midst o conversations and

playing kids, like any town anywhere in America.

Reunions

Afer the MLK panel reunion, I asked Abkow and Sadiq i the Banta amilies

living in Lewiston would like to see some o the slides and photographs Jorge

had taken during our year in Banta. Our collection o photographs included

hundreds o elegantly posed ormal portraits, many in black and white, that

the villagers had requested o themselves during our stay, but also hundreds

o candid shots o villagers arming, cooking, playing, building homes and

urniture, getting married, celebrating, shelling, pounding and grinding corn

and sesame, and more. We had scores o photos o other midvalley villages,

shots o the river and arm elds in different seasons and o local ora and

auna, and images o the local pastoralists who migrated through the bush

outside Banta, bringing into the village their milk to trade or corn or their

animals to access the river. We also had tape recordings o the wedding music

or the marriage o Caliyow Isaaq’s son to Sheikh Axmed Nur’s daughter, as

well as recordings o Cali Osman reciting poetry and playing his ute.

Abkow and Sadiq responded that the Banta amilies in Lewiston wanted to

arrange the slide show as soon as possible. Afer Anne Kemper, the coordina-

tor o the Adult Learning Center in Lewiston, offered the large gymnasium

in Lewiston’s Multipurpose Center or the gathering, a date was chosen and

announcements went out to the Somali Bantu population in Lewiston. Jorge

and I spent every evening or the next two weeks reviewing our slides rom

Banta to compile our show, remembering names, places, amily networks, and

the mundane rhythms o daily lie in a small arming village. As the day o the

event approached, I became increasingly ner vous about what emotions the

photographs might provoke. Would people become overwhelmed by seeing

what they had lost? Or would the photographs provide joyul remembrance o

happy moments and loved ones no longer alive? What i seeing the photographs


37/48

20 • Introduction

provoked trauma and people broke down during the event? We were uncer-

tain about how to plan or such a possibility.

I phoned Abkow and Sadiq with my concerns, but they responded that ev-

eryone wanted to see the photographs, even though some o those eatured

might be dead, stressing that the photographs o their past lives would not

add any more trauma to what people had already endured. Rather, every-

one was eager to see the photographs and to remember their lives beore

the war. As we prepared our slide show, our anxiety mounted as we won-

dered whether we would be able to remember everyone accurately, whether

people might come whom we were not expecting, whether there would be

rage, tears, despair. I no longer had any aptitude in the Somali language and

was chagrined and embarrassed that I could no longer speak to people I used

to communicate with. On the day beore the event, I nally unearthed my

census data rom Banta and typed up the names o everyone by household

who was living there in 1987–88. Te evening was devoted to making large

display posters o the census, along with mounted prints o black-and-white

portraits o Banta residents.

On the day o the event, over a hundred people streamed into the gym-

nasium. As people arrived and we ound mutual recognition in each other’s

aged aces, it was a shock to realize how short everyone was; in my memories

they were all tall and strong and dignied. When I embraced Isha, her head

barely reached my chest. She immediately asked to see the child I was carry-

ing in Banta, now a nearly adult eighteen-year-old, whom she hugged hard

and long. I couldn’t keep my eyes dry. Isha was with a large group o children

and grandchildren, depending on her youngest son, Idris, or translation. He

was our when we lived in Banta and I remember him as a quiet, shy child,

but standing beore me was an obviously bright, thoughtul, competent young

man speaking excellent English. An older man arrived, catching my eye over

the crowd—Axmed Baraki, who was married to Binti, one o my rst riends

in Banta. Our poster included a photograph o Binti and their son; both are

now dead. Te nephew o Sheikh Axmed Nur arrived, and I showed him the

elegant black-and-white portrait o his uncle. Te nephew gave us the news

that Sheikh Axmed Nur was still living in the reugee camp in Kenya, hoping

that his amily reunication application would one day allow him to join his

children in the United States.

Te son o our neighbor and dear riend Cabdulle Cabdi was one o the

rst through the door. Iman was just a baby when we lived in Banta and had

no memory o his parents, who died when he was a toddler. Nor did he re-

member his dead grandather, caught in a stately pose by Jorge’s camera. Iman

examined their photos, searching or his likeness in their aces.


38/48

Introduction • 21

Daliya’s daughter arrived and burst into tears upon discovering our por-

trait o her dead mother sifing corn. Everyone started naming those captured

in the portraits: Ganuun is dead. Although Caliyow Isaaq is dead, his only

surviving wie, Jimcoy, is in Maine. One o his other wives, Amina, is dead,

but their daughter Binti, caught on camera as a delightully happy baby, now

lives in the United States. Matan Garad is dead but his son Abdulkadir, who

as a teenager worked as my eld assistant collecting harvest inormation and

measuring arms, now lives in Lewiston as a married ather o eight. Khalar!

Our old riend Khalar is still alive but living in extreme poverty outside Banta.

As the names rom the census were read aloud or those who could not

read, people started calling out their ates. People continued arriving as the

tape o wedding music played in the background, and someone inormed us

that the wedding couple, Mohammed and Xawo, now lived in Hartord. Because

so many women were weeping openly as they listened, I asked i we should

turn off the music. No! they protested, insisting they wanted to hear it to enjoy

the memory o marriage rituals in the village.

.9 Sheikh Axmed

Nur, Banta, 1988. Photograph

by Jorge Acero.


39/48

.10 Iman Osman as a

baby in his mother’s arms in Banta,

1987. Photograph by Jorge Acero.

.11 Iman Osman as a

teenager in Lewiston, 2008.

Photograph by Elizabeth Milliken.


40/48

.12 Daliya sifing corn,

Banta, 1988. Photograph by Jorge

Acero.

.13 Amina Cabdulle and

Binti Caliyow Isaaq, Banta, 1988.



41/48

.14 Abdulkadir

Matan Garad with his nieceand nephew, Banta, 1988.


.15 Abdulkadir

Matan Garad in his Lewiston

apartment with some o his

children, looking at a copy

o the photograph in gure

.14, 2009. Photograph by

Catherine Besteman.


42/48

Introduction • 25

Finally it was time to begin the slide show and the audience quieted, en-

grossed, as they struggled to make sense o the photographs and the aces

rozen as they were eighteen years beore. I recalled when we rst offered

photographs as gifs during our stay in Banta and discovered that people had

no idea what they were seeing; making sense o the small images was chal-

lenging to many who were unaccustomed to likenesses o any kind. Jorge re-

minded me that people were ofen disturbed by photographs that didn’t show

the entire body or that had unny angles that distorted people’s bodies, such as

a photograph—which we thought was beautiul—o Iman’s cousin, our young

neighbor Marian, weaving a mat, that everyone derided as making her look

like an ant because o the angle.

As people got used to what they were seeing, they asked to repeat the

entire show a second time, this time calling out names to identiy those ap-

pearing on the screen. Te photograph o Abshirow, stylishly dressed in his

velvet jacket, standing with his wie Muslimo and baby son, evoked shrieks:

“Look how dressed up he looks, standing in ront o his mundul [round

house made o mud and grass],” someone yelled out. Abshirow and his am-

ily were resettled in exas, but, like many other survivors rom Banta, later

moved to Lewiston. A photograph o Axmed Baraki, now elderly and seated

.16 Mohamed Caliyow Isaaq and Xawo Sheikh Axmed Nur, Hartord, 2009.

Photograph by Catherine Besteman.


43/48

26 • Introduction

in the audience, provoked cries o delight. In the photograph he appears young

and very strong, wearing shorts and a large wrap on his head while working

with a group o men to construct a rame or the room o a new mundul .

Axmed Baraki himsel got ar more excited about a photograph o one o his

arms, calling out the name o its location. Several women exclaimed with

satisaction at the beauty o the nicely tilled arms that appeared in several

photographs.

We ollowed the second showing o the slides with a tape o Cali Osman’s

poetry recitation and ute perormance, which everyone asked to hear a sec-

ond time, and then a third time. Ten everyone wanted to watch the entire

slide show again, identiying still more people, including Sahara Mahamed,

now living in Lewiston but unable to attend because she was about to give

birth. Forthright and condent as a young girl, she stands in the photo as

i she owns the world. I asked about her parents, who were good people and

riends. Te answer, o course, was that they were dead.

Te photographs o young children guarding elds o sesame against the

predations o birds and monkeys elicited lots o comments, as did the photo-

graphs o people in the unsteady village canoe crossing the Jubba River. Te

third time through the slide show, people recognized the images o religious

and ritual activities, commenting in excitement on their old estivals. Slides o

hoes, machetes, and other long-lost arm tools evoked lots o chatter.

.17 Marian Cabdi Dhaqane, Banta, 1988. Photograph by Jorge Acero.


44/48

Introduction • 27

As the estivities wound down, everyone asked or copies o photos and

s o the music. Sadiq and Abkow remained to help clean up afer people

dispersed, sharing more inormation about what actually happened in Banta

and beginning the long process o recounting Banta’s history since our depar-

ture. We learned that several o those who appeared in the photographs had

become perpetrators o violence during the war—killing, kidnapping, and

ransoming. Over the next two years, as I reconnected with Banta’s survivors

in Lewiston, Syracuse, and Hartord, I pieced together the story o what hap-

pened in Banta, recounted in the ollowing three chapters.

My rst visit to a Somali Bantu home in Lewiston occurred a ew weeks

afer the Bates MLK panel, when Jorge and I went to visit Sahara, who as a

young girl had stood guard over me as I wrote my eld notes each evening,

shooing away other villagers who might disturb my concentration, and who

now, as a married mother, had given birth to her sixth child the day afer

the slide show. Sahara’s downtown tenement building was a creaky old our-

story walk-up, listing slightly to the right. We climbed to the top oor up the

narrow twisting stairs through thick dust, cigarette butts, and garbage to a

door with “Sahara Mahamed” scrawled in pencil. Inside, the apartment was

transormed rom grimy Lewiston tenement to lively Somali space. Colorul

woven plastic mats covered the oor, brightly patterned nylon drapes owed

along the walls rom ceiling to oor, and bunches o plastic owers dangled

.18 Iman’s brother guarding stacks o sesame on his ather’s arm, Banta, 1988.



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28 • Introduction

rom the corners. A cascade o plastic owers woven into a garland hung to

the oor rom a ceiling hook in the middle o the room, making a gay cen-

terpiece. Te aesthetic was a modernist rendering o the beautiully colored

woven palm rond mats that used to grace the walls, beds, and oors o Banta’s

small huts, a new style that has since become very amiliar to me. Sahara’s

six children assembled to meet us: six-year-old twins Xassan and Xussein,

born in Dagahallay (in Dadaab) reugee camp, Gamana and Khadija, born in

Kakuma reugee camp, giggly toddler Yasmin, born in Georgia, and the tiny

newborn Lewiston native Sahel, sleeping in the center o a bare mattress. In

addition to the single mattress, an old on a small side table completed the

room’s urnishings. An adjoining bedroom held another single mattress atop

more oor mats. As we talked, the kids rolled around on the mattresses and

the mats—lacking toys or books, there seemed to be little else or them to do

but watch and wrestle. Jorge and I exchanged a look o concern, sharing a

mutual reaction to the reality o seven people in a one-bedroom apartment

with a long trek down our ights o stairs to get to the street. Sahara had re-

cently relocated to Lewiston rom Atlanta, where debts had overwhelmed the

struggling amily shortly afer their arrival in the United States. Her husband

remained in Georgia to pay off the bills beore joining his amily. As I was to

learn, Sahara’s apartment was just like the apartments o most newly resettled

Somali Bantus: hardly any urniture other than an old donated mattress or

two; lie lived on the oor, where everyone ate, slept, played, and talked;

all windows and walls covered with bright curtains; and lots o bright plastic

owers everywhere. A phone and an old donated completed the standard

urnishings in most homes.

When her tenement building burned down a ew months afer our visit,

another large reugee amily rom Banta took Sahara’s amily into their small

two-bedroom apartment while she waited or a new apartment to become

available. Such strong community support structures remained rmly in place

despite the repeated ruptures experienced by reugees in the resettlement

process, making visible the kinds o communitarian practices typical o the

reugee community that many o Lewiston’s poorer residents lacked. Indeed,

seven years later, when arson destroyed several tenement buildings down-

town and lef two hundred people homeless, all the Somali Bantu amilies

ound housing with riends and relatives while their non-Somali neighbors

had to move into public acilities or short-term hotel rooms provided by the

city until they could nd somewhere else to go. o re-create their structures

o mutual support was precisely why Somali Bantu reugees chose to leave

their sites o initial resettlement throughout the United States to live together

again in Maine.


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Introduction • 29

The Argument of the Book

Drawing on oral history interviews with war survivors rom the Jubba Valley;

published reports about the Kenyan reugee camps; seven years o advocacy

work, collaborative projects, and ethnographic eldwork in the United States;

and extensive engagement with social ser vices providers and others in Lewis-

ton, this book develops an understanding o the lives o resettled reugees that

contradicts some o the most consistent claims in the media about reugees and

their resettlement. One is the assumption that reugees are apolitical, docile,

dependent recipients who benet enormously rom humanitarian intervention.

Another is the claim that immigrants to America share a common trajectory

o assimilation.

Policies involving immigrants and reugees will be one o the most press-

ing issues o the twenty-rst century. Although the language o emergency

used by the United Nations High Commissioner on Reugees () denes

reugees as a crisis situation rather than the norm, those who have lived in

reugee camps or generations know differently. In numbers that currently

exceed feen million, reugees are staying in camps or longer periods o

time than ever beore, and many live in camps that have existed or decades.

Grandparents are raising grandchildren in camps where they themselves grew

up. Reugees appear to have become a permanent part o the contemporary

global landscape, the state o exception that has become normal. “Tey are at

the heart o the denition o the world order and the debates it raises.”

Containing and constraining the mobility o reugees, who as border cross-

ers are dangerous and mistrusted by the states that take them in as well as by the

states that try to keep them out, is a major global enterprise, as maniested in

the construction o massive reugee camps where humanitarians house and care

or those displaced by war or disaster. Because, despite all evidence to the

contrary, reugee camps are envisioned as temporary solutions to short-term

crises, less than 1 percent o those who live in them are reerred or resettle-

ment to a third country. What is supposed to happen to the rest? As Zygmunt

Bauman and many others argue, reugees are a product o our current world

order; their numbers are not going to diminish; and their persistent presence

is a reality the world must conront. Te vast number o reugees, especially

those who have lived or decades in “temporary” camps, begs the question:

what kind o world do we want to live in? Is a sae, secure world one in which

millions o people are stashed in temporary reugee camps or a lietime?

With a ocus on their experiences as recounted to me by Somali Bantu re-

ugees, part I asks what humanitarianism eels like to those who are its objects.

What expectations and burdens accompany the extension o aid in the orm


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30 • Introduction

o reugee camps and resettlement opportunities? We will see how humani-

tarianism in the orm o reugee camps eels constraining and debilitating to

reugees who are working to retain agency over their lives and how reugees

learn to navigate within and push back against the constraints on their ree-

dom imposed by humanitarians and the states whose interests they represent.

Anthropologists recognize that memories play tricks, that current experi-

ences reshape recollections o past events, and that stories are told with an

eye to their possible uture signicance. Reugees, in particular, learn to tell

stories about their experiences in particular ways because o the requirements

imposed on them by reugee camp administrators, as I discuss in chapter 3.

While I have no way to veriy the particulars o the stories I retell here, the

version o events recounted in the rst three chapters reects the things I

heard over and over again as I crossed the country to reconnect with Banta’s

survivors. Chapter 1 begins in 1988, our nal year o residence in the village,

sweeps back to the early twentieth century, and then ollows the events precipi-

tated by the arrival o armed militias in Banta in 1991. Chapters 2 and 3 ollow

my old neighbors as they ed the Jubba Valley or Kenyan reugee camps,

where they lived or the next decade and a hal.

Part II o the book takes up the question o what happens when reugees

move in next door; when dependent objects o humanitarian charity become

neighbors with rights. U.S. media and the promoted the U.S. offer o

reuge through resettlement to Somali Bantu reugees as a purely humanitar-

ian act to rescue a displaced, persecuted minority group rom an uncertain u-

ture. But what does the offer o reuge actually mean? How is reuge envisioned

and actually enacted? What happens when a town that did not invite reugees

nds itsel unwittingly becoming their place o reuge? Part II reviews the

competing and contradictory responses by Lewiston’s residents to the unex-

pected arrival o thousands o reugees, exploring the debates about economic

responsibility, moral responsibility, security, and community that immigration

provokes.

Part III takes up the question o immigrant integration. Te avored melt-

ing pot image o America acknowledges the country as a nation o immi-

grants, but the “land o opportunity” in the popular national narrative rests

on the assumption that immigrants assimilate to mainstream American

culture as they ollow the trajectory o upward mobility blazed by previous

generations o immigrants. But what does integration actually mean? Even

though the idea o the melting pot has long captured the national imagina-

tion, the iconic image o the current era is perhaps more one o crashes and

clashes, maniest in ears about immigrants and the differences they bring.

Samuel Huntington’s article “Te Clash o Civilizations” and his book Who


48/48

Are We? , Robert Kaplan’s article “Te Coming Anarchy,” the lm Crash, and

many other popular narratives warn o the dangers o culture clashes, violence,

and destruction precipitated by immigration. Tose earul o insecurities

introduced by immigration argue that clashing and crashing is what happens

when integration ails and such ears animate reactionary measures such as

laws making English the offi cial language. When immigrants are black and

Muslim in addition to non–English speaking, what is integration to the Euro-

American white mainstream supposed to look like?

Tis book contains crashes and clashes: Somali Bantu villages are crashed

and destroyed by Somali militias; Somali Bantus and I crash into each other

afer twenty years; Somalis and Somali Bantus crash Maine and clash with

Mainers. But much more interesting than the clashes and crashes are the stories

that are lef out o such narratives: the seepages, mutual transormations, and

slow border crossings o all kinds (linguistic, cultural, ideological, philosophical,

cultural) that accompany human mobility. While Lewiston’s story has its share

o racists and xenophobes, a ar more accurate portrait o the experience and

impact o migration captures how reugee immigrants and locals negotiate

coresidence, creating arenas o care, solidarity, collaboration, and mutuality

as people rom very different backgrounds work out ways to live together,

create community, and envision a collective uture. Tis process is not with-

out struggle, o course, but integration works both ways: immigrants adapt to

their new society but their neighbors also adapt to the new ways o being-in-

the-world that immigrants bring. Tis books shows how and why.

Documents

Making Refuge by Catherine Besteman