When the local Somali Bantu community began arriving in Milwaukee in 2003, people came with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Largely illiterate, few spoke English. And little in their decade in the refugee camps of Kenya, where they’d fled Somalia’s civil war, prepared them for life in the United States.

It’s been a difficult adjustment for many of the Bantu, as families struggled to maintain their religious and cultural identities while navigating the complexities of American society and its laws.

Now, their fellow Muslims are working to ease that transition, offering a series of educational programs aimed at helping the Somali Bantu better assimilate.

“A Muslim must respect the law of the land and always be a good citizen,” Imam Ziad Hamdan, speaking through a translator, told about 300 Bantu gathered this week for an Iftar – the nightly breaking of the fast during Ramadan – sponsored by the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. Those who do so, said Hamdan, “will please Allah and live in peace in this society.”

The initiative, funded in part by the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee and the Islamic Society, has been welcomed by Bantu leaders, who worry that their youth are being influenced by negative aspects of American culture – truancy, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse – and that their parents are ill-equipped to stop it.

“This is helpful for our community,” said Abdiwahab Aden, president of the local Bantu-American Friendship Association, who estimates there are about 600 Bantu, in about 130 families, in the Milwaukee area.

The Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition began developing the program this spring after two young Bantu men, ages 25 and 23, were convicted of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl they met at a library.

“That was almost unheard of before in the local Muslim community,” said coalition director Janan Najeeb, who is coordinating the program.

“We realized that unless we intervened, to help them find healthy ways of living . . .  this was going to be a burden for the Muslim community,” she said.

The program launched this summer with a six-week session for children at Clara Mohammed School, 317 W. Wright St., where nearly half of the 184 students are Bantu.

The sessions covered everything from health and cleanliness to how to resolve conflict without violence.

“This is a group that very much wants to learn,” said Clara Mohammed’s elementary school principal, Javera Bokhari.

“We need to teach them the laws before condemning them for something they’re not aware of,” she said.

The program is now offering monthly educational forums for the Bantu.

This week’s session, which preceded the Iftar, covered a broad range of topics, including how the law looks at sexual relationships involving teenagers – in Bantu culture it is not uncommon for teenagers to marry – and physical disciplining of children.

“It is absolutely illegal for anyone under 16 years old to have relations with anyone else,” attorney Othman Atta told the Bantu.

On the issue of discipline, Atta explained that, while parents are entitled to discipline their children, children can be removed from the home if a teacher or some other authority sees evidence of abuse or neglect.

That drew the attention of the Bantu mothers, all dressed in the traditional goono saako garbasaar – much like the Indian sari – and many carrying young children on their hips. One mother gestured intently at the young men on the opposite side of the room, and in Bantu urged Atta and the interpreter to admonish the children to respect their parents.

“They are getting out of hand,” the mother of four, Aziza Shego, said through her grandson, Abdishakur Ali, after stepping out into the hall.

Shego, who works as a cook at Clara Mohammed, said she’d come to the session to learn how to keep her children safe.

“We want our children to be educated, and we want to make this community stronger,” said Shego.

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Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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