FORT MORGAN, Colo. — As meatpacking jobs attract more Somali immigrants to this northeast Colorado farm town, community leaders have found that simply learning a foreign language can be a matter of life and death. On June 1, an immigrant who didn’t understand English-language traffic signs entered the wrong side of Interstate 76 and collided with another car. The 65-year-old recent arrival, Ali Aden, and a passenger were seriously injured. Passenger Mohamed Najji Mohamed, 44, was killed. A Surprise, Ariz., resident in the other car suffered minor injuries, the Colorado State Patrol said. The wreck provoked some local resentment toward the 650-strong African community — mostly Somali — that either lives or works in Fort Morgan, a town that otherwise has overwhelmingly welcomed the newcomers.
The crash has also spurred a new African-run community center to start teaching English and the rules of the road to the new immigrants, including people from Kenya, Congo and Ethiopia. But some readers of the local newspaper, the Fort Morgan Times, have suggested that the immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to drive. Fort Morgan’s police department doesn’t keep data on accidents by race, Lt. Darin Sagel said. But Mayor Jack Darnell said it appeared the immigrants are “having a disproportionate amount of accidents,” most of them minor fender-benders. “And they realize it. They are trying to adjust,” Darnell said. Sagel said the accidents may be the result of not being accustomed to a new environment. The Morgan African Community Center has signed up 150 people for English and driving classes in September. It’s also developed a driving handbook that shows traffic signs with Somali translations. “There’s a lot of people who want to register and they’re all excited,” said center organizer Ali Bihi, 53, who immigrated from Mogadishu in 2007. Bihi wants Somalis to take the course before they apply for licenses from the Department of Motor Vehicles. In the past, some non-English speakers would guess on the DMV test or hope that someone at the DMV could translate during it, said Abdikarim Ali, 24, a center volunteer. The Africans chose Fort Morgan as their new home largely because of the presence of Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., a Wichita, Kan.-based firm that has hired more than 360 of them, said Ibrahim Abdi, who also runs the community center. Cargill’s wages start at $12.45 an hour for jobs from cleaning to packaging meat, Ali said. The plant employed about 20 percent of Fort Morgan’s 10,800 residents in 2007. Endemic political strife in Somalia has produced one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. Since the 1991 overthrow of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia has experienced civil war, famine and failed U.N. and U.S. humanitarian missions. Abdi said he had to escape violence that killed his 15-year-old son in 1991. Soldiers from the opposition United Somali Congress shot him because he wouldn’t stop crying as they detained his father, whom they suspected of supporting the government. “There wasn’t a life over there,” said Abdi, sitting in his office located next to a barber shop and a tire shop. Two small U.S. flags lean against a window. Besides the U.S. government, Abdi said Somalis are grateful for Cargill. “They gave us work, and they gave us a way to live,” Abdi said. Center volunteers drive people to doctor’s appointments or help them find housing, another big issue. As many as 100 immigrants, most of them single men, stay in motels because there aren’t enough apartments or because they want to get a job before signing a lease, center leaders said. Abdi said the center also has acted as a mediator to prevent the kind of discord that arose among Somali Muslims and their employers around the country over prayer rituals. In Greeley, about 50 miles west of Fort Morgan, the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant fired more than 100 workers during Ramadan last year after evening-shift workers walked out, saying the firm refused to allow their breaks to coincide with sunset so they could pray. At the time, Swift said they had tried to accommodate workers’ lunch schedules by more than an hour. There have been no such problems in Fort Morgan, workers say.
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Source: AP
