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Somalian family finds hope, peace in Lansing
Samantha Meinke
GLWoman
It has taken a 17-year journey to get Somalian refugee Rahma Ahmed and her family to a typical American Thanksgiving day.
Her 11 children, two sons-in-law, and three grandchildren gather between 10 and 11 a.m. in her five-bedroom Lansing home. The women of the family cook stuffed turkey, fried rice, vegetables, bread, salad and Somali hot sauce. They drag chairs into the house from the porch and backyard and gather together around the dining table.
"We like the idea of designating a whole day as an appreciation to God for all the things he has granted us," says Ikram Adawe, Ahmed's 26-year-old daughter. "One thing we always do before leaving the dining table is we say prayers for our mom. We ask God for things like give her a long life and health, and please her heart."
After dinner, the family gathers around Ahmed for tea, coffee and dessert. They listen as Ahmed reminisces about the past.
Some stories contain great times. Others reveal the sort of horrors most Americans will only see on the nightly news.
Ahmed and her family fled Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1991, when President Mohamed Siad Barre was forced from power and the streets erupted in random violence.
The country was plunged into chaos; schools closed, food and water became scarce; there was no electricity.Men were shot in the streets, and their families were hit by stray gunfire while hiding in their homes.
Ahmed, her husband, Ali Adawe, and their children went to Cairo, Egypt. But Ali could not get work there, so he moved to Tanzania, leaving his family behind.
Living in Cairo was terribly lonely for Ahmed, who was thrilled when she was granted asylum in the United States in 1998.
Today she and her children are American citizens. She has a job, a home and her children, ages 9 through 27, excel in school and post-college jobs.
Ahmed knows she has many reasons to be thankful.
"I am happy, I am healthy, I am OK," Ahmed says. "I am very happy for my kids."
Onset of war
The life Ahmed leads today is one she could scarcely imagine in Mogadishu before the war. Back then, she lived a peaceful existence. She got up early in the morning, got her kids ready for school and went to work as an accountant for the Somalian government from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In the afternoon, she came home, cleaned the house and took care of her family. It was easy living in the vast familial support system that included her parents, 12 siblings and her husband's nine siblings.
Somalia appeared to be headed into a progressive future.
"Mogadishu was a very nice city," says Lul Askar, a Somalian immigrant living in East Lansing, and a friend of Ahmed's. "It's on the Indian Ocean, and life was very relaxed."
"When Mohamed Siad became president, he did a lot of work within the country, building roads and schools," Ahmed says.
"Everybody was required to go to school to learn at least reading and writing. And everybody capable of working was offered a job. There were high hopes for the country."
In 1991, the regime collapsed. "People started destroying everything," Ahmed says. "People didn't know how to operate their equipment and would shoot in random houses and the whole family inside would be destroyed."
Ahmed's family was not immune to the violence. Her sister and two nephews were killed. Two of her brothers-in-law, both in their 20s, were shot in the street while out trying to get supplies for their family.
"It was very scary," Ahmed says. "A lot of people mentally weren't able to continue because of what happened."
People started to get hungry and desperate.
They didn't traditionally store food at home because they bought it fresh daily.
"When the war happened, people were not able to go out and buy their groceries," Ahmed says. "So a lot of people started to move to other places."
Flight to Egypt
Adawe and Ahmed decided to flee as well, first going to two of Ahmed's brothers' homes in Mogadishu.
When they left home, they took nothing.
"Then people would come and steal everything; people even came and took the doors from our house," Ikram says.
As the city continued its descent into chaos, the family left Mogadishu itself.
First they went to the north of Somalia, then farther, to Egypt.
"We had to return to Mogadishu first, and then we took an airplane to Egypt," Ikram says. "Sixteen days after we were in Egypt the tribal war started, and it got horrible after that. Mom always thought things would cool down and we would be able to go back, but that never happened."
Ahmed's years in Cairo were so painful she still can barely speak of them.
The United Nations accepted her family as refugees in 1993, and that status gave them health insurance, some cash assistance and paid the children's school tuitions. That was the only stability Ahmed's family had.
She had no friends, no extended family. And because her husband wasn't allowed to work in Egypt on his residence visa, he moved to Tanzania to work to pay for the family's housing and food.
Ahmed and her children saw Adawe once every six months.
On their own, Ahmed and her children lived their first five years in Egypt in a cramped three-room apartment.
Then their landlord raised the rent. When they couldn't afford to pay more, they were given 24 hours to move out. After that, they moved frequently, always with only 24 hours of notice.
"They would say, 'You have how many kids?'" Ahmed says. "They say, 'Oh, no, we don't want 10 kids.' ... Every month, every two months, every six months I will go look for another apartment. It was very hard. ...
When they see the kids they say, 'Oh, a lot of kids, OK, move, MOVE! MOVE!' "
Ahmed breaks down in tears as she recalls her desperation.
"I hate Egypt; I don't want to stay there another time," she sobs. "I look for another house. And I go everywhere. When they say move, I move."
When Ahmed wasn't looking for a home to keep her family off the streets, she was standing in long lines in those same streets.
Every year she had to renew her family's residence visas, and she had to enroll at least one child in a new school as they progressed through their educations.
To do either required waiting in line for five or six days and a pocket full of cash.
"To get the process done is when you have to give people money," Ikram explains. "You have to bribe."
Coming to Lansing
It was with great relief that Ahmed and her family applied for and were granted asylum in the United States in 1998.
The preparations to move them to Lansing took a year, and they arrived - without her husband - in 1999. They lived in an apartment for one week, and then were moved into a five-bedroom home that came complete with furniture, food, blankets and clothes.
"I was very happy coming," Ahmed says. "But I was a little worried because I didn't speak the language, I didn't know the people, I didn't know the place."
She was also five months pregnant with her youngest son and was suffering from gestational diabetes. Because of her health problems, she was introduced to Lul Askar, a Somalian who worked at Family Community Development.
The bureaucracy surrounding American medicine bewildered Ahmed, who couldn't understand why she was given a pregnancy test and asked if she'd like to keep her baby.
In Somalia, where there has never been a social security system, huge families are considered blessings, as children take care of their aging parents.
Askar says Ahmed's confusion didn't last long, as she was able to quickly understand explanations of American customs.
"Rahma was one who came with open eyes," Askar says. "Some people came and had to go to school to learn to live here. Rahma is an educated person, so whatever you told her, she would understand. I liked to work with her."
Ahmed gave birth to her youngest son, Ayub, and her health improved enough so she could work.
Since February 2002, Ahmed has worked for Peckham, cleaning the Capitol building from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. She washes floors, vacuums, empties trash cans and cleans bathrooms.
Ahmed is proud to work, and enjoys her colleagues.
"I like it, I like the people," she says. "I'm able to work and make money.
I support my family. I am independent."
Ahmed's floor supervisor, Marie Lizaire, a fellow refugee from Haiti, enjoys working with Rahma too.
"Rahma works so hard," Lizaire says. "She's very nice. Our group has fun together."
When Lizaire arrived in America, she could only read and write her name.
Ahmed has helped her study to become an American citizen.
"Rahma helped me with reading and writing," Lizaire says. "I want citizenship. The second time I'm going for the test, I passed."
Ahmed passed the test last year, becoming an American citizen. All but two of her children are now citizens as well.
"This is huge - very, very, very, very big," Ahmed says. "Now I'm American. I'm happy. I'm very glad. I get to vote. This is a big opportunity."
Never home again
American citizenship provided Ahmed her first opportunity to travel legally in 17 years. In that span, she hasn't seen her mom or her siblings and has only had patchy communication with them by phone. They are scattered around Africa and the Middle East in refugee camps, where phone and other communication systems are rudimentary.
Ahmed used her new-found freedom to visit her mother and brother in Yemen. The visit opened her eyes to just how fortunate she and her children are.
"They don't have a life," Ahmed says. "They don't have help. Eight years, nine years, they've been in the camp. They don't have nothing. Some people are begging in the streets because they have no way of making money. It's a hard life."
The hardest part of visiting them was knowing she could do little to help. She can offer some financial assistance, but she can't help them apply for U.S. citizenship.
"You have to provide income requirements for that," Ikram says.
That means Ahmed would have to show she could support her mom, brother and his 10 kids should they come the United States - something way beyond her means.
The sad fate of her family is compounded by the tragic fate of Ahmed's country,which remains at war.
"It's very dangerous in Somalia," Askar says. "We can't go back. We'd like to go back, and, inshallah, it will happen sometime. You can't understand what the life was. Over there the life was easy.
Your relatives are all close to you. But here it's individual."
Ikram talks sadly about what her family has lost.
"We lived for 10 years in Egypt and never saw an uncle or an aunt," she says.
"Being able to have a family reunion, being able to get your whole family together at Thanksgiving, that's something a lot of people don't have."
But there is still hope for the Adawe-Ahmed family. They have survived hardships.
And the family is expanding-with two husbands and three babies joining their ranks.
And there is great hope that this will be the year their nuclear family is reunited.
Adawe, who Ahmed and her children haven't seen since they left Egypt nine years ago, might finally be joining them in Lansing. It will be his first chance to meet his youngest son.
"They already approved him for a visa," Ahmed says with a hope-filled smile. "We think he's going to come within this year."
Editor's note: Many quotes attributed to Ahmed were spoken in Somali and translated by her daughter, Ikram Adawe.
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