A Refugee Family's Second Chance.

Salt Lake City, Utah---“They say ‘She likes Americans we should kill her,” she said to me in a small apartment in Salt Lake City. “I leave with my children because everywhere is fighting, so much fighting.”

I look around this sparse apartment that she shares with her six children and a visiting Aunt and wonder why they are so happy with so little. There is only a map of the United States predominately taped to the wall by their table.

“I dream every night in the camp, I dream I am in America,” her dark brown eyes do not leave mine, “and now my dream is true!” she raises her hands above her head as in celebration.

The kids

The camp she is speaking of is the refugee camp in Ethiopia where she and these children, ages 18 to 8, spent five years after fleeing Somalia. Many families wait for years to be placed. Coming to America is like winning the lottery. All have one thing in mind, they just want to go to a safer place to work hard, raise their family and start a new life.

Without asking,  a daughter brings me and my cousin glasses of lemonade so full she walks very slowly watching the tops that are about to spill over.

Ethiopia, it turns out has the second largest refugee camp in the world with 170,000 Somali. Other countries have taken in more. Overall the number of Somali refugees in the region numbers more than 1 million.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agencies online news update, “Somalia remains one of the world's longest and worst refugee crises. A third of Somalia's estimated 7.5 million population lives in forced displacement – either as refugees or internally displaced people.”

I watch the kids run around excited to have visitors they are silly and funny and behave like, well, kids. My cousin Martha is a liaison for this family, a volunteer position through Catholic Community Services that she started after a battle with cancer that left her wanting to give back. This is the third family and she’s incredibly proud of them because of their progress. It is evident the mother loves Martha and that she has made a difference.

“When I first get here I get on the bus and know nothing so I just ride and ride,” the mother told me, “I was so confused. In the bush we have nothing like this. Here is all so big and so many things. So I stay on the bus and do not know what to do.”

“Then one day Martha comes. She says ‘let’s go ride the bus together’ and now I know. Two stop lights I get off, zip, zip, zip I am knowing it all now,” she said excited, “We love Martha, she is like Angel.”

Another daughter brings Martha and me each a piece of cake that together, would make up half the cake. I stare at the lemonade that I cannot finish and look at this huge mound of cake bewildered. There is an audience of the Aunt and several children on the sofa across from me staring to see my reaction. I am so full from an earlier lunch but take my fork and smile doing my best to take some bites. It’s very good, one of the daughters blushes as we compliment her baking.

I wanted to know more so later I found a good story from KSL.com Utah published March 7, 2013 and written by By Nkoyo Iyamba. The story states; "There are roughly 15 million refugees in the world and less than one percent will be resettled," explained Aden Batar, director of immigration and refugee resettlement at Catholic Community Services in Utah.  The United States Department of State reports a resettlement budget for roughly 70,000 refugees to be relocated to cities around the U.S. Utah refugee advocacy groups are resettling roughly 600 refugee families during the first part of the 2012-2013 fiscal year; that's already half the state's budgeted capacity.

The story continues to say; "A lot of the refugees, they don't want to live on welfare, I can attest to that," Batar said. "All they want is to provide for their families. About 70 percent of refugees that are resettled obtain jobs within the first 6 months of arrival to Utah."

This is true for this family. The oldest daughter has a full time cleaning job and is already helping to support the family.

This family are not United States citizens, they have a "permanent resident" status. The other children are all in school and plan to be in summer school to get a jump on more education. I watch my cousin ask to see school  paperwork for the summer term, add her name as an emergency contact and explain how they need to turn it in the next day.

I ask the mother how is it she speaks such good English and she immediately jumps up and goes into one of the bedrooms reappearing with a manila envelope. Sitting next to me on the sofa again, she pulls out paperwork and sorts out three laminated pieces of paper to show me.

I read two letters from the American Embassy in Somalia from 1991. It states that she had been a good janitor at the Embassy and also did some secretarial work. The third paper was a certificate for being “Employee of the Quarter” during her time there. She beams with pride over these treasures.

Now it all makes sense. She worked in our Embassy and this is why she first was known to “like the Americans.”  And working for, liking Americans is what first got her life threatened.

I did not ask about the father and husband. My cousin told me she hasn't asked yet either. Many men had been killed and many women and children were separated from the men while leaving the country. Even the Aunt now visiting was not known to be alive until reaching the USA and finding her on a search site.

There is so much more to their story that I did not have time, or feel comfortable asking about. But it was inspirational to see a family so appreciative of our country and so amazed at the life they had “won.”