E, I thought of you when I saw this article in the Tucson paper. And I was particularly gratified to discover that Tucson now has an Ethiopian restaurant. That's new since the last time I was there. Maybe it would make a suitable retirement place after all.
azstarnet.com
Refugees who wandered for years adapting well to new Tucson home
By Stephanie Innes
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The people getting off Tuesday night's American Airlines flight from Dallas couldn't help but notice them: 11 tall Sudanese men with smiles on their faces, surveying the arriving passengers.
Laughs and greetings in the Dinka language erupted as three Sudanese "Lost Boys" walked off the plane at Tucson International Airport and joined the group waiting to welcome them.
With the arrival of these and other Lost Boys - more are coming this month - Sudanese are in line to become the largest population of new refugees to settle in Tucson this year. So far, the city's biggest new refugee group is from Iraq with about 50 people settling here this year.
Forty of the young Sudanese men - up from seven in April - now call Tucson home, and at least three more are scheduled to arrive this week and more later this month. They are among some 4,000 young men, orphaned during fighting in their native Sudan, who are expected to settle in the United States by the end of September.
Overall, the Sudanese are adjusting well to desert life, in spite of a couple of bike accidents and anxiety about meeting their academic goals.
"I really think they are going to make it and meet their goals," said Jill Rich, a local Realtor and volunteer with Jewish Family & Children's Service who visits with the 19 young men her agency has settled nearly every day. The young men call her "mom." She recently rented a bus to take them all to a friend's party.
"They are wonderful to work with and learn very quickly. They are very alert, and I can't say enough about them," said Rich, who is working with the American Red Cross to help some of the young men who are trying to trace family members in Africa.
"They truly have a wisdom about them, coming from years of having a lot of difficulties."
International refugee workers in Kakuma, Kenya, dubbed the group the "Lost Boys," and they have attracted national attention in the United States from people who are moved by their history. The boys were among about 17,000 young men who spent about a decade trekking across the desert and living in refugee camps, most recently in Kakuma.
They saw their villages burned, displacing thousands of people during fighting between the Islamic fundamentalist government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Young girls stayed with their families, were married off or forced into slavery.
The boys set out on their own, barefoot, and walked through scorching heat from Sudan to Ethiopia. Many of them died of thirst, starvation, drowning and attacks by wild animals. After four years in Ethiopia, the boys were forced back to Sudan. Facing danger there, they trekked to Kenya.
The new ones arriving Tuesday night wore blue and gray U.S. government-issued track suits and they were noticeably thinner than the Sudanese counterparts who greeted them. They were also tired after two days of travel but awake enough to notice everything new, like cellular telephones, ATM machines, luxury American cars and - once they got to their apartments - running water.
"Now I can say I have a new life," said 21-year-old Dominic Gatdhuon Kuluai, one of the three new arrivals, as he surveyed his new living space at a Midtown apartment complex.
A member of the Nuer tribe who left his Sudanese village of Bentieu at age 7 when his parents were murdered, Kuluai arrived with no luggage, just a plastic bag containing his chest X-rays and some names and addresses of his friends.
Kuluai is sharing a studio apartment with 21-year-old Adeer Amol Marier and his cousin, 21-year-old Garang Marier, who had a chicken-and- vegetable dish waiting for Kuluai when he arrived at the apartment. Garang Marier is awaiting his GED test results and hoping to enroll at Pima Community College. He's also working full time at a Tucson nursing home.
What Tucson Lost Boys like Marier are finding in their new Southwestern home is a steady supply of generosity from community members, who regularly take them to museums, shows and their favorite restaurant - Zemam's Ethiopian food on Broadway.
In their small studio apartments they have televisions, VCRs and computers donated by local residents.
But they also are discovering that free time is scarce. Most days consist of GED preparation, computer training and full-time jobs. Since they don't have cars, the young men must rely on the bus system and bicycles to get around,
"They are very intent on education, and it's been more difficult than they'd expected," said Deb Kuhl, program assistant for the Refugee Resettlement program at Jewish Family & Children's Service. "They are passing math and science. But the areas more difficult are literature and arts and social studies."
Jon Merrill, Tucson coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, agreed.
"Probably the expectations were somewhat high for some of them," said Merrill, whose agency has settled 21 of the young men.
The young men are working in maintenance for the Vail School District, as nursing home assistants, hospital technicians, house-cleaners in hotels and as electrician's assistants.
"We want to be able to concentrate on our studying," said 21-year-old Daniel Keech, who hopes to study marketing at Pima Community College once he passes his GED. "But we cannot study without working. That is not possible."
After four months of living in the United States, refugee assistance runs out, and the young men must begin paying their own rent.
Keech hopes to find out by mid-September whether he's passed his GED, and he's anxious to get enrolled in some college credit courses, which he will have to balance with a maintenance job.
For now he's studying through the PCC adult education program, and in just three months he's gone from complete unfamiliarity with computers to proficiency with Microsoft Word, using the Internet and using e-mail - he's got his own account.
Maroor Maroor Apath, a 23-year-old from Sudan, has been in Tucson since April. He hopes to become a doctor. But for now he is also awaiting his GED results and working in a nursing home.
He has recovered from injuries he got when a car hit him while he was on his bicycle. Another young man was also recently knocked off his bike by a car but was also not seriously injured.
When they have a spare moment, some have joined a soccer team, and they all enjoy renting wildlife videos to watch on their VCRs. The young men find that learning about animals they once feared and ran from, like lions, elephants and crocodiles, is comforting. Apath has a poster of Bob Marley in his apartment and likes listening to reggae and jazz with his roommates.
Looking over at Kuluai as he attended the arrival festivities last week, Apath remembered how he felt when he landed in Tucson nearly five months ago.
"I was confused," he said. "He looks like a new hen and he's very thin. But it is good that he's here. The ones we left in Africa, we are writing them letters. We are telling them that Arizona, it's very good." |
