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Tim Sullivan
The Salt Lake Tribune
The languages Awes Muhina speaks are mile markers on the tortuous route that led him from Somalia to Salt Lake City.
Mushunguli is the dialect of Muhina's Bantu tribe, but because the Bantus endure second-class citizenship in Somalia, he also speaks two mainstream languages, Afmay and Afmaxa. He had to learn Swahili when he fled Somalia during its civil war, walking for five weeks to reach a refugee camp in Kenya.
"And now," Muhina says in his new apartment in Salt Lake City, "we are going to learn English."
Muhina, his wife, Masala Muya, and their three young children arrived in Utah last week as one of the first Bantu refugee families to resettle here. During the next two years, the New York-based International Rescue Committee plans to resettle 230 Bantu families in the Salt Lake area, says director Edie Sidle. Catholic Community Services will be welcoming a few hundred more.
The influx of what will probably be more than 1,000 Somali s to the Wasatch Front will create a sizable Bantu community where none existed before.
And it is not an exaggeration to say that most Bantus will be happy to be here. While all refugee groups have endured hardships in their home countries and on their paths to the United States, the Bantus have had it particularly bad. As the lowest caste in a country ruined by more than a decade of civil war, they have suffered on several different levels.
Distinguished from other Somalis by physical traits like a bigger nose, bigger lips and darker skin, Bantus have experienced discrimination in Somalia since they immigrated there from central Africa about 200 years ago and were enslaved. That prejudice, Muhina says, has ranged from name calling to being systematically denied help from the government. Few Bantus today attend any kind of school in Somalia.
In 2000, the United States identified the Bantus as a priority for refugee resettlement and began processing hundreds of thousands of them in refugee camps; 12,000 will come to this country during the next three years. Salt Lake City was one of several cities chosen because other Somali s have resettled here and because it is considered safe, family-friendly and affordable, Sidle says.
Muhina's story is typical of those of many other Bantus. He was born to a family of farmers who grew fruit, corn and sorghum. School was out of the question, since the family needed everyone to help work the land.
"I don't know how to read or write in any language," Muhina says.
In 1992, when he was 14 and the civil war two years old, Muhina left for Kenya. He describes running and walking for a week straight without any sleep to reach the nearest major city. From there, it took him a month to reach the Kenyan border. He ate grass and leaves, even clay. He passed people dying in the street.
Muhina then spent 10 years in Kenyan refugee camps, where he met his wife and fathered his children, now 5, 3 and 10 months old. Rape and theft were rampant in the camps, and during the family's first night in Salt Lake City, Muhina lay awake until morning, expecting someone to break into the apartment. No one did.
There is more good news for Bantus arriving in Salt Lake City.
The differences between Bantus and other Somalis seem to dissipate outside of Somalia, says Ahmed M. Ali, the Muhinas' International Rescue Committee case worker and a native Somali. Though ruling Somalian tribes like the Mareexaan also have resettled in the Salt Lake area, Ali says, the distance between oppressor and oppressed shrinks considerably when they are in a place where they have more commonalities than differences - and everyone has a chance at a good job and place to live.
Soon after his family arrived, Muhina says, a group of Somalian refugees brought him over some food.
But because the Bantus are starting from scratch in Salt Lake City, Sidle says, the resettlement agencies must take some added measures. She compares the Bantus' situation with that of the Lost Boys, the orphaned young men who came to the United States from Sudan during the 1990s.
For the Lost Boys, who like the Bantus spent a long time in refugee camps without access to education or technology, the IRC received additional funding from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. The agency designed extra classes and took the men to restaurants and the symphony. Sidle says the IRC wants similar funds for the Bantus.
Meanwhile, Muhina already seems to have realized the leadership role that he could assume among his people. He says he wants government agencies and the public to know who the Bantus are. And he wants to help incoming families.
"We're very lucky to be one of the first families," Muhina says. "For future families coming here, I will do the same as was done to me."
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