The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
3
These damn Bantubabukaris are everywhere!
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0...EFD9_news.shtml
Volunteers help Bantus adjust to new world
Area residents recruited by Catholic Family Center provide support, advice
(February 29, 2004) --Maano Abdi can't get past the bakery aisle. One by one, she picks up the boxed desserts, looking up with questioning eyes.
Remember, Maano, admonishes volunteer Meagan Brown. Ninety dollars is all you have.
Swiftly, her long skirt and headscarf swishing around her, Abdi returns a package of doughnuts to the
able and settles for the sale-priced pound cake.
Even if the 24-year-old and her roommate, Halima Luhiso, were limited to the bare essentials on this biweekly shopping trip, they and their children wo
uld
leave with far more in their carts than they
got in a month at the refugee camps. To them, the South Clinton Avenue Tops Friendly Market store is a treasure trove.
It's also alien territory to these Somalian Bantu refugees, as is most everything in their newly adopted home.
They are among the 37 Somali Bantus who have been relocated here from Kenya, where they fled after civil war broke out in Somalia. Having grown up amid primitive conditions, they now face a steep learning curve.
As such, they depend on the guidance of volunteers such as Brown, who have signed up or been recruited by Catholic Family Center to help with the resettlement process.
The volunteers are responsible for everything from ferrying the refugees to doctors' appointments to introducing them to under
garments. They have found apartments and furniture for the Bantus, tutored their children and taken them on hours-long grocery shopping trips.
Most of the volunteers are church members who wer
e re
cruited by
CFC. The agency has been resettling refugees since
1918, but its small staff couldn't handle the Somali Bantus alone, says Jim Delaney, a consultant for CFC and its retired associate director of refugee and immigration serv-ices.
As many as 230 Bantus are expected to arrive in Rochester, one of more than a dozen cities selected for its solid support systems, low cost of living and culture of acceptance.
Delaney turned to church congregations for help. " make what I call a pulpit pitch, he says, an eight-minute speech to rouse them up.
It seems to work; as of last month, he had recruited volunteer teams from 26 churches across the region.
Donna and Tim Germuga, team leaders from Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Brighton, were among the first to sign up. They took
in Abdi and her two children, Musa, 4, and Arbay, 1, when they arrived in July.
During their first week here, Abdi and her children slept in the basement of the Germugas' ranch house, b
ehind a
sheet hastily str
ung up in order to afford the family some pr
ivacy.
Later, the Germugas and other volunteers would help the family move, drive them around, manage their financial affairs and generally be there for them during a tough transition to a new world.
Every single step of the process has been more involved than it looked on paper, says Donna Germuga, who with her husband has two children, ages 11 and 14, and is also training to become a nurse.
"t's been more than I bargained for --the intensity with how much you want them to succeed.
CFC, which is connected to a network of volunteer agencies working with the U.S. State Department to receive and place the refugees, provides basic training of sorts. But, Delaney says, how they actually deal with challenges --we've not d
one this. We can't tell them.
Instead, the volunteers learn by trial and error, sharing their experiences by word of mouth and through Bantu Banter, a newsletter Delaney created
.
Th
ey've seen the Bantus mak
e great progress: As o
f January, at least one employable member of each Bantu family had found a job --a top priority in helping the refugees become self-sufficient. The federal government provides financial assistance for four months. After that, they're on their own.
The refugees also are expected to reimburse the government for their airfare, no later than three years after the date of their arrival. And they are required to learn basic English skills, which the adults are picking up at the Rochester School District's Family Learning Center.
"t's very rewarding when you help them, says Quyen Luu, CFC's volunteer service coordinator and a counselor and case manager for the City School District. "t's slow, but it's a big satisfaction.
That's what drives Brown.<b
r>
" knew I really wanted to do something that mattered, the 28-year-old says. Now it's my life purpose.
A part-time teacher of English as a second language at BOC
ES, Brown spend
s the rest of her time vol
unteeri
ng for CFC's refugee resettlement service. She has been assigned to help Luhiso, a shy, 22-year-old refugee who came to Rochester without her husband after he apparently chose to stay in Africa with another wife.
" love it because I get to really pour myself into Halima, says Brown, who did similar work in Dallas before moving to Rochester with her husband.
" get to see her progression and I get to develop a deeper relationship with her.
Brown's affection for her charges is clear on the shopping excursion at Tops. As the 90-minute trip nears an end, she spies a shelf full of miniature daffodils.
Placing a pot of flowers in Luhiso's cart, she turns to the young woman and says, "'m buying them for you.
These damn Bantubabukaris are everywhere!
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0...EFD9_news.shtml
Volunteers help Bantus adjust to new world
Area residents recruited by Catholic Family Center provide support, advice
(February 29, 2004) --Maano Abdi can't get past the bakery aisle. One by one, she picks up the boxed desserts, looking up with questioning eyes.
Remember, Maano, admonishes volunteer Meagan Brown. Ninety dollars is all you have.
Swiftly, her long skirt and headscarf swishing around her, Abdi returns a package of doughnuts to the
able and settles for the sale-priced pound cake.
Even if the 24-year-old and her roommate, Halima Luhiso, were limited to the bare essentials on this biweekly shopping trip, they and their children wo
uld
leave with far more in their carts than they
got in a month at the refugee camps. To them, the South Clinton Avenue Tops Friendly Market store is a treasure trove.
It's also alien territory to these Somalian Bantu refugees, as is most everything in their newly adopted home.
They are among the 37 Somali Bantus who have been relocated here from Kenya, where they fled after civil war broke out in Somalia. Having grown up amid primitive conditions, they now face a steep learning curve.
As such, they depend on the guidance of volunteers such as Brown, who have signed up or been recruited by Catholic Family Center to help with the resettlement process.
The volunteers are responsible for everything from ferrying the refugees to doctors' appointments to introducing them to under
garments. They have found apartments and furniture for the Bantus, tutored their children and taken them on hours-long grocery shopping trips.
Most of the volunteers are church members who wer
e re
cruited by
CFC. The agency has been resettling refugees since
1918, but its small staff couldn't handle the Somali Bantus alone, says Jim Delaney, a consultant for CFC and its retired associate director of refugee and immigration serv-ices.
As many as 230 Bantus are expected to arrive in Rochester, one of more than a dozen cities selected for its solid support systems, low cost of living and culture of acceptance.
Delaney turned to church congregations for help. " make what I call a pulpit pitch, he says, an eight-minute speech to rouse them up.
It seems to work; as of last month, he had recruited volunteer teams from 26 churches across the region.
Donna and Tim Germuga, team leaders from Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Brighton, were among the first to sign up. They took
in Abdi and her two children, Musa, 4, and Arbay, 1, when they arrived in July.
During their first week here, Abdi and her children slept in the basement of the Germugas' ranch house, b
ehind a
sheet hastily str
ung up in order to afford the family some pr
ivacy.
Later, the Germugas and other volunteers would help the family move, drive them around, manage their financial affairs and generally be there for them during a tough transition to a new world.
Every single step of the process has been more involved than it looked on paper, says Donna Germuga, who with her husband has two children, ages 11 and 14, and is also training to become a nurse.
"t's been more than I bargained for --the intensity with how much you want them to succeed.
CFC, which is connected to a network of volunteer agencies working with the U.S. State Department to receive and place the refugees, provides basic training of sorts. But, Delaney says, how they actually deal with challenges --we've not d
one this. We can't tell them.
Instead, the volunteers learn by trial and error, sharing their experiences by word of mouth and through Bantu Banter, a newsletter Delaney created
.
Th
ey've seen the Bantus mak
e great progress: As o
f January, at least one employable member of each Bantu family had found a job --a top priority in helping the refugees become self-sufficient. The federal government provides financial assistance for four months. After that, they're on their own.
The refugees also are expected to reimburse the government for their airfare, no later than three years after the date of their arrival. And they are required to learn basic English skills, which the adults are picking up at the Rochester School District's Family Learning Center.
"t's very rewarding when you help them, says Quyen Luu, CFC's volunteer service coordinator and a counselor and case manager for the City School District. "t's slow, but it's a big satisfaction.
That's what drives Brown.<b
r>
" knew I really wanted to do something that mattered, the 28-year-old says. Now it's my life purpose.
A part-time teacher of English as a second language at BOC
ES, Brown spend
s the rest of her time vol
unteeri
ng for CFC's refugee resettlement service. She has been assigned to help Luhiso, a shy, 22-year-old refugee who came to Rochester without her husband after he apparently chose to stay in Africa with another wife.
" love it because I get to really pour myself into Halima, says Brown, who did similar work in Dallas before moving to Rochester with her husband.
" get to see her progression and I get to develop a deeper relationship with her.
Brown's affection for her charges is clear on the shopping excursion at Tops. As the 90-minute trip nears an end, she spies a shelf full of miniature daffodils.
Placing a pot of flowers in Luhiso's cart, she turns to the young woman and says, "'m buying them for you.