African immigrants interviewed

In today's Des Moines Register, I found a fascinating article which reminded me of an incident a few years back. One of our neighbor families (who have since moved north to Minneapolis) was a man and his wife and two little kids. The man was a big, jovial Nigerian named "Sunday"; he was married to Julie, who was a very sweet and thoughtful girl who grew up in Minnesota, and their two kids played with mine all the time. I was grieved when they moved; it changed the neighborhood dynamics significantly.

Anyway, we all lived happily in our little corner of the inner city of Des Moines, in old Victorian homes in varying states of disrepair, among people of very wide-ranging backgrounds and socioeconomic standings. There are some very old apartment buildings in the neighborhood, dotted among the 100-year-old houses, and many of them are occupied by immigrant families who have been resettled here from Sudan and Somalia due to the horrible persecution faced in their homelands. I have found them to be polite and quiet neighbors. Many of them get their first job sacking groceries or sweeping floors; it's not an unusual sight to see an extremely tall, extremely black-skinned, extremely thin man with tribal scars on his cheeks, cheerfully loading my grocery bags for me.

There's a city park a couple of blocks from our home where many neighborhood children congregate. I don't let my kids go there alone yet, mainly because they would have to cross a couple of fairly busy streets to get there. Sometimes in the summertime, however, we all take a walk over there. One day we did that and ended up befriending a little group of three of four ragamuffins who were there by themselves but who were congenial and played nicely with my own kids. They were all brown-skinned themselves, but had obviously been born and raised right here in Iowa. (As an aside, can I please interject here that I absolutely love that my children do not notice their playmates' skin color, or rather, they don't choose their playmates based on skin color. They notice, but only as shades of hue rather than as distinct groups, and they readily play with kids who are nice regardless of their appearance. It's how I have always wanted it to be.)

Lunchtime had passed, and I got the distinct feeling that they weren't going to get any lunch at home, so I offered to let them come to my yard and I'd fix them some mac & cheese. Of course, this was met with enthusiasm, so we trekked back home, and while they all played in our yard, I cooked up some Kraft. They ate it happily, then decided as a group that they'd walk home. I asked them where they lived, and when they told me, I knew it wouldn't be that much of a walk, so I told them the quickest way to get there. They shook their heads "no", saying that they were afraid to walk by one of the apartment buildings near their home, which was about three blocks from where we live. Thinking perhaps that a group of bullies congregated there to hassle small children, I asked them why.

"Oh, miss, that's where the Africans live. Them Africans, they eat people."

I assured them that they did not eat people, but that if they were uncomfortable, I'd give them a ride, so I did. I later related the story to my Nigerian neighbor Sunday, who bellowed with laughter. Julie warned me to be on the lookout; that if I suddenly stopped seeing her, I'd know what had happened. It made it very clear to me that black Americans and Africans are very distinct groups and don't really intermingle, at least not here. The Register has noticed that too, and has interviewed several African immigrants concerning the issue. Some interesting snippets from the article:

Abdalla S. Abdalla and his family fled their civil-war-torn country of Somalia nearly seven years ago. Abdalla left to find peace.

"People were killing each other for very simple reasons," he said. "They killed you because of the watch you are wearing."

After Abdalla, 43, who is from Kismayo, arrived in Des Moines in October 1998, he discovered that life was better than in Somalia but that it had its own challenges.
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He said he is puzzled by the label African-Americans. In Africa, he said, blacks in the United States are known as "black Americans."

"Where did they get their name?" Abdalla said. "They are not in Africa. Are they second-class citizens? They were born here, they are citizens and should be called Americans."
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Ngino Nikako is a little hesitant about forging a relationship with black Americans. His reasoning is because he believes blacks don't have the resources, such as time, to make the effort.

"They have their own problems," Nikako said.

Before he agrees to participate in making a connection, Nikako, 30, said, the group should have a goal.

"I don't want to come sit together because we're black," he said. "We have to be doing it for something."

Nikako, who hails from Malakal, Sudan, and is a member of the Shilluk tribe , said he left his country in 2000 because of political unrest.
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Before Ben Kigen moved from Kenya to the United States to study, he didn't know about the black American struggle for freedom. He didn't know blacks had opportunities such as serving in political office.

"As far as African-Americans, I thought they played basketball and were musicians," he said. "I thought they were a people that the United States put aside. All I saw in newspapers and TV were Caucasians."

But his opinion is different now.

"My view has really changed a lot," Kigen said. "Personally, I believe there is an opportunity for them, and there are a lot of people reaching out to African-Americans. There are education programs and housing programs for them."

Kigen, whose native town is Koipatek and who is a member of the Kalejin tribe , came to the United States in 1996 to study at Indiana University, where he met his Caucasian wife, Jenny. Three years later, he moved to Des Moines and began attending the University of Iowa to obtain a master's degree in social work.

Kigen said he has more opportunities here than he did in Kenya.

His experience with black Americans is good, Kigen said. He said he never feels uncomfortable or insulted.

"When I meet African-Americans, they like to know more about Kenya and want to know the lifestyle that is going on. They ask things like is it true that people in Africa walk around naked," Kigen said.

What separates him from the black community, he said, is the way he speaks.

"It's the accent," Kigen said. "The way they cook food, the way they dress - it's like we are from the same place. We do things the same way."

The cover of a book can give you some clues as to its content, but can't really tell you the most important things about the story contained within. To do that, you must make the effort to open the book and begin to absorb the information on its pages. Same with people...