Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

May 21, 2003

Wow. This story really does speak to the poem at the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame.

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Excited Somali Blacks Leave for the United States

Tue May 20, 2003 06:25 PM ET

By Helen Nyambura

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Fresh from a crash course in modern living, black African Somalis fleeing war and prejudice leave this week for new lives in the United States, many swearing they will never go back to Africa.

"We were poor, we were small (unimportant) in Somalia," said Hassan Musa Lamungu, among 70 impoverished Somali Bantu -- black African -- refugees flying from the Kenyan capital Nairobi in batches on Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening.

"Whenever we took our children to school, they (Somalis) hit our heads and called us "adon" (slave) and sent us back home with our children," added the 42 year-old father of nine.

"Now, I am at peace. My children will go to school."

One of Africa's longest suffering peoples, the minority tribe of descendants of slaves from Mozambique and other parts of southern Africa has tended to be ostracised by Somalis, who are a fairer-skinned, Cushitic people, because of different physical, cultural and linguistic characteristics.

Washington agreed in February to take the whole tribe of 11,800, who have been living in camps in northeastern Kenya for most of the past decade because of the violence in Somalia.

The Horn of Africa country degenerated into anarchy with the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. A transitional government sits in Mogadishu but has no power over the rest of the country, divided between numerous warlords.

The refugees have had security checks, medical examinations, literacy training and cultural orientation to ensure they integrate. Aid officials have also taught the tribe, denied formal education in Somalia, the nitty gritty of modernity.

The refugees are taught how to switch on and change light bulbs, flush the toilet and turn on taps.

NO SPANKING OR WIFEBEATING

"We tell them that once in America, women and men are considered equal and men should not even think of hitting their wives -- and no spanking of children," an aid official said.

At a transit center in Nairobi, aid officials handed out bags containing diapers, underwear and snacks to nursing mothers dressed in brightly flowered blue ankle length dresses.

Amina Dadiri will head a household of six when she gets to Salt Lake City -- two children of her own and three siblings. The 25-year-old has been abandoned by her husband.

She speaks only a few words of English, but says that will not be a deterrent to her success in the land of opportunity.

"Me and my children, we will all go to school...I will cultivate land if that is all there is for me to do...Nobody will take away my crop by force," she smiled.

Somali Bantus say that their farm produce was usually taken away from them at gunpoint by their Cushitic countrymen.

In October, the United States threatened to exclude families that were circumcising their daughters from the emigration list.

The refugees rushed to circumcise their daughters while in the Kenyan camps when they learned the practice was outlawed in the United States. But 60-year-old Khadija Abdi says they will abide by the law of their new country.

"We will follow the law over there," Abdi says. "We don't want problems...I will never, never come back to Africa."

Most of the tribe are conservative Muslims. But Nurto Omar, Lamungu's wife, says that if there are no Muslim or black people to marry her daughters, then any suitable suitor would do.

"If they love one another, I have no problem with it."