For many communities, it might have been a proud but fairly routine assembly, with pupils coming forward to receive certificates and handshakes from grownups for school achievements, but the recent Education Day, which the Somali Bantu Community Association of Pittsburgh conducted, was a poignant event for people who were largely excluded from educational opportunities in their homeland for generations before being terrorized into exile.
Only in refugee camps in Africa and after resettling to America did they have more opportunities for schooling.
“Our whole community lived without education from the beginning until the 1990s,” said Aweys Mwaliya, president of the Somalia Bantu Community Association of Pittsburgh.
“To us, it was really a milestone to see young people who are really changing their lives.”
Most of Pittsburgh’s new immigrants left their homelands by choice, lured by job prospects, professional advancement, marriage or other draws, but thousands like Mr. Mwaliya didn’t have that luxury.
Calamities such as war, genocide or ethnic cleansing displaced them, and they often spent years in refugee camps before coming here.
About 3,500 refugees have been resettled directly to Allegheny County in the past 12 years, according to Pennsylvania Refugee Resettlement Program statistics. Some have moved to other parts of the country; other refugees have relocated here from other American cities. The city is also home to earlier waves of refugees, such as those from the Vietnam and Bosnia wars.
The largest refugee group here consists of ethnic Nepalis who were driven out of their longtime homeland of Bhutan and languished in refugee camps for years before being resettled here. A total of 1,781 resettled here initially, according to state figures, and Bhutanese community leaders estimate the overall population now at more than twice that.
Refugees by the hundreds also have resettled here from Myanmar, mainly ethnic groups that suffered years of military repression, as well as Somalis and Iraqis whom war displaced.
Refugees range vastly in education, culture and religion but often share tragically familiar narratives of persecution, exile and the chance for a new life:
• Driven from his southern Sudanese home at age 13, Benedict Killang made a desperate flight to a refugee camp. Years later, he came to the United States as one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan. He is now the president of the Union of African Countries in Pittsburgh and an employment specialist at Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Pittsburgh.
• After years of forced labor and other persecution in his native Myanmar (formerly Burma), Roding Lian fled to Malaysia where, after three years in a refugee camp, he resettled to Virginia and later to Pittsburgh, where the ordained minister provides practical help and spiritual leadership for fellow refugees.
• Born on a riverbank in Nepal in exile from Bhutan, Yadhu Dhital largely grew up in a refugee camp in Nepal before his family resettled in Florida and then came here. He’s a pre-med student at the University of Pittsburgh and is researching mental-health issues among fellow refugees.
“We came to America for the better life, and many are finding it, getting jobs, buying homes, starting businesses and furthering education,” he said at a recent public forum on refugees.
“Some of us are still having a bad situation,” he said.
Depression, even suicide, are problems, community leaders say, as are domestic violence and substance abuse.
Community leaders and service providers are responding. Support groups for Nepali, Iraqi and other refugees, as well as senior citizens activities, help to reduce the isolation that often accompanies such problems, said Barbara Murock, the immigrants and internationals initiative manager for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.
The department has an advisory council on reaching foreign-born populations, and it is helping to train health professionals and others on issues facing refugees and immigrants. “We need to expand the capacity to serve people from other cultures both with specialized services and with expanding the services we do have to be more accessible and culturally appropriate,” she said.
Mr. Mwaliya’s ordeal in Somalia began about 1990, when he was 9 or 10. A rumored distant war soon hit home, as gunmen demanded food and other goods and killed his uncle.
Desperate flights followed, first through Somalia and then into Kenya, where food and water were so scarce that his younger sister died while being carried on his mother’s back. The family got separated in search of refugee camps. One part of the flight was “the darkest journey I’ve ever seen. You are in the dark; you don’t know where you are going.”
He spent years in a refugee camp before before resettling first in 2004 to Utah and then in 2011 to Pittsburgh.
He said Somali Bantus here, numbering just more than 250, have integrated well into the larger culture, found jobs and affordable housing, often in public apartments. Many have gained citizenship.
In Pittsburgh, four agencies currently resettle refugees: AJAPO (Acculturation for Justice, Access and Peace Outreach), Catholic Charities, Jewish Family & Children’s Service and Northern Area Multi-Service Center.
“Our motto here is building independence. It’s something that fits in with the goal of refugee resettlement,” said Kheir Mugwaneza, director of community assistance and resettlement at Northern Area, based in Sharpsburg.
The agencies also offer longer-term services for refugees and other immigrants, as do other organizations, including the Prospect Park Family Center, based in the apartment complex in Whitehall where many refugees live; the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council; and Squirrel Hill Health Center.
Susan Rauscher, executive director of Catholic Charities, said resettlement agencies struggle to find apartments for refugees that are affordable, safe and near bus lines that can get them to the often-manual-labor jobs they will need. While refugee families receive initial help with food and rent, they’re expected to be self-supporting within months.
Mr. Killang said refugees are proving themselves reliable, and he’s trying to get more employers to give them a chance. “I meet with anyone who is willing to hear,” he said.
Public agencies also have ramped up to provide translation and other services to refugees and immigrants. Civil rights regulations require service providers that receive federal dollars, such as schools and doctors working with Medicaid, to give access to translation services to foreign nationals who are not proficient in English.
“When I first started this role almost seven years ago, … we had to really push to get services and interpretation,” said Leslie Aizenman, director of refugee and immigrant services at Jewish Family & Children’s Service. “Now providers are getting enough of these folk that they’re saying, ‘Can you help me get an interpreter?’”
The Baldwin-Whitehall School District, which draws students from Prospect Park, has become well practiced at teaching waves of refugee and other immigrant children of varying English skills. Often, students bring issues from home that go beyond schoolwork, such as post-traumatic memories and other family stresses, so teachers often work with counselors and others.
“Any time you’re working with children that come with challenges, you wear many hats,” said Darlene DeFilippo, director of programs at Baldwin-Whitehall.
Resettlement groups and the U.S. government list humanitarian concerns as a prime reason for resettling refugees, but they say more than the refugees benefit.
“It’s saving a life. It’s offering hope, and Pittsburgh really benefits,” Ms. Aizenman said.
Refugees have opened numerous businesses and helped rejuvenate neighborhoods, with many buying homes, she said.
Often the refugees look to each other for help.
Mr. Lian, a leader in the Myanmar refugee community, spends much of his time visiting fellow refugees, helping them navigate their interactions with doctors, schools and other agencies, and providing spiritual solace.
He spends much of his time leading two congregations consisting of fellow Myanmar refugees, including members of his Chin ethnic group and members of Karen, Karenni and other groups that have been on the losing end of long conflicts with Myanmar’s military rulers.
“Sometimes I’m overwhelmed, but I’m really a religious person,” he said in an interview. “God wants to show up in the midst of trouble. That gives me encouragement.”
:: Jaime M. Turek, refugee resettlement case manager for the Northern Area Multi-Service Center, right, guides a group of Bhutanese refugees around the streets of Downtown Pittsburgh in August
:: (By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith)
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