Somalian Women in N.Va. Struggle With Past, Present

[Gediid]

Somalian Women in N.Va. Struggle With Past, Present

Widows, Traumatized by War, Face Poverty in New Home

 

By David Cho

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page B01

 

They are, in several respects, like so many other refugees newly arrived in the Washington area.

 

 

Most came here speaking little or no English, with few possessions beyond what they wore. Clustered together, often in crowded apartments with their children, they shared a harrowing history in their native country and harbored the struggling immigrant's dream of a better life in this one.

 

But these women of Somalia are different in one major way: Close to half, according to a recent local survey, are widows. Having lost their husbands in Somalia's brutal, prolonged civil war, thousands of them fled to this country, where they face a new struggle: how to support their families as single parents with few, if any, marketable skills.

 

In Northern Virginia, where nearly all of the region's 2,800 Somalis live, the number of single-parent households has caught the attention of local officials. Fairfax County, which surveyed the Somalian community in 2000, found that the incidence of single parents was more than double the county's average.

 

In Somalia, the women were brought up with the expectation that they would marry and raise children. Education was not a priority, they say, and many never finished what schooling was available.

 

Now they are the sole support of their children, often in low-paying jobs -- if they can find them. Sixty percent of the women in the Fairfax survey were unemployed. Of those with jobs, two-thirds made less than $15,000 a year, and 86 percent said they made less than $25,000. As a group, they are by far the poorest of the immigrant poor, the study showed.

 

Dennis Hunt, director of the nonprofit Center for Multicultural Human Services in Falls Church, said focus groups and outreach efforts to help the women made it "clear that many were depressed. . . . They said they have trouble sleeping at night; they jump and startle at loud noises. They showed symptoms that they were traumatized . . . [and] there is great pressure to be employed."

 

Mariam Farah, 40, is raising two children by herself but can remember a time of relative luxury for her family. Her husband was a prominent geologist who worked for think tanks in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, she said.

 

In late 1990, he got a job at home in Somalia and landed in Mogadishu, the capital, not realizing trouble was brewing. Days later, civil war broke out. All Farah knows is that he was shot on the street.

 

In the next few years, she would lose others close to her: her sister, whose head was cut off by rebels outside her home; her sister-in-law, killed by a rocket grenade; her brother, shot when he yelled at soldiers looting a neighbor's home.

 

As the war intensified, Farah fled with her children to refugee camps in Kenya and then Pakistan. In November 2000, she was given asylum in the United States.

 

She came to Fairfax because other mothers she had met in the camps and now considered her friends had settled in Northern Virginia. They helped her find employment and apply for food stamps, Medicaid and other assistance from the county's Department of Family Services.

 

Even though Farah was better positioned than most Somalis -- she had above-average English skills gained from two years at a Somalian college -- she found it difficult to stay employed, in part because she had never held a 9-to-5 job before. Four months after she arrived, she was homeless and signing up for affordable housing.

 

Life was extraordinarily busy for a time. She took two jobs, working full time at a gourmet food company and part time at a multiplex cinema. That meant scrambling to pick up or drop off her children and finding someone to watch them when school was out. She bought a van that always seemed to be on the edge of breaking down. She eked out four or five hours of sleep each night.

 

Her life began to come unhinged late last year. In December, she was laid off from her full-time job. In February, the two-year limit on her housing subsidy expired. And earlier this month she was fired from her $7-an-hour part-time theater job because, she said, she used her pass to allow her daughter and a friend to see a new movie. The pass is restricted to older movies, she said.

 

Now she is without a job, and the bills are piling up. "My account is zero," she said. "I'm worried. I'm counting the days because . . . I cannot afford the rent."

 

In Northern Virginia, Fairfax and Arlington offer adult education classes that help refugees learn English and basic skills such as how to interview for a job, dress for work and use public transportation. To enhance their employability, sessions are offered that allow them to practice working at a department store, for example.

 

Even this is a struggle for some.

 

Teacher Kathy Dunn recalled one recent student who had trouble focusing. The student said she was haunted by the memory of watching rebels kill her 4-year-old son. "They are facing possible homelessness and bills, and I think some of them are just worn out," Dunn said.

 

The 2000 Fairfax survey is one of the few recent studies providing insight into the Somalian community in the United States, analysts said. The U.S. Census Bureau counted 20,000 Somalis nationwide in 2000, not enough to warrant release of detailed data.

 

In an attempt to draw attention to the plight of the single mothers, local Somalian leaders have been talking with officials about establishing a cultural center in Fairfax where the women could support one another and learn job skills, while their children could be taught about their heritage.

 

Mohammed Issa, president of the Somali Development Council, a local nonprofit group started last year to aid the mothers, said some in the community are worried that the children lack guidance and are getting into trouble at school or with the law. They have little appreciation for their culture, he said, because their country has been enmeshed in war for so long.

 

Somalia's latest civil strife began in 1990, when several clans invaded the capital and took power. The West initially intervened to keep the peace, but U.S. involvement waned after a 1993 incident in which a Black Hawk helicopter was downed in Mogadishu and 18 Americans and untold numbers of Somalis were killed. By 1995, the country had been left to the warlords, and as they battled for power, hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced.

 

A 44-year-old farmer's wife named Halimo, who now lives in Annandale with her seven children, was among them. She remembers fleeing with others down long, dusty roads -- a miserable journey made more so by the fact that so many of the women were mourning their husbands. Halimo lost hers, a corn and melon farmer, when he tried to elude a militia group sent to press him into military service and was shot.

 

Halimo and her children fled to Kenya. Along the way, she said, the bodies of the dead littered the roads.

 

Since arriving in this country in 2000, she has had trouble holding a job, partly because she speaks almost no English and has little schooling. She spoke with a reporter on the condition that her last name not be used because, she said, she is embarrassed that she cannot provide for her family.

 

Her hope now lies in her children. Her eldest, who is 25, works in a grocery store. Soon the others will be old enough to have jobs, too.

 

"I'm hopeful because my kids are growing up and they will finish high school," she said through an interpreter. "I feel the void left by my husband. . . . Now my children will have to help sustain this family."

[dawoco]

What is your opinion of that article Gediid?

 

I'm am so sick of these westerners using the suffering that has touched us all as a way to degrade us.

Even when the article seems sympathetic to the Somalian cause, they manage to depict us in an uncivilized manner. And why is that damn helicopter going down always mentioned?! what about all those killed by the americans? Or are american lives worth more than those of the somalians?! These kind of articles always make me angry....

[Gediid]

Thats a very good question dawaco.I actually know the first woman in that article.I have known her for a while now and seen first hand what she goes through daily trying hard to make ends meet.Inspite all the hardships she encounters she always has a smile on her face and Mansha Allah is raising her kids very well.I think as a Somali when I see a westerner write our suffering we tend to get a little suspicious thinking maybe they have ulterior motives behind it but this article truly depicts what Maryan and whole lot of other Somali women go through daily.