US: Somali Farmers

[Muhammad]

Uprooted by war, Somalis find refuge in city gardens

 

Crops - except bananas - give taste of home

 

By Stuart Steers, Rocky Mountain News

July 23, 2005

 

Sometimes putting down roots means just that.

 

Hamadi Mayange, a 54-year-old refugee from Somalia, looks ill at ease in a community room at his apartment building in east Denver, struggling to explain what he wants with the help of a translator.

 

But at the mention of a wheelbarrow, his eyes light up, and he becomes excited at the prospect of digging in the dirt.

 

"All my work has been farming," he said. "Now, I won't have to go to King Soopers for my cabbage and onions."

 

Mayange is part of a group of Somali Bantu refugees who will break ground this weekend on a community garden in east Denver. Almost all of them were once farmers in Africa, growing corn, tobacco and beans in terrain far different from Colorado. Uprooted by civil war, they spent years in refugee camps in Kenya before being allowed to come to Denver.

 

The garden's 25 lots will sit on vacant land near 13th Avenue and Xenia streets surrounded by three- to four-story apartment buildings that often become a first home to refugees relocating in Denver.

 

The 2-acre empty city lot is now covered with weeds, and it will take volunteers several weeks to lay water lines, put up fences and install gravel paths before planting can begin. The garden will be open to everyone in the neighborhood, though Somali Bantus are expected to be some of the main tenants. A play area for the many children who live nearby also will be part of the project.

 

Dozens of Somali Bantu refugee families live in the nearby Mercy Housing apartment complex, and many families have expressed an interest in getting a plot.

 

Moving to Denver has been a shock for most because they spent their lives in rural areas and had never even seen snow.

"Can I grow a banana tree?" Mayange asks Michael Buchenau, executive director of Denver Urban Gardens, during a meeting last month.

 

Buchenau tells him that he can't grow bananas in Colorado but assures him "you can grow canteloupes, strawberries and watermelons."

 

Because the new garden won't be ready for planting until later this summer, the Somalis will have to plant fast-growing crops like lettuce and spinach on their 200- to 300-square-foot lots.

 

To plan the new garden, Buchenau took several Somali Bantu community leaders to look at the Lowry community garden.

 

"We've always been farmers," said Rasulo Rasulo, a 23-year-old man who studied English in the refugee camp and often translates for his fellow Somali Bantu. "There were plot areas in the refugee camp. It was just like this. It was awesome."

 

Several Somali refugees already are working in community gardens in other parts of the city.

 

"They transform gardens," Buchenau said.

 

Halima Abdi, a 23-year-old Somalian refugee, has been working a plot in the Fairview Community Garden in Sun Valley near Invesco Field. She and her husband, Abdul Kahdir, and their four children are often at work in the garden, tending cabbage, peppers, broccoli, tomatoes and onions.

 

"People in Africa said there are no gardens in America," Abdi said with a smile. "Now, I know you can have a garden here."

 

Abdi, who wears a lime green shawl and African print skirt, says Denver's climate is far different from Somalia's.

 

"Somalia is very hot, and there's no snow," she said. "It rains a lot. The dirt is a little different."

 

Abdi grew up on a large farm, where her family raised corn, tomatoes, watermelons and mangos. Like the other Somali Bantus, they had to leave when bandits from the lighter-skinned ethnic majority began terrorizing them during the country's chaotic civil war.

 

Here in Colorado, she's discovered new delights, like potatoes, which she had never tasted before. But there are a few things she misses from gardens in her homeland.

 

"You can't grow bananas in Denver," she said ruefully.

 

[Muhammad]

direct link:

 

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3948752,00.html

[Baluug]

Why can't you grow bananas over here?Is it too cold?Wrong climate?

[Lidia]

"lighter-skinned ethnic majority began terrorizing them during the country's chaotic civil war."

 

 

Loooooooool, I’m sorry but the statement above made me laugh.