Madina Adan sits in the corner of her living room, a slight smile on her face. A Somali who has been in the United States just over a year, she is studying English - but she is speaking with her eyes and hand gestures rather than words.

Her tone also is clear. She is distressed. She misses her husband, Osman Abdullahi, who is still in a refugee camp in Kenya awaiting a visa.

But missing the father of her four children is only one problem that confronts Adan every day.

More than a year after 60 Somali families resettled in Springfield, they are still struggling to navigate a dramatically new culture, which in many ways wasn't ready for them.

Although social service agencies have helped many get jobs, the children struggle in a school district cited by federal education officials for providing just two part-time translators for 90 students spread among 21 schools.

In some cases, the children are trying to learn two new languages in a bilingual system set up primarily for Spanish-speaking students.

Transplanted from tents in dusty resettlement camps to city apartments, the Somalis find their new world to be a cacophony of urban sounds and a blur of signs and bills in a language they don't understand.

After life in their war- and famine-ravaged homeland, their new home is still an improvement. But volunteers who work with them say that more help is needed.

Kathleen Conlon, a volunteer from Palmer, tries to visit Adan every week to offer a little help with many things, ranging from checking how her English classes are coming along to reviewing the mail - there may be important correspondence from Kenya regarding her husband.

"We're all volunteers," said Conlon of a loosely knit group of people who have become go-betweens for Somalis and American society. "We have no coordinator. If we weren't around, who would fill in?"

Agency directors who contracted with the state and federal governments to bring Somalis to the area urge anyone who wants to help the refugees to contact their offices.

Jewish Family Services of Western Massachusetts in Springfield and Lutheran Community Services of New England in West Springfield are the two agencies that are continuing to work with Somali refugees.

Jewish Family Services originally received $300,000 to resettle them, but this year, the fourth, it received $147,000. Even though there is less money, Robert Marmor, the agency's director, said, "We do not deny anybody any service."

But while the agency has tried to help and to provide language support, there are only two case workers for the Somali population of about 300.

There are Somalis who have adapted relatively well to their new lives here despite very limited English. Marmor said his agency has placed most of the Somalis for whom it is responsible into jobs.

The Somali Women's Project received a $40,000 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The project, based in the New World Theater in Amherst, connects some 50 Somali women with artists and craftspeople as the women learn English. African and African-American artists will also work with the women this spring, said Andrea Assaf, artistic director of the theater.

"We want to empower women in the community to become leaders," she said.

For Nadia Noor, that sounds like one of the better ideas being put into practice.

Noor, a Somali case manager with the Lutheran agency, said an indelible part of Somali culture is the mistaken idea that a woman's role is to be subservient to her husband.

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Source: The Republican, April 09, 2006

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