East Africa refugees find welcoming home in KC

By SAMUEL SIRINGI
The Kansas City Star
Wendesday, September 03, 2008

When all seemed to be doom and gloom following Ume Mayeke’s separation from her husband in Minnesota, she had no doubt where she would relocate.

She had been in Minnesota for two years. That is where her husband had received his green card. But once she and her husband were no longer together, the pull toward Kansas City became great.

Mayeke knew a lot of Somali friends in Kansas and Missouri. They reassured her about the hospitality of residents, availability of jobs and a large community of people from her native region of East Africa.

Mayeke, 50, packed her bags and flew to Kansas City on April 8, 2004. She has never looked back.

“I count myself happy to have come to what looks like the best city in the U.S. I have three jobs to do now and people here are marvelous, so welcoming,” said Mayeke, holding young Rahila Omar, a smiling 8-month-old daughter of a friend whose children she sometimes looks after.

From her income, Mayeke is able to educate her son, Mohammed, a student at Kenya-based United States International University, where she sends about $1,200 every three months. Mayeke’s experience may help explain why more people from the East African countries of Somalia, Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia come to Kansas City.

They come because “Kansas City is a welcoming community,” said Joy Foster, executive director of the Jewish Vocational Service, the resettlement agency in Kansas City for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

They come also, Foster said, because housing is affordable and jobs are available.

“The service industry has been really good to us,” she said. “The casinos and hotels hire a lot of refugees and they get benefits.”

The exact number of East African refugees — most from Somalia and Sudan — in the Kansas City area is not known. But Foster and Farah Abdi, director of the Somalia Foundation Inc., think the number is in the thousands.

In the last 10 years, Foster’s agency has resettled 842 refugees from Somalia, 440 from Sudan and 19 from Ethiopia. Last year alone, the Jewish Vocational Service resettled 112 Somalia refugees in the Kansas City area.

The refugees who settle here get help from Jewish Vocational Service, the Full Employment Council and Somalia Foundation Inc. The foundation has offered transportation and translation for health-care access, government appointments and documents, and other needs since its inception in 1999.

“We now are a full-fledged social services agency with our own outreach center at St. Aloysius Catholic Church, near the heart of the East African refugee community,” Abdi said. “Refugees come to our offices for English-language instruction and employment, which we conduct with a partnership with Jewish Vocational Service and Full Employment Council.”

The number of immigrants to the United States began declining after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the numbers have started to rise again.

The number of refugees from Somalia decreased this year until a kink in the immigration process could be straightened out, Foster said.

The flow of refugees from Somalia has started again and Foster expects the number of those who settle in the Kansas City area to continue to climb.

Still, she said, there is really no way to tell exactly how many East Africans actually have settled in the area.

Some, like Mayeke, land in Kansas City after first settling in some other state. Some may have come through Foster’s agency for help and been counted but many others here may not have.

Though not refugees, many have come from Kenya, said Dan Ochweri, former vice chairman of the Overseas Kenyans in Kansas City.

He attributed the high number to the fact that many are able to find jobs in the area.

“Many of them are coming because they are advised by those already here that the environment here is good,” said Ochweri, an engineer.

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The Star’s Mará Rose Williams contributed to this report.