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'She's made us proud': Ilhan Omar's journey from Kenyan refugee camp to US Congress
'The lesson is to be hopeful': Ilhan Omar's journey from Somali refugee to US Congress
(3 days later)
Fadumo Kuusow remembers a thin and shy girl who lived next door. Her memory is hazy as the girl left more than 20 years ago.
Ilhan Omar, who lived in a Somali refugee camp when she was a girl and was elected to the US Congress last week, has said she hopes her victory would give hope to those whose childhoods resembled hers.Omar fled the civil war in Somalia with her family in 1991 and spent four years in the Utango camp, near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, before arriving in the US with her six brothers and sisters under a resettlement programme.“I would have loved to have heard a story like mine. I could have used it as an inspiration to get by. The lesson is to be hopeful, to dream and to aspire for more,” said the 36-year-old member-elect of the US House of Representatives for Minnesota’s fifth district.Omar, a Democrat, will assume office in January, sharing with Rashida Tlaib the historic distinction of being the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.Multiple media outlets, including the Guardian, have reported that Omar lived in the vast Dadaab camp, which opened to receive civil war refugees around the same time as the Utango facility.
Last week Kuusow organised a small celebration with friends in Ifo camp, one of a vast complex of refugee settlements on dry, scrubby plains around the remote Kenyan town of Dadaab. Eight thousand miles away that thin, shy girl – now 37 – had just become the member elect of the US House of Representatives for Minnesota’s fifth district.
The report in the Guardian, describing the celebrations and prayers for Omar in Dadaab after her victory, also included interviews with residents of the camp, who said they remembered her living there almost 30 years ago.
Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, will assume office in January, sharing the historic distinction with Rashida Tlaib of being the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.
The interviews were conducted by telephone by an experienced local journalist who is a native Somali speaker, and, while the Guardian is confident the interviewees were speaking in good faith, it is now clear these memories were erroneous.
“The women here talked about her. I remember in the hot weather afternoon, Ilhan and I used to play jumping rope near our homes. My family lived in a tent and Ilhan’s family lived in a makeshift structure made of sticks and cloth,” she said when reached by telephone by the Guardian.
The politician has previously spoken of her flight from Somalia, describing how militiamen prepared to attack their home in Mogadishu at midnight and had to be convinced by older female relatives to leave the family in peace.
Omar was born in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, but was raised in the inland town of Baidoa. She fled Somalia’s civil war with her parents at the age of eight and spent four years at what became known as the Dadaab camp in neighbouring Kenya.
Omar left with her family shortly after, and remembered walking through streets strewn with debris and corpses.
Now a vast, impoverished city with an estimated population of at least 250,000 people, conditions were rudimentary when Omar was a resident. Many refugees had arrived from Somalia with nothing more than they could carry.
The Utango camp was isolated and rudimentary with limited sanitation. Omar collected firewood and water for the family, and has described how she enviously watched similar-aged children going to school in uniforms, and asking her father if she could resume her education.
“We were neighbours in Ifo camp within Dadaab complex,” Kuusow, 40, said. “Life was very tough those days. That was soon after the civil war in Somalia and many people were coming to the camp. I remember in the beginning we did not get school here.
They were among the first to reach the Utango camp, which had just opened. Arrivals were housed in tents or makeshift huts before the facility was closed, in about 1996.Omar, a former community organiser and policy analyst, remembered the rough conditions. “It was isolated … in a jungle setting. There were deaths from malaria,” she said.
“Camp security was a disaster. Girls and women were raped and we always feared about men. I can remember when it was evening; my mother could not allow me to go outside because of the risk.”
When Omar was 12, she and her family travelled to the US.
In 1995, Omar arrived in the US as a refugee, settling first in Arlington, Virginia, before moving to Minneapolis in 1997. She won a seat in the state’s legislature in 2016, becoming the first Somali-American lawmaker in the country. She had previously worked as a community organiser, a policy wonk for city leaders in Minneapolis, and as a leader in her local chapter of the African-American civil rights group the NAACP.
The Dadaab camp remains open and has grown into a sprawling complex with more than 250,000 inhabitants. Life there can be harsh, precarious and chaotic, with arrivals and departures every year.
“I saw her on the television last night when her election victory was projected. Well done I can say. She tried her best. Thank God she has won now,” said Kuusow.
Omar, who visited Dadaab in 2011 to help with humanitarian assistance for victims of famine in her homeland, has become a hero to many in the camp. They have adopted the politician as one of their own and insist she was once a resident. One interviewee called Omar a “daughter of Dadaab”.The Kenyan government has made repeated attempts to close the camp. For many residents, the US refugee resettlement programme was their principal hope of a better future. Since its creation in 1980, the scheme has led to hundreds of thousands of people from around the world being admitted to the US.
Abdullahi Osman Haji Adam came to Dadaab with his family in 1991 and he too remembers Omar in the refugee camp.
Last year, hundreds of Somali refugees in Kenya, who were days from travelling to the US to start new lives under the programme, were told they could not travel, after Donald Trump’s executive order banned migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries for three months. Since then, more stringent vetting and a review of procedures has led to a dramatic drop in refugees reaching the US.As of 10 September, 251 Somali refugees have been resettled this year, a massive drop from the 8,300 admitted by the same point in 2016, according to Reuters.“I talk all the time about the eight-year-old me and all the eight-year-olds who are living in their camps,” Omar said. “I hope my victory gives them hope.”
“In early 1991, I was [a] young man when I arrived Dadaab camp. Soon after that Ilhan’s family came as there was intense fighting in Somalia. I remember she was always alone and sat near their makeshift home. I thought that life was hopeless but today I am sure that it was not,” he said.
• This article replaces an article published on 9 November 2018, adding new material from Ilhan Omar and clarifying refugee camp information.
“What I can tell about her is only her smile and how shy she was. She was eight years old. She did not talk much.
US politics
“The camp had no hospital and no emergency service available. The only ambulance service we could find was one wheelbarrow which we used to carry sick people to a far away hospital. We had no school for two years.”
On Friday, Adam, 46, attended morning prayers at the camp’s mosque where elders prayed for the new congresswoman.
“We are glad that she won. She made us proud as refugees and Somalis. This shows that even if you are a refugee, you can still succeed. We pray for her and hope she will support the refugees. She must know that we are here in Dadaab,” he said.
Two years ago Kenya’s government said it would close Dabaab. It has been unable to do so, but the threat of a new closure effort hangs over residents. Food rations are inadequate after cuts in funding to international agencies.
Omar Sheikh Ahmed, 48, a cousin of Omar’s father, said the politician was “our star”.
“Her voice in Congress represents the minorities and refugees are minorities. She knows that we in Dadaab have no good schools. We are facing a food ration shortage. We do not have freedom of movement. Our future is shattered.”
For many in Dadaab, the US refugee resettlement programme was their principal hope of a better future. Since its creation in 1980, the programme has led to hundreds of thousands of people from around the world being admitted to the US.
Last year, hundreds of Somali refugees in Kenya who were days from travelling to the US to start new lives under the programme were told they could not travel, after Donald Trump’s executive order banned migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries for three months.
Since then, more stringent vetting and a review of procedures has led to a dramatic drop in refugees reaching the US.
As of 10 September, 251 Somali refugees have been resettled this year, a 97% drop from the 8,300 admitted by the same point in 2016, according to Reuters.
“Ilhan is a very special woman for refugees in Dadaab. She won at a time when refugees are facing challenges. Everyone says refugees are bad but she proved them wrong,” Adam, who is the current leader of Ifo camp, said.
Kuusow had one urgent request for Omar: “I want to appeal to Ilhan: please come and visit us here in Dadaab. We’ll welcome you as our daughter.”
