Entering the World of Political Refugees

Encounters With Jubilee Partners, Part 2

originally published May 14, 2008

The dining hall was alive with conversation and laughter. This would be my second visit to the Tuesday night common meal at Jubilee Partners. Don Mosley had informed me that two members of a Liberian family had returned to visit, and would be good candidates for an interview. They had recently moved to Atlanta (generally, refugees stay at Jubilee for two months, after which a placement is found for them, usually in the Atlanta area). Their reason for return became obvious in the course of the interview.

Most of those present were volunteers and staff, including permanent residents. The mood I picked up on that night, and which I have invariably sensed when at Jubilee, was of a serenity mixed with mirth and kindness. Such ways of being strike me as coming from another time and place, possibly monastic, though no one would mistake the crowd for an austere, religious order. They were having too much fun.

Among the diners, comfortably conversing at a table, sat Samuel and Kartee Johnson. Introductions were made. With his open, blazing yellow shirt, bright eyes and carefully ringed curls, Samuel seemed a shining young man of the tropics. Kartee, wearing a shirt of earth tones with ropey white embroidery, had on a necklace of wooden beads, in the center of which hung a white shell. Not knowing their origin, one might as easily conclude that they were young African Americans. They both greeted me in a friendly manner, yet I sensed a certain guardedness that I inferred must come from years of insecurity, and a part of me felt profane, as a stranger, sitting down to talk to these survivors of unspeakable woes.

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In 1989, Liberia was a bad place to be. The country was in a state of civil war. President Samuel Doe, his own reign the result of a coup, had survived a failed coup attempt against him, and in its aftermath faced an uprising from the Gio and Mano tribes, rising in arms against governmental abuses. The insurgence was led by Charles C. Taylor, an elite like Doe, who had been groomed for rule through high-level affiliations in the country. Over the next seven years, 200,000 would die and a million would be displaced. Samuel and Kartee’s father would disappear during this time, and their mother and siblings would flee to neighboring Guinea. Though the family is Liberian, the majority of their lives has been spent as refugees.

The two young men were open to talking. Details of carnage and suffering, unfortunately the stuff of typical media fare, were not uppermost on their minds; more salient and life-giving were thoughts of their new home, new friends and passions, such as school and soccer.

And who could blame them for facing toward the future? They had lived most of their lives in refugee camps, had come to Jubilee in a state of literal deliverance from evil. What most interested them was using their experiences to help others achieve a sense of hope and positivity in life. No small part of these sentiments was fueled by deep religious feeling.

In fleeing Liberia, the family ended up in a situation the young men described as worse. Though the camps were established as a refuge from the ravages of war, the Guinean army itself treated the refugees as enemies, mistreating, and in many cases, killing defenseless women and children there. It was in the camps, in 2000, that robbers broke into their living quarters, stabbing one brother in the stomach and beating their mother so badly she never recovered. She died in 2006.

Kartee recalled life in the camp. “When I stayed in the camp, it was like being in a forest,” he said. “There was wildlife and stuff like that. They had scorpions. It’s not something you’d want to be playing around with. You’d just lay down in a small bed, not a bed but a mat. You’d just try to spend the night there… ”

Kartee and Samuel, fraternal twins now 18 years old, had fled Liberia with their family in the late 1990s. They learned in early 2007 they were eligible to come to the United States. Samuel reported that at the time of their leaving Guinea, “there was a strike going on; they wanted change.” He continued, “As a refugee, you don’t have any rights. They were looking for refugees; they were blaming them for the problems; they wanted to get rid of them. Life was very hard. One morning you wake up and you don’t have anything, only your clothes. So life was very hard.”

I was amazed at the maturity and composure of this young man. Soft-spoken and thoughtful, he recounted his family history like a philosopher. Yet everything about the experiences he related evoked a hell more raw than most Americans will ever know.

“We thought we were saved when we crossed the border from Liberia to Guinea, but it was worse,” Samuel said. “We were beat up all the time by a group of military, but we kept faith in God and prayed a lot; and we have survived today because of our faith. When I came to the U.S., it was really hard for me because I was afraid. I didn’t know the people would be nice, because first of all, I moved from my country to escape war, then I moved to another country and it was worse. So, I was afraid at first.”

Among the formalities upon entering this country, one notable irony for these young men was being pressed to register for the draft. Samuel explained that he and his brother were told they could “get better jobs” if they signed these documents. Though I did not press the issue, this part of the interview has haunted me. After the horrors to which they were subjected, the prospect of possible enlistment seems unthinkable. Yet other males their age in this country have the same reality to face.

Samuel and Kartee both draw from a deep religiosity, their resilience a far greater testament to faith than the barrages of ersatz born-agains ranting through amped-up media outlets often seen in this country. And their faith in Jubilee is just as real. Said Samuel of the community, “I was very happy because God answered our prayers and took us from the hell of war in Africa to the paradise of our life at Jubilee.” But this paradise, as for other refugees arriving at Jubilee, could only be revisited, not retained. The next stop for the Johnsons was Avondale Estates, in Atlanta. Housing had been provided for them, but conditions were far from secure, prompting memories of earlier troubles. “It was hard for us. The police were always around. The [refugee resettlement agency] was the one in charge of housing. They found the apartment. They saw it wasn’t going good so we decided to talk to them about a better place. The place we’re in now is much better. It’s more secure.”

In the course of the interview, I realized that Kartee and Samuel were much more concerned with the possibilities of their new lives than they were with recounting the horrors that they experienced. Kartee was intent upon making a difference in the lives of others. “I do feel that I have some part to play in the future in some people’s lives. Things happen, of course, but if you can overcome it, it’s a good example to show to other people that they can do it. I feel that God is calling me to do something.”

I looked with Kartee at a newsletter that showed him and his siblings (three brothers and two sisters) together having a blast at the pond at Jubilee. “Right now in the U.S., this is the family that is here, and we have other family members, but since ’98 we haven’t seen them,” he said. I asked him who was missing. “A sister and a brother and my dad and grandparents,” he replied. He has no idea where his father might be, and continues to search for him. I asked him how his family got separated. “It was because of the civil war. Nobody knows which direction they took. When we escaped from the war we were in a neighboring country. We put in a notice that we were looking for our parents. We have spent eight years without getting a response. And we will still continue searching.”

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Samuel was drawn into the conversation when it came to bear again upon his home country. We had been talking about what it was like during their last days in Liberia. He recounted the scenes of tragedy all around him, of children on a path that he had, amazingly, been able to avoid.

“There were child soldiers. They give them drugs, they give them guns, and they do not recognize their parents. So, that was very sad,” he said. He went on to express his belief in how blessed we are in this country not to have these problems, but also said that he feared there being so many guns in U.S. cities, citing some of the events on local and national news that caused him to think of war again. (Among the brothers’ spiritual qualities, I realized, is pacifism.) Recounting the recent case of an armed elderly African-American woman in Atlanta who was shot to death by local police, Samuel’s summation was that “he who lives by the gun, dies by the gun.”

In addition to acknowledging his mother’s role through years of hand-to-mouth existence as a source of spiritual strength and stability for the family, Samuel made clear to me that he was also acutely aware of the slender strand of good luck that attended his family’s rescue from the miseries of refugee life in Africa, and the central role of Jubilee Partners, which acted in their behalf as sponsors. “Jubilee has been a lifesaver for me, because everything started here,“ Samuel said. ”If it wasn’t for Jubilee, I don’t think I could be in this country. They taught us how life goes. They taught us that if you are meant to do something with your life, you can do it. I had courage before, but they reinforced my courage. I owe Jubilee a lot, and like I always say, I consider it to be my one home.”

Edmund J. Smith

To be concluded with the stories of an ethnic-minority Karen refugee from Myanmar.