CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Phoenix, Arizona Saturday, March 31, 2001
Arketa and her three children were dead tired—the International Rescue Committee representative, Luka, a refugee himself from Bosnia, saw that. Who wouldn’t be exhausted after thirty-some hours in transit between three continents, across eight time zones, and U.S. flight bookings that required a freezing cold bus ride from JFK to La Guardia airport, then in the air with stopovers in Chicago and Saint Louis before arriving in Phoenix at an ungodly post-midnight hour. Luka determined to take as little time as possible acquainting them with the apartment complex for refugees from every conceivable corner of the world. By 1:30am the children had finished all the questions about the car—an English word and a new experience—when the carparked.
Arketa plus three stepped from the man’s car onto asphalt and climbed dimly lit concrete stairs to a second-floor apartment. Arketa thought of the soft and humid floor of her tropical jungle home, and the hard-packed dirt of Kinshasa’s church compound.
Luka unlocked the door and stepped back. Arketa entered, dropped her clutched plastic bag onto the floor, slipped out of her flip-flops, and with a quiet sigh tucked her toes into close-cropped carpet. The children tucked themselves close to their mom and scanned the space while the man in charge began explaining things.
“These are for overhead lights,” Luka said, clicking wall switches. The refrigerator held cooked chicken, tomato, a selection of fruits and orange juice. But, he cautioned, the door must be closed quickly when things are withdrawn and, of course, at all times when it isn’t being used.
“Here,” he pointed to a cupboard, “four glasses, four plates. There, two cooking pots. The drawers hold utensils—four forks, four spoons, four table knives, one sharp knife. One jug of drinking water rested on a stand.
In the bathroom he explained the shower fixtures and how the curtain should tucked inside to keep water off the floor, and that, no,this room is not shared. It is exclusively for the Zambakari family. Eeiii! He pointed to the four towels hanging on a rack. The children looked to each other—a towel each. No bucket for hauling water. Eeiii! A conservative amount of toilet paper was pulled off the roll, and dropped in the toilet for a flushing demonstration. As the water swirled the Zambakaris learned that only two things other than a sensible amount of toilet paper are allowed in the toilet bowl—both, he said, from the human body.
The flush toilet—Arketa studied it. She was familiar with the sort. She had seen them in the UN building in Kinshasa but she was a woman from dah village.She never asked to use one. Arketa—educated, multi-lingual, respected refugee hero, daughter of professionals, granddaughter of chiefs, treasured midwife to her people, sufferer, survivor—Arketa pressed the handle and watched water swirl out of the bowl. To sit on it? NO. She would not sit on it.But she didn’t say so.
Moving back to the main living/kitchen area, the man approached the electric stove and turned one of the knobs on—just long enough to produce a red glow. He turned it off.
The two bedrooms were acknowledged and, but for showing the family how to lock the apartment door, he was finished. He wished everyone a good sleep then said he would explain more when he returned Monday morning. “Be ready early.” He bade them goodnight.
No clock. But a clock had never been a part of time. Arketa understood “early.”
Within minutes of his departure all the Zambakaris played with light switches. It was dark outside and click!Instantly more light than two fires at one time inside a M’boki tukul, or one kerosene lantern in their windowless Kinshasa room. Giggling children raided the refrigerator, examined drawers and cupboards, used the toilet as instructed, stripped and showered in the water-readybathroom, then dried their bodies—using separate towels. This is America: One person—one towel. Luxury.
Finally settled on individual bedroom floor mattresses, the three children repeated and mimicked English words—“bedroom” using a short ‘a’ as in apple. The American man had placed words high in his nose before freeing them with a bountiful amount of wind from his throat. They laughed hard, pulled light blankets to their chins and fell into deep, totally disoriented sleep. For a while longer, Arketa stood by the window in darkness, reaching Africa in her mind.
° ° °
From the get-go, manufactured items kept Arketa guessing. She feared that the red-hot stovetop coils would burst into flame. Why wouldn’t they? “Look to the color!” she said. Fu-fu required vigorous beating at a boiling temperature—just what a red-hot burner can provide. But . . .
Arketa saw red and said “Ouuu! Quick!Dah knob off before dah fire jumps!”
Until the caseworker’s assurances and children’s pleadings prevailed, fu-fu making failed. When Arketa first heard the refrigerator “growling,” she grabbed her children and retreated to the hall. God alone knew what that thing might do next! It was bad enough that each time she opened it a light popped on. Who does the switch for it, she wondered. She was suspicious. That device was a marvel but not readily trusted.
On Monday, Arketa’s caseworker started the family on necessary rounds: Social Security cards, Green cards, fingerprints, city bus passes, physical examinations, Inoculations (four apiece for everyone), school enrollments, a work permit and job applications for Arketa, forms to fill out identifying members of her family now in Arizona, forms for identifying those still in Africa, learning the locations of a grocery store, a drug store, thrift store, and finally—off to the Department of Economic Security (DES) for food stamps.
° ° °
Early in our acquaintance, before friendship took over, Arketa and I had shared two or three, conversations about her arrival in Arizona. In July 2009, I wrote this in my journal.
“Welcome to the United States, dear Sudanese family speaking English as a fifth or sixth language and that, with a beautiful African accent. Welcome to the life of a refugee here, under a sponsorship that will care for you during the three months we give you to adjust to things like our culture, escalators, electricity, refrigeration, freeways, chain-link fences, high crime, pharmacies and frivolous fashions; TV and blaring radios, expensive foods, impossible rents, and heat in Phoenix to rival anything you felt in any part of Africa. We have rivers but not for you to dip in, wash your clothes in, or draw your water from. We have public transportation but not nearly enough; we have a job for you, paying $7.25 per hour.
No, you cannot bring your four years of training and years of experience as a midwife and expect to use it here. No phone, no family, no friends; no car; no washer, dryer or savings account. But. Before you start paying, before we turn you loose, you have three months to find your way.”
° ° °
But, find her way she did in that first year of settlement, thanks to help from very kind American people. By the end of the first week in the United States of America, the family footed itto Food City. Lost Boys, having arrived a week ahead of Arketa and living in the apartment building, explained how to shop—
Get the cart, watch for the door moving by itself, jump the track of it, push the cart inside with you, compare prices, pay attention to how much you spend, get cold items last, give your food stamps to the person at the checking counter and, remember, you have ten blocks to walk back to the refugees apartment building. Don’t buy too much at one time, they advised.
The Zambakaris found the cart and quickly settled the squabble over who would push it. Christopher first. Even though warned, they jumped back from the sliding doors. Glancing about, Arketa was awestruck, the children, dumbfounded. Everyone grew shy. What was all that stuff on shelves? How could food be in boxes and bottles and stacked from the floor to above their heads? Goodness,none of the meat hung on hooks, not even chickens lay out in the open. And so manychickens! That is, the packages said, “Chicken” but who could tell, without the heads or legs or feathers attached to the body. My goodness.
The frequent attempt at English pronunciation of items created such a comic crisis that Arketa warned her children—in her language—that if their squealing didn’t stop she would send them outside to wait. What was this—cantaloupe? The look of it was nearly too much for sensible children.
“Hush!”
And this! The sign said ‘Jicama.’ An African sound, for sure. JawCAma. But what was the way of cooking this round, hard tuber? Watermelon, they all knew. They put a watermelon in the cart.
The Zambakaris wandered through the aisles, read words on boxes, marveled at unfamiliar items. They loaded the cart. Chicken, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, onions, oranges, watermelon, corn flour, dried beans, milk, rice, bottled water, and peanut butter. Where was the red palm oil?
“From what tree was dah oil of Crisco?”
“Refugees first coming are like dah small rat in dah house going dis way and dat,” Arketa told me. “If you follow dah refugee, you see dis change from Africa was not easy.”
Four bright Africans recently arrived in America marched toward a cashier’s line in Food City. The mental work of selection swirled in their brains. Totaling costs caused synapses to fire up enough electrical energy to light up the neighborhood. Food stamps in hand and cart and costs under control, the family unloaded groceries. Last selected cold items were first. They watched items move along a disappearing and reappearing black belt. They watched numbers and words flash on a screen as the cashier punched buttons. The children exchanged glances, enraptured.
When Arketa told me this story her laughter was so great I was laughing at her laughter and saying, “Stop, stop; slow down.” This was a story I wanted to hear.
The man finished, Arketa said, and she “slapped dah foo-dy stamp down.”
“Please enter your pin number,” the cashier said, placing his hand on a keyboard device.
“Dah what?”
Arketa laughed hard for my sake when she recalled this event. “Maybe my English is not understanding good,” she thought.
“Your pin number,” he said again.
What was this, a pannumber? It was, she learned, what she didn't have but what she needed.
The food was forfeited. Empty-handed, they walked ten blocks to the refugees’ apartment building that was, fortunately, situated next to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) office building. She stopped in and asked, “What was this secret about a pan number that she didn't know?”
The next day, she and her caseworker returned to DES where Arketa learned about pin numbers.
“You must choose four numbers you will keep secret but will allow you to use your food stamps,” a clerk explained.
“Ah. 1-2-3-4,” said Arketa.
“No,” said the clerk. “You must scramble the numbers.”
“What is dis, ‘scramble’?”
“Mix numbers up and never forget them.”
“Ah. 4-3-1-2”
Back at the apartment, Arketa put each number on pieces of paper and handed one to each child. “Christopher you are four,” she said. “Nathalia three, Sarai, one. And I am two.” Each of us must now remember our number and use it together in dah order when we hand in dah stamps.” They returned to Food City the next day and Arketa asked the cashier if she could test the number before picking up more food.
“You have to buy something. How about that little candy?” the cashier suggested.
Arketa bought the little candy. She and the children put in the secret number and smiled bigwhen it proved to be good. Everyone was clapping. Christopher ran out for the cart, Nathalia took over pushing and the family “bought a-l-ldah things that before we left behind.”
° ° °
I sat with Arketa at her dining table reminiscing one early summer day, years after her arrival in the U.S. Suddenly, she lifted her hand to make sure I didn’t talk her away from something she wanted to say. Bright red nail polish glistened at the tips of the slender fingers she held up to keep me quiet.
“Toilet paper,” she said. “Dah food stamp does not stand for it. We take toilet paper to dah Food City cashier who tells us, ‘No.’
“We put it back. Dis is dah way for dah poor. You can buy candy but not toilet paper? Dis is crazy. When I talk about dis now, my children say, ‘Mom don’t talk about it, people think we are foolish.’ But, dat is when we first start learning. Now—because we understand dah pin number, dah bags are full and we are happy walking dah ten blocks home.” Home to the four small, easy-to-break chairs, a small glass table for eating, three drinking glasses—because Sarai broke one—and carpet for sitting, she said, remembering the place well.
“Carpet for sitting? No sofa?” I asked.
Arketa paused. “I didn’t tell you dis?”
Some people in the apartments had sofas, so Arketa inquired about getting one. Her caseworker said that some of the Lost Boys “go where people throw trash. Furniture there is free.” But when Arketa talked to one of the Lost Boys, he said that the sofa “comes with dah bedbugs.”
“I don’t want dat. We can stay dah way we are. Better let me sit down on dah carpet which is clean.”
Which is what the Zambakaris did at the end of each day early in their settlement. Arketa and the children sat together on carpet to talk. She started to tell me about the children’s experience in American schools but I interrupted.
“Hold it,” I said. “What about toilet paper? You couldn’t get toilet paper with food stamps?”
“No.”
“And you had no cash before you started working?”
“No.”
“What . . .”
“Dis is what we do. Everyone can go to dah office of IRC. Dehr you can find things donated. Dat’s where we get dah clothes. And, you can get one roll of toilet paper. So, we go together, dah children with me. Each one get one roll of toilet paper. We use it wisely till I can pay for it with cash at dah store.”
By the time of that conversation she knew me well enough to expect my utter disbelief. She jumped on it.
“Dat worked out good for us, Barbi. Now we are safe. People are helping us. Dah children are in school and dah IRC is helping me find a job. You see?”
During the day the children attended school. Christopher used the city buses to reach high school. Nathalia walked to middle school with Spanish speaking kids who lived in her building. She returned each day using a mix of Spanish and English words and expressions. Sarai rode on a school bus and within a couple of weeks she had English at the tip of her tongue. “She was translating me,” said Arketa.
“British English is clear to me but American English—I don’t know how to do it. Americans speak very quickly and inside dahr nose,” she said. She attempted a demonstration that ended in snorts and coughing.
“I’m saying all dah time to white people, ‘Excuse me, can you repeat?’ Sarai knows what dey say, good, and she tells me.” But, surprisingly, very bright Sarai didn’t like school.
“Dis was dah hard time. We talked about it at night. Sarai was crying. ‘Mom, I don’t know anyone here.’ I tell her, ‘You will know dem, small by small.’ Den, I see, dah bigger problem. Dah schools see dos children was too smart so dey sweep dem up to dah new class. I tell dah people, ‘No. Let dah children be familiar. Leave dem. Now dey can make friends. Many things have to be learned country to country, not just dah language.
One evening, during the family carpet chat, enough time had passed for Arketa to ‘fess up,’ to her children.
“Dat toilet?” she said. “I don’t sit on it. “When I go, I just jump over it like a pit latrine. I stay half up.”
“Mommmm!” said Nathalia. “You have to learn!"
“I was laughing hard,” she admitted. “Doz children, like when dey peeled dah small banana on dah boat? Dey are ready to do things American. But sitting for toilet? Aieee, dis was taking time for me. Jumping over it was better.”
° ° °
With A Little Help – 2001-2002
The refugees’ apartment complex was located some twenty-seven major avenues west of Central Avenue, the road that divided Phoenix between avenues (west) and streets (east). In May, two months after arriving in America, Arketa landed a job.
At 5:00am, Monday through Friday, a shuttle bus arrived at the apartment building and delivered refugee workers to an upscale hotel in Scottsdale—about seventy or more streets east of Central—about a thirty or forty-minute drive under predictably snarled traffic conditions.
If Arketa was lucky, after cleaning eighteen rooms or suites, the shuttle dropped her home by 8:00pm. Exhausted, she inquired after the children’s schoolwork, prepared food and clothing for the next day, got everyone fed, then sat on the carpet for the evening family chat and English vocabulary work. The children saw their mom when darkness and weariness ruled. No one’s heart was in the conversation.
At the end of her third workday, exhausted, Arketa climbed up the concrete stairs to her apartment. She was thinking about her mom when one of the resident Lost Boys approached her. He had been on the flights from New York with the Zambakaris. He stopped her on the stairs.
“Mama Arketa,” he said. “Tonight, because I saw the kids huddled there in the hallway beside your door, I think, ‘these kids is like orphans.’ They are saying to me, ‘America is not good.’ This is not good for them. Better they be in Africa.”
“When he tell me dat, dah next morning dah work bus comes but I’m no-show. I don’t go back. I know, even den, I cannot be dah midwife like in Africa, dis cannot happen. I have to work. I have to pay dah INS for dah flying tickets to get us here but not dis way. No.”
It was not easy for a refugee woman to find work. Arketa had a job but left it. What she never left was the conviction that God is good. She was reminded of that within a day or two of choosing to be with her children. “Better dey go without food den to go without each other.
“Dis was how I met dah white lady called Nanette from dah Episcopal Church. Dah people in Phoenix know dah story of dah Lost Boys and churches and some organizations was helping—good. This woman was helping dah Lost Boys who came to Phoenix from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Because I was home, dah Lost Boys point to me and tell her, ‘Dis is dah Lost Mom.’”
Nanette, the woman from the Episcopal Church, started asking Arketa questions.
“You have three kids? Where are you working?”
Arketa explained about the hotel job.
“What did you do in Africa before all the troubles?”
Arketa’s full answer had reached to babies being delivered in the dirt in M’boki when Nanette raised her hand, stopped the telling, and told Arketa to expect her again the next morning.
“Be ready to go with me,” Nanette said. That next day Arketa stepped into work that became her American career, work that eight years later, led to my meeting her.
“The midwife can do this,” Nanette said as she and Arketa drove the few miles to Beatitudes Continuing Care Campus. “A midwife knows how to pay close attention to the needs of people. And, in your culture, you have compassion for the elderly. This job will suit you well.”
“Dis is how, from Nanette, I met Etta, dah very kind lady in charge of caregivers at Beatitudes.”
Under the guidance of these two women, Arketa completed a job application, enrolled in an extensive caregiver/med-tech training at Phoenix College, secured a job at Beatitudes, and scheduled her work around the children’s school hours. Five daytime shifts, weekends off.
“God is great.” Arketa had plenty to confuse her but this much, she knew without question.
° ° °
Not long after Arketa started work at Beatitudes, not many months after she arrived in America, Etta begged an exception to the schedule. Would Arketa please work the next day, Saturday? She wouldn’t ask this often, she promised, but a caregiver had called in sick and Etta had been unable to find a replacement.
Arketa honored the request and, at the end of that Saturday’s shift, she walked to her usual Sixteenth Street bus stop. A white woman standing there smiled. Arketa smiled back. After a short while the woman said, “Excuse me, but may I ask where you are from?”
“Sudan.”
The woman then asked how long Arketa had been in the United States. Arketa told her. Two questions. That was okay, Arketa thought. Unusual but okay.
“Where you are working?” the woman asked.
Arketa answered and explained that usually she was not working on Saturdays, only this one because of another caregiver’s illness, and that woman couldn’t come.
“Where are you living?” came the next question.
This must be the American way, asking questions about everything, Arketa thought. Not in Africa. No.The inquiring woman seemed nice enough but nosy, if Arketa could be honest with herself. In Africa you don’t ask questions about what you don’t see. But, Arketa answered.
“In dah apartment beside dah IRC office.” The woman knew about that place, she said. Then she asked yet another question.
“Do you have children?”
“Oooohuu, yes! I have three with me.” Then Arketa watched the woman take paper from her purse and write an address and telephone number on it. She handed it to Arketa.
“What day you are off?” she asked. So dis is how Americans learn from each other—direct.
Arketa answered and the woman said that if Arketa’s boss was good, she would give Arketa time to go see the people on the paper—they are giving a nice house to single moms.
“Huh?”was on Arketa’s mind as she and the woman each boarded the bus. Before that woman got off at her stop she said to Arketa that when she goes to that place, she was to bring a-l-l the papers concerning her immigration and her family.
When she reached the apartment Arketa immediately pulled the paper from her purse and showed the children. By the time the telling of the encounter ended her children were dancing, whooping.
“No, no,” Arketa said. Maybe the woman said, “a nice house for single moms like Arketa” but maybe not. “Dis was American English.” Maybe Arketa didn’t understand completely.
Christopher said, “Oh Mom, call your boss, tell her you worked today, you want Monday just to go to dah college class but not work after because of dis phone number.’ Arketa went to the IRC office where she could use a phone and heard her boss say, “Fine. Do what is good for the kids.”
Monday, directly after her class, Arketa took a bus to the office of Homeward Bound,a non-profit organization offering transitional housing and social services. In a plastic bag, she carried along the big white envelope with all the documents concerning her family that she carried from Kinshasa. Everything.
“I went in dah back office where dah nice lady from dah bus was. I show her everything.”
“Do you want to get a house today?”
“I say, ‘You have a house ready today?’”
The woman pushed back from her desk, smiled, and asked Arketa to accompany her. They drove to a house at 15thAvenue and Camelback Road, very near the Homeward Bound office.
“Eeeeii!“ Arketa remembered the moment. “Dah house was three bedrooms, kitchen, bath, and living room. It was clean. If I was in Sudan I would be dancing, and making dah loo-loo-loowith my tongue. But I stayed quiet, not believing dis could happen.”
Arketa was shown everything from window latches to door latches and a sliding screen not to be walked through. Homeward Bound would help her with supplies and furnishings, she was assured. After a thorough tour, they stepped out. The woman with all the questions at the bus stop locked the front door, and handed the house keys to Arketa.
When my mom and dah other three kids arrive—look to dah room for everyone! Arketa thought.
° ° °
The American Necessity – Spring 2002
Sudanese Lost Boys had been arriving in America since the mid-1990s. The people of Phoenix stepped up, helping them settle, helping them adjust.
“Watch for dah tall boys walking. Be careful, dey don’t know how to walk in traffic. Dey are in dahr African mind, still barefoot, still with dah cows of Sudan.” Arketa saw this television report and laughed and laughed. Dis was so true.
“Now, shortly, we are in dah new house, dah children are in new schools, and I am working.” Sarai stood near the house for a school bus but Arketa, Christopher, and Nathalia used city buses for transportation to work, school, grocery runs, and necessary appointments.
“Dis is when I talk to Andrew, dah man from Camelback Bible Church who with his wife, was helping us settle in America. He was a lawyer, too smart. I say, ‘How can I get dah car?’”
Arketa was already making a small monthly payment to INS, repaying them for the cost of flights from Kinshasa, for a small computer and had two more months to pay off a small TV. This was good, Andrew said. This was how to establish good credit. But, he emphasized, Arketa needed to afford to make purchases and she had to make payments on time.
“He say, ‘Finish making dah small payments, den go for dah car. So I do it dat way. Already I got dah couch—automatic from my bank—everything is paid quickly.
“When it is time to shop for dah car, Arizona Federal helped me. A man in Andrew’s church was moving with a car to sell for $5000 but I don’t want to spend more den $4500. Dah next day, we go see it. He sell it to me for $4000.” Remembering this, Arketa started laughing.
“Andrew say, ‘You have a license to drive it home?’”
“I have dah ID and dah Social Security. I don’t know about driving license.”
Andrew called his wife who came to the rescue. As she drove the car to Arketa’s house she talked about driving rules.
“Before even I have dah license? I have dah car.” Could there be anything funnier or more wonderful?
“Dis was America. Dis was dah American way.”
On her next day off, Andrew drove ambitious Arketa to the Department of Motor Vehicles and cautioned her—if you turn left, stay next to the yellow line. If you turn right, be next to where you are turning. Be very careful, he cautioned.
“I go inside. Dah instructor guy say, ‘Please drive for him.’ I do it. Andrew is in dah back seat. I do even dah side park, like he say. Americans drive on dah right, like in Sudan. It’s okay. I do it good because before the bombs, I was driving my Range Rover in Yambio.”
For the instructor, Arketa set the mirrors, hung to the yellow lines turning left, kept to where she was turning when turning right and she aced the written test. In her own car she picked up her children from their schools. They rolled down windows, turned up the radio, and talked like they did every night sitting on the carpet.
“Dah Lost Boys know now I have dah car because dey visit with us. Dey want me to teach dem to drive but Andrew say it is too big a risk for me to teach dez boys who don’t know a car at all. He got someone he knows to do it.”
° ° °
The American adventure had begun. Andrew or his wife called nearly every day, checking to see if they were doing well.
“Maybe dis is because now I was teaching Nathalia and Christopher to drive. Dos people at the church was very good to us. Dey are the ones who helped with everything when my mom died in 2002.
“That was why Timothy was stuck in Uganda?” I asked. “Because your mom died?”
“Unnnn,Dat is dah hard reason. Dah three children and my mom walked from M’boki to Uganda where my mom died. Exactly. Dis was soon after I come to America. A-n-d,dah story was very big about dis. Did I tell you?”
Coming Up: CHAPTER FIFTEEN -- A Staggering Surprise
Phoenix, Arizona – April 2001
Arketa arrived in Arizona as March disappeared. As April emerged and Arketa got her bearings, she sent a letter to her mother in M’boki urging her to walk to Uganda with her three grandchildren—orphaned teen siblings Rosetta and Angelo, and Arketa’s twelve-year-old son, Timothy. Arketa knew they faced weeks of treacherous walking through three countries—still, emigrating from Kampala seemed safer than staying in Kinshasa. But, Arketa’s letter chased through U.N. channels for months like a rabid rabbit through connected warrens.
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