TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) - Through his sliding glass door, Kanegamba Mulabwe silently watched snow accumulate on his deck as a song by Florida Georgia Line drifted from a clock radio on the counter.
Next to the radio, the alarm clock Mulabwe and his family received the night they arrived in Twin Falls was also plugged into the wall, still in its box. No family photos hung on the walls. No toys were in sight.
Mulabwe, 26, can’t understand the “Cruise” lyrics, but the country music fends off the silence of his new apartment. He and his wife, Beatrice Bahati, 22, and their children, 3-year-old Sarah and 1-year-old Daniel, are still learning English, adapting to a strange culture and figuring out how to start their lives over.
That afternoon, Dec. 29, marked 43 days since the family of four arrived in Twin Falls from the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, on the day Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter joined other governors in urging President Obama to halt refugee resettlement.
The parents are refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo - where Bahati’s family disappeared and Mulabwe’s parents were killed - and their children were born in the refugee camp. Now, they’re building new lives in a community where opinions on refugee resettlement are deeply divided and opponents are vocal.
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The camp in Malawi was crowded. In Twin Falls in late December, confined to their apartment by the cold, Mulabwe and Bahati faced isolation instead.
With no scheduled English classes - the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center was closed for the holidays - the family hadn’t left the house for two days. They don’t like Idaho’s winter weather and opted to spend their days inside.
They were already bored with watching “The Lion King” and “The Jungle Book” over and over - the two movies that volunteer mentor Allison Bangerter gave them with a VCR before she left on vacation. The small tube television sat silent on a set of plastic drawers in a corner.
Sitting on the floor, the pregnant Bahati propped her back against the living room wall. Sarah and Daniel rested near her, fiddling with a cellphone charging in a nearby outlet. With no intention of facing the snow, Bahati wore a skirt and flip-flops, and her daughter wore jean trunks.
Mary Lupumba, an English-speaking refugee who works for the Refugee Center, visited their apartment that day to interpret for the Swahili-speaking couple.
Mulabwe can’t drive. And he misses the mingling he enjoyed in Malawi.
“I’m mostly at home, unless someone picks me up,” Mulabwe said, as Lupumba interpreted. “There is a big difference between back home and here. Here you can’t visit people; everyone is home.”
On the radio, Tim McGraw’s “Just to See you Smile” began to play as Mulabwe talked. In Malawi, you can just visit someone without planning ahead, he explained.
Mulabwe said he was eager to start working and earning money.
“What I’ve noticed is that everything here in America is about money,” he said.
Another of Mulabwe’s goals is learning to drive. With a job, he could afford to buy a vehicle and make his family more independent. Instead of waiting for a ride to the store, they could come and go as they please.
“I am confident to go shopping,” he said. “My only problem is bringing it back.”
Mulabwe also needs to start working for another reason: the baby to be born in April. That means another mouth to feed and clothes and diapers to buy.
Back in the refugee camp, Mulabwe was a tailor - a skill learned by watching others. On Jan. 6, he would receive a sewing machine donated to the CSI Refugee Center, and within days he’d start making a new dress for his wife.
“It would be good to find a job like that since I already know how to do it,” he said.
However, he knew that’s unlikely. A Refugee Center employee told him that a job application was submitted for him as a housekeeper in Jackpot, Nevada.
Mulabwe said he’d be happy to work, no matter the job.
“My main focus is to speak English and write it well,” said Mulabwe, who hopes to get his U.S. citizenship in five years and his high school diploma. “I want to get a better job to earn me more money and provide for my family.”
A knock at the door interrupted Mulabwe. Before he could rise, Sarah jumped up and opened the door.
Kathy Blamires from the Refugee Center had arrived to deliver the family a monthly check - $200 for each adult - and take Mulabwe to the bank. In March, this monthly check stopped - another reason Mulabwe was anxious to start working.
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Before Bangerter was a wife and mother, she dreamed of living in another country to help establish a school or dig wells for clean drinking water.
Then she met her husband, Joel, they had four children, and life became busy. Now Bangerter, 37, drops children off at school, picks them up, makes lunches and teaches piano students.
But her desire to help people from other countries never lessened.
“I feel very spoiled with my whole life,” she said. “When I look at my whole life, I was so blessed.”
So when she heard a radio advertisement for refugee mentors last year, Bangerter got involved. She was there the November night that Mulabwe, Bahati and their children got off the plane after two days of travel. She was there when they walked into their new apartment.
Now, she’s with them every week - guiding them through the complexities of laundromats and grocery stores or finding experiences they might not try without her encouragement.
In January, Bangerter took Bahati to the bank. They sat in Bangerter’s van before going in, so Bahati could practice saying, “I would like to cash my check.” Bahati was nervous in the van, but as soon as she stepped to the counter, she did fine.
“I felt like I did something that was so helpful to someone else,” Bangerter said. “What they are doing is amazing. If I were in their shoes, I would want somebody to help me.”
Bangerter is one of 16 mentors who volunteer at the CSI Refugee Center.
“They are a friend, essentially, who can help them around the community and adjust to life here,” AmeriCorps volunteer coordinator Jenny Reese said.
Reese started working at the center in December. Her position is new - scheduling mentor orientations, training and activities involving mentors and the refugees they’re assigned to - but the mentor program is not.
“There is a desire from the community to be involved with refugees,” Reese said.
Reese held her first mentor meeting Dec. 21 at CSI. Bangerter and two other mentors showed up to share stories of dealing with language barriers, differences in culture and walking the fine line between helpful and intrusive.
“I still haven’t found something they like to eat,” Bangerter said later. “Except for oatmeal cookies. They liked them so much they wanted to take some home. They also like popcorn.”
Bangerter spoke in her dining room, where a red flower bloomed on the table, soaking in light from a large window. The flower was one of two amaryllises Bangerter bought in January; she gave the other to Bahati’s family. When Bangerter’s husband found an air popper at Deseret Industries, he gave it, too.
The two families have been attending weekly story time at the Twin Falls Public Library. The Jan. 8 story time included songs and an activity where children made their own bear paws.
“If you wanna hear a song, move your eyebrows,” said a woman sitting in front of the crowd of children and adults. Lupumba turned to Mulabwe and translated. He then turned to Sarah, a finger on his eyebrow to make it move.
It’s a fun activity for the children, but Bangerter chose it for another reason, as well. She hopes the repetition of story time will help them with their English skills.
After a few songs, many of the children became restless - standing up or walking around the room. Daniel headed for the stacks of books, but Mulabwe motioned for him to come back. The storytelling wasn’t over, and Mulabwe was listening intently.
After the singalong, participants made bear paws from paper bags. Bangerter helped Sarah and Daniel fasten bear paw pieces with a purple glue stick while Mulabwe and Lupumba watched from the side. The room quickly filled with sounds of cutting paper and children talking. Daniel was distracted by the commotion, but Sarah was focused on her bear paw’s assembly.
“Are there bears in Africa?” Bangerter asked Mulabwe.
Mulabwe said no, so Bangerter told Daniel it could be a lion’s paw. Mulabwe helped his son put it on his hand and make a clawing motion.
The children, Bangerter said, are a good bridge between her family and Mulabwe’s. Story time isn’t part of some perfect prescription for refugee mentors - she’s never been given a to-do list - it’s just one of Bangerter’s best guesses for helping newcomers adjust.
“It’s been a learning process. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Bangerter said. “There is no right answer.”
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This matter of new experiences can be uncomfortable.
Bangerter and her family took Bahati and Sarah to Cabin Fever Day’s free activities at Bowladrome and the Herrett Center for Arts and Science on Jan. 9 - two days after Otter said his meeting with federal officials revealed a more thorough refugee vetting process than he’d realized.
Still, the Idaho Republican Party’s central committee Jan. 9 passed a resolution asking the state Legislature to stop Idaho’s refugee resettlement and disbursement of funding for refugee benefits until economic costs are analyzed and national security concerns put to rest.
That day was the first time Bahati and Sarah had ever watched a planetarium show. They sat near the front row of the Herrett Center’s crowded planetarium. Before the first preview came on, Sarah fell asleep in the darkened room. But Bahati was startled by the images on the screen, especially when a preview for “Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure” flashed strange creatures across the ceiling.
After a tour of southern Idaho’s nighttime sky, the group got up close and personal with snakes, lizards and cockroaches in the Herrett Center’s reptile room.
While other visitors held snakes in their hands or peered at them lying in glass boxes, Bahati shook her head, indicating she wouldn’t go near them, let alone touch them. When Sarah slowly approached a girl holding a snake near the entrance, her mother called her back in Swahili.
When the group ordered lunch at a McDonald’s drive-through, Bahati refused to eat a hamburger, but she accepted some fries. When they arrived at the bowling alley, she munched on an apple near a foosball table as the Bangerters waited in line for shoes and an open alley.
At first, Bahati didn’t want to bowl, either.
“You gotta do it,” Allison encouraged as others chimed in.
When she finally, reluctantly agreed, Bahati knocked down four pins on her first throw. Told she had another try, she knocked down three more. No big deal.
Lupumba, the interpreter, also took some convincing.
“Go Mary, go Mary,” someone chanted.
Bahati laughed as Lupumba finally stood up and chose a ball.
Sarah was trying to press buttons on a console when it was her turn. Hearing her name, she quickly grabbed a ball and scurried to the front of the lane. Her ball was not even halfway down the lane when she danced her way back to grab another.
By the third frame, Bahati, too, was warming up to the game. When she knocked down nine pins, she clapped her hands, grinning.
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For Bahati, everything in Idaho is different: grocery shopping, laundry, going to the doctor.
For a Jan. 12 trip to Walmart with Bangerter, Bahati had a shopping list written in Swahili. Daniel and Sarah sat in the cart while Bahati browsed the produce. Whenever Bahati walked away, Sarah yelled, “Mama!”
Bahati stuffed plastic bags full of apples and bananas. What other shoppers might have put in two or three bags, she fit into one. She examined a head of purple cabbage - she was looking for green - but decided against it and put it down.
Other items on Bahati’s list were challenging to find, too: lotion, fingernail clippers, lip balm, makeup. Nothing on the shelves looked familiar.
Lupumba translated to Bangerter that Bahati was looking for a razor. Bangerter asked: the kind to shave your legs? Lupumba shook her head. It was to cut nails.
Bangerter was stumped. “We can look and see what they have,” she finally said.
In the cosmetics aisle, Bahati and Lupumba scanned the shelves for Black Opal, the makeup line that Bahati uses. She carried an almost empty compact in her hands to show a Walmart employee.
The first employee directed them to a small African-American hair section next to toothpaste and toothbrushes. The second employee suggested the Queen Latifah makeup line.
Bahati eventually purchased Loreal’s brand in the most similar shade she could find. Instead of lotion, she bought Vaseline. She decided not to buy a fingernail clipper or lip balm when presented with the alternatives.
Not being able to find what she is looking for in the store is minor inconvenience for a woman who used to worry how she would feed her children. That worry is lessened now.
“When they tell me, ’I’m hungry,’” she said later, “I can give them food.”
Bahati and her husband can sleep soundly at night without fear someone will enter their home and rob them. In the refugee camp, Mulawbe said, if someone finds out you have a little money, they come in and take it.
“Here, I can sleep without worry,” he said Jan. 18, at home with his family.
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It was difficult to find foods Mulabwe and Bahati liked during lunch at Bangerter’s home Jan. 15.
Bangerter pulled a plastic container of lasagna from her refrigerator. Bahati took one look and, without saying a word, declined the leftovers.
“No way?” Bangerter said, laughing. “It’s good, it’s good.”
Then she offered boiled eggs and leftover stew. Bahati reluctantly took a bowl of stew after Bangerter explained what was in it: potatoes, carrots, celery, beef.
“Do you want to try it?” Bangerter said. “Or does it look gross?”
Bahati took cautious bites of the potatoes, careful not to drink the liquid. She later tasted peanut butter for the first time.
Mulabwe declined all the foods.
When Bangerter’s children asked for corn dogs, she heated one for Sarah, too. But Sarah backed away from the piece of corn dog on a fork that Bangerter held. The children instead ate boiled eggs.
Bangerter tried again to get Mulabwe to eat, this time offering a corn dog. When others pressed him to try it, Bangerter’s youngest daughter, Amaya, interjected: “They don’t have to.” Bangerter agreed.
But when it came to making oatmeal cookies, Bangerter wanted them to help as they waited for loads of Bahati’s laundry to wash and dry.
“Do you want to make cookies?” she said. “Do you understand cookies? We can bake because we have to wait for the laundry.”
Without an interpreter, Bangerter read the recipe for oatmeal cookies and explained where they could find the ingredients in her kitchen. She showed Mulabwe and Bahati how to combine the sugars and butter in a mixing bowl.
“The butter is too cold,” Bangerter said. “We should have let the butter get warmer. Do you understand cold and warm? The butter was cold, so it wasn’t as soft.”
Mulabwe nodded to show he understood, as he talked to his wife in Swahili. They stood close to the bowl, peering in to watch the ingredients mix.
When Bangerter increased the mixing speed, pieces of batter flipped out of the bowl. Mulabwe and Bahati backed up, smiling.
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Even giving birth will be different than in the refugee camp.
In Malawi, many women give birth before getting to the crowded hospital. Bahati was lucky; she reached the hospital in time for the births of both her children.
Expecting her third child, Bahati went to her first St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center ultrasound Jan. 7. In the dark room, the only light came from a wall-mounted screen and ultrasound technician Lisa Miller’s computer. Miller pushed the ultrasound wand across Bahati’s bare belly.
The fetus on the screen was curled up, knees blocking its face.
“This is the baby’s thigh and femur,” Miller said. “The baby’s foot is right there. See how his foot is right there?”
As Lupumba translated, Bahati smiled.
Another angle revealed the sex of the baby. Miller typed, “It’s a boy,” on the screen followed by exclamation marks.
“Can you feel that movement right now?” Miller asked. Bahati nodded, eyes glued to the screen.
“He’s very active,” Miller said.
While Bahati learned the baby’s due date, April 18, and its heartbeat, 143 beats per minute, Mulabwe sat in the waiting room with their two children.
Bahati said he wasn’t expecting a son when Daniel was born.
“I’m sure he’ll be excited,” Lupumba translated for Bahati.
Later, Mulabwe reflected on the newest member of his family. The baby boy will be the first American citizen in the family.
“He will have a better life and better opportunities than Sarah and Daniel had back home,” he said.
Mulabwe had never heard of the “American dream” before coming to the U.S. He liked the idea that he and his family could become anything they set their minds to.
“That’s good,” he said. “That means you work hard.”
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Some in Twin Falls want to close that door.
A group seeking to get a measure onto May ballots banning refugee centers in Twin Falls County has been gathering signatures since October. By mid-January, the group had gathered about 1,500 signatures of the 3,842 required by the early-April deadline, but it hadn’t turned them all in. The Twin Falls County Clerk’s Office had certified only 219 so far, and Prosecuting Attorney Grant Loebs - who reviews proposed ballot measures before they are approved - had expressed doubts about whether some of the provisions are legal or enforceable.
In Boise, all 105 Idaho lawmakers were invited to controversial anti-Islam pastor Shahram Hadian’s Jan. 14 speech at the Capitol, but only a handful briefly stopped by to listen to parts of his presentation - a warning on the dangers of refugees. While about 100 protesters holding “Idaho is too great to hate” signs rallied inside the Statehouse, Hadian argued that states must protect their citizens from Muslim extremists because the federal government will not.
Meanwhile, hundreds of refugees in Twin Falls - 304 arrived in the most recent fiscal year - are navigating the adjustment to American self-sufficiency.
Two of the biggest hurdles Bangerter foresees for Mulabwe and Bahati are learning English and being financially independent. When communicating without Lupumba’s help, Bangerter has learned to use hand signs.
Bangerter also wants Mulabwe and Bahati - both stopped attending school in the ninth grade - to finish their high school educations so they aren’t limited to low-wage jobs.
“I think it’s going to be important to get a GED, but it’s not going to happen overnight,” Bangerter said. “We got to get English going so it’s really easy.”
She also has high hopes for 21-year-old Lupumba, who graduated from high school in Zambia but didn’t come to the U.S. with her diploma. Lupumba plans to take the GED. When Bangerter first met her, she asked what Lupumba’s dreams were. Lupumba’s answer: to be a doctor.
Bangerter gave her a GED study book to encourage her to remember that goal.
“I don’t want the dreams to be sucked out of her,” Bangerter said.
Back in Zambia, Lupumba worked for a theater company that led children’s ministry classes such as acting and dancing; here, she attends Our Savior Lutheran Church.
Mulabwe wants Bangerter to teach him to drive and is taking classes at the Refugee Center to pass the written exam. When the weather gets nicer, Bangerter and Mulabwe plan to start lessons behind the wheel.
And before the baby comes in April, Bangerter wants to hold a baby shower for Bahati. The couple hopes to move into a cheaper apartment in preparation for the baby’s arrival - and for the first payment they’ll need to make toward repaying their plane tickets to the U.S.
Mentors stay with their families for a year, but Bangerter plans to check in with Mulabwe and Bahati long after that. She’s known them for only three months but already is looking to the year ahead. When November comes, it will be marked with happiness and some sadness for her.
“I don’t know, it will be sad,” Bangerter said. “It will mean they don’t need me anymore.”
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A white CSI Refugee Center van pulled into the Fred Meyer parking lot the morning of Feb. 2. Mulabwe sat inside with other refugees.
It was Mulabwe’s first day of work in Jackpot, where he’d become a hotel housekeeper at Cactus Petes Resort Casino.
“He was happy with that. He knows we can’t live without a job,” Zeze Rwasama, director of the Refugee Center, translated Jan. 22, shortly after Mulabwe took a drug test for employment.
Mulabwe said he will be paid $8.40 an hour. After two months he will be eligible for benefits.
Cactus Petes for years has worked with the CSI Refugee Center to fill positions including housekeeping, houseman, stewarding, cook and security, Dawn Vandiver, the casino’s human resources manager, said later. Cactus Petes’ talent recruitment specialist goes to the Refugee Center and conducts employment screenings, assists with the online application process and even does uniform fittings.
Cactus Petes employees can advance through transfers, training and a tuition reimbursement program, Vandiver said. “We’ve had many success stories of team members hired through the Refugee Center starting in one department and advancing their hospitality career in other departments.”
Candidates from the Refugee Center typically have basic English skills, Vandiver said. Cactus Petes also uses interpreters and InterpreTalk, a telephone-based service. “We also have a number of team members who are multilingual and are helpful in assisting with translation needs.”
Mulabwe waited inside the van for about 10 minutes before a large bus with “Cactus Petes” on the side pulled into the parking lot. As graveyard shift employees unloaded from the bus, daytime workers lined up to board.
Mulabwe shook the hand of an older refugee leaving the bus as he embarked on his first day of employment. Outside the bus’s tinted windows, more vehicles pulled up and parked, while weary workers returning home scraped morning frost from their windshields.
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Information from: The Times-News, https://www.magicvalley.com
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