Mali, like every country in West Africa, has been affected by the global rise in food prices, as it is dependent on imports for almost 80% of its basic goods. Small-scale farmers clearly have an important role to play in helping to make the country more self-sufficient in food. This week the women of the co-operative have a stall for the first time at the Bamako Agricultural Fair – hoping to find new markets for their products.so a leat of mangoe trees in mali .

 

Obama racked up margins of more than 90 percent among Pennsylvania’s black voters, who are heavily concentrated around Philadelphia. African-Americans made up about 14 percent of Tuesday’s vote, and whites made up about 80 percent — and voted 60-40 for Clinton.

The last week of campaigning included a bruising debate between Obama and Clinton, who also pounded her rival for a recent remark that decades of economic decline had left some rural voters “bitter” and clinging to religion and guns. CNN exit polls showed that nearly a quarter of state voters made their decisions in the past week, and those voters leaned toward Clinton by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent.

Obama cut sharply into the double-digit lead Clinton held in published polls of Pennsylvanians when the campaign began seven weeks ago. But he outspent her by 2-to-1, and Clinton’s campaign has begun questioning whether he could stand up to Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, after losing his third big state in a row.

In the spring of 2003, the first Somali Bantu refugees will arrive in the United States to begin new lives. This group of approximately 12,000 refugees under consideration for admission to the U.S. has spent most of the past decade languishing in camps along the dangerous Somali-Kenyan border. Descendants of slaves taken from Tanzania and northern Mozambique in the late nineteenth century to the southern Somali coast, the Bantu have remained a persecuted minority in Somalia and cannot return to the homes they fled there.

For many years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sought a place of safe asylum where the Bantu could permanently resettle. Kenya, which struggles to meet the needs of its own population as well as the hundreds of thousands of refugees it hosts, was unable to provide permanent refuge. In 2000, the United State agreed to consider the group for resettlement in the United States.

After being moved from the border to a safer and more accessible site in Kenya, the refugees will undergo interviews with officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to determine if they are eligible for admission into the United States as refugees. In addition, rigorous security checks and medical examinations will be performed on all applicants before they are approved for resettlement. The Bantu will also be provided with literacy training and an extended program of cultural orientation in Kenya before arriving in the United States. They will be placed in extended family groups in up to fifty cities and towns across the United States throughout 2003 and 2004.

Upon arrival in the U.S., each Bantu family will be assigned to one of the ten voluntary agencies under cooperative agreement with the Department of State to provide reception and placement services. These agencies are Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Iowa Bureau of Refugee Programs, Immigration and Refugee Services of America, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and World Relief Refugee Services. They will assist with basic immediate needs such as housing, furniture, clothing, food, and referrals to employment, ESL, and other services. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service s Office of Refugee Resettlement provides funding to the states and voluntary agencies for longer-term programs for refugees.

For more information on the Somali Bantu, see the fact sheet on the Bantu on the Cultural Orientation website operated by the Center for Applied Linguistics: www.culturalorientation.net.

In the spring of 2003, the first Somali Bantu refugees will arrive in the United States to begin new lives. This group of approximately 12,000 refugees under consideration for admission to the U.S. has spent most of the past decade languishing in camps along the dangerous Somali-Kenyan border. Descendants of slaves taken from Tanzania and northern Mozambique in the late nineteenth century to the southern Somali coast, the Bantu have remained a persecuted minority in Somalia and cannot return to the homes they fled there.

For many years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sought a place of safe asylum where the Bantu could permanently resettle. Kenya, which struggles to meet the needs of its own population as well as the hundreds of thousands of refugees it hosts, was unable to provide permanent refuge. In 2000, the United State agreed to consider the group for resettlement in the United States.

After being moved from the border to a safer and more accessible site in Kenya, the refugees will undergo interviews with officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to determine if they are eligible for admission into the United States as refugees. In addition, rigorous security checks and medical examinations will be performed on all applicants before they are approved for resettlement. The Bantu will also be provided with literacy training and an extended program of cultural orientation in Kenya before arriving in the United States. They will be placed in extended family groups in up to fifty cities and towns across the United States throughout 2003 and 2004.

Upon arrival in the U.S., each Bantu family will be assigned to one of the ten voluntary agencies under cooperative agreement with the Department of State to provide reception and placement services. These agencies are Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Iowa Bureau of Refugee Programs, Immigration and Refugee Services of America, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and World Relief Refugee Services. They will assist with basic immediate needs such as housing, furniture, clothing, food, and referrals to employment, ESL, and other services. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service s Office of Refugee Resettlement provides funding to the states and voluntary agencies for longer-term programs for refugees.

My family and I used to live in Africa.  We lived in Kenya in a refugee camp called Dadaab.  Everyone there lived in tents.  There wasn’t a lot of food or education, but the people wanted to learn.  They didn’t have enough money to pay for school.  Kids in Africa respected their elders though.  In Kenya there were a lot of animals like zebras and elephants.  It was a pretty place but it was not a nice place to live.   

One day, in Dadaab, when I was about ten years old I started middle school.  The first time I went I didn’t know anyone so I tried to be friends with everyone.  I made friends with a boy named Abdi.  He was very nice.  We became very good friends.  After five years, some people came and took out photo I.D. and told us that 12,000 people from Dadaab would move to Kakuma.  We moved to Kakuma.  All the Somali Bantu were all together in Kakuma.  Kakuma was very different from Dadaab.  There were a lot of mountains around the camp.  I got to see Mt.Kilamanjaro.  There were a lot of dogs in Kakuma.  People would eat the dogs and donkeys in Kakuma.  One morning I was walking in the market and I saw people selling donkeys to eat.  Abdi got to come to Kakuma too.  We lived in the same house and we ate together every day.  After two years, I left Kakuma and came to the United States.  It was November 16, 2004.  The first time I came through Nairobi, to London, and to New York City.  I lived in New Hampshire.   

New Hampshire was very cold.  It was snowing when I got there.  I had seen snow before in the mountains in Kenya.  I got to see my uncle and brother in New Hampshire.  My whole family was there.  When I saw my uncle, who I hadn’t seen in five years, we hugged and I was very happy.  My whole family was happy

The Somali Bantu can be subdivided into distinct groups. There are those who are indigenous to Somalia, those who were brought to Somalia as slaves from Bantu-speaking tribes but integrated into Somali society, and those who were brought to Somalia as slaves but maintained, to varying degrees, their ancestral culture, Bantu languages, and sense of southeast African identity. It is this last group of Bantu refugees that has particularly suffered persecution in Somalia and that is therefore in need of protection through resettlement. These Bantu originally sought resettlement to Tanzania in 1993 and 1994, and to Mozambique in 1997 and 1998, before they were considered for resettlement in the United States in 1999.