28 April 2012
Refugee forum aims to put human face on atrocities
http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index.php/newsx/local-news/6720-refugee
Written by Joanna Smiley
Asmeret Teklu lives the American dream in Portland, but the country she left is battered by conflict in a war-afflicted corner of the world. Teklu found sanctuary here 16 years ago after fleeing from the African country of Eritrea, which borders Sudan and Ethiopia. Although Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1991, many human rights organizations report continuing border tension and military conflict.
"I came to Portland as a refugee following my husband," said Teklu. "It's a nice, quiet little city. The best place to raise my children."
She prepares a massive plate of Injera flatbread colored with lamb and lentils, quietly mentioning that she owns Asmara — Portland's only Eritrean restaurant tucked away on the corner of Oak Avenue. It took her four years to start the "family business" she's been running since 2004 out of a tiny kitchen the size of a few of the restaurant's wooden tables. Teklu prepares each dish herself, even in peak season when her space is packed to capacity. She came up with the idea to start a restaurant after her teacher in her adult education class inspired her to apply for a small business loan.
"I like being able to pay the bills myself, keep busy and active. I'm always thinking, what am I going to do today?" she says, as she waves to a local customer who surprised her with a gift of homemade honeycomb.
Teklu is quick to point out that her country of origin "is not Sudan." She says there are about 30 Eritreans living in Portland compared to over 3,000 Sudanese seeking sanctuary in the city, which became an asylum more than 10 years ago for African refugees fleeing civil war and genocide. She also mentions that today, Eritrea is not nearly as violent as it once was before it gained independence from Ethiopia and "it is not what people hear about."
In recent weeks, Eritrea's Sudan and South Sudan neighbors have been in the international media for nearing a full-scale war over oil profits and their contentious borders. On Monday, Sudanese warplanes bombed a market and an oil field in South Sudan, killing civilians.
"There couldn't be a better time for the Portland community to get involved," says Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a student pursuing joint degrees at University of Southern Maine in political science and international studies. Gaudette helped organize a free upcoming Friday, May 4 lecture from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at University of Southern Maine's Portland campus, called: "Paving the Way to a Better World: Mass Atrocities and the Responsibility to Protect."
"You could really pick any day of the year to have an event like this and it would be relevant. There's any number of crises happening in the world at any given time, on any given day," he says. "We will be having a survivor from the crisis in Darfur speak. He'll be putting a human face on the word 'atrocity.' It's too easy to get lost in the numbers and the statements. Even though everyone knows Maine is the whitest state in the country, Portland actually has one of the highest refugee populations on a per capita basis and the highest Sudanese."
Gaudette says he has long admired "the beauty of the African community" in Portland. He is an awe of their resilience and says he's dedicated his studies, and his life, to empathizing.
"To me, it's obvious. It's a moral travesty, why aren't we doing anything? I also hear people say it doesn't affect me so why should I care? To them, I'd say that in a highly globalized world there is no such thing anymore as a truly local crisis. There's always a trickle down domino effect," he says.
Gaudette admits that he has heard native Mainers "speak with derision and negativity" about Somalians and other African refugee groups.
"There's a broad sense people have that (refugees) just come over here, we're paying for them to be here, they're taking our jobs, same old story. Unfortunately, it's the reaction many people have to immigrant communities," he says. "But it's especially heinous to do that here because of what these people have had to come from."
For a few years out of high school, Gaudette worked late hours at Unum's corporate offices in South Portland. It was there that he got to know a Somalian man who emptied wastebaskets.
"Some of the stories he told me of the things he saw happen to his friends and family, and then to come here. ... All he wants is for his kids to grow up and succeed without hardships," he says.
----[Mailing List for Eritrea Related News ]----
Received on Sat Apr 28 2012 - 13:34:07 EDT
