Sudanese newcomers seek community space in Austin

By Gregg Aamot • MinnPost

When John Brown Bol moved to the southeastern Minnesota town of Austin, his latest home in a life spent in the diaspora, he saw what he had feared most: fellow Sudanese refugees, people with backgrounds like his, living on the margins.

"I saw the failure of many families with children — single parents who work at night and are trying to raise four or five kids," says Bol, himself the father of three.

The solution, Bol remembers thinking, seemed simple: Let's create a community center where Sudanese youth can spend time together, work on their homework and "learn some things about their culture." Adults could find support, too.

Energized, Bol scaled back on his job as an interpreter for the school district and went to work drumming up support for the plan. He visited the mayor, pitched the idea to community groups and trekked to St. Paul to talk with legislators. Six-feet-five, animated and often wearing a suit, he is hard to miss. "Something is going to happen," he insists.

Nearly a year later, activists are still looking for a building to house such a center, not to mention the money needed to sustain it. Yet the sentiment behind the plan — the search for a sense of belonging and rootedness, a fear of cultural loss — is an achingly familiar one for Minnesota's refugees.

"When you are displaced and living elsewhere, you often gravitate to what you know. There is security in that," said Cawo Abdi, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota who has studied the African diaspora. Abdi noted that many Sudanese who are now living in Minnesota spent years in refugee camps in Africa. Bol, himself, lived in camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.

"The thinking is that, 'There might be only a few of us here, but we need something to define us; to share and transmit our culture and our language; to be distinct in the wider community,' " she said. "That is always important."

According to the state demographer's office, as many as 360 Sudanese live in Mower County, all of them in Austin, a city of 25,000. Most of them have arrived in the last decade or so, refugees from civil war in the Sudan in east Africa that culminated in 2011, when South Sudan declared itself an independent country.

Indeed, a city once identified by its largely white, meatpacking workforce has gradually absorbed a mix of ethnicities that also includes Hispanics, Somalis and even a handful of Karen, an ethnic minority from Myanmar. In the Austin Public Schools, 41 percent of the students are now nonwhite, according to statistics provided by the district.

Abdi says supportive groups and gathering places can serve as a "launching pad" for newcomers, places where refugees can confront language barriers and other cultural challenges before they reach the next generation. "They are an absolute necessity for long-term success," she said.

Austin already has a Welcome Center downtown that helps newcomers of all stripes with such sundry tasks as finding a doctor or getting a ride to work. On a cool April morning there, Bol acknowledged that the prospects for a Sudanese center, at least for the time being, seemed modest.

Nonetheless, Bol remains undeterred.

"We could do all sorts of things," he said, "and people would be able to go from there — to progress toward something positive."

Gregg Aamot is the author of "The New Minnesotans: Stories of Immigrants and Refugees."