The Thanksgiving Table

Thankful for Thanksgiving Without Pirates

By Jill Kuraitis, 11-25-08

	Somali children

The chaotic and violent East African country of Somalia has no official government, but it has some big-time pirates. Their latest acquisition on the high seas, just last week, was a Saudi oil tanker the size of three aircraft carriers.

Not even Johnny Depp could have pulled that off, but audacity isn’t a problem for this kind of piracy, which has become a career for some Somalis. Faced with little choice in a country ravaged by warlords and combat for more than 20 years, pirates were once people who stole because of hunger, and then hunger turned to greed.

Poverty which leads to crime and violence – an ancient story unfortunately still with us.

It’s impossible for ordinary Somalis to try to organize against the warlords. “How can we do there?” asked Mali, a Somali mother newly arrived in Boise with her two daughters. “Just to step the line outside the village we are killed,” she said.

The Somali refugees in Boise know about pirates. They know about starvation and suffering, slaughter and death, and the spirit-killing stress of living in daily terror. Boise has about 1,500 Somali refugees, most having arrived in the past two years. Some emigrate to warmer climates, but many are willing to learn life in cold weather to live in Boise, a town which most immigrants find to be unusually friendly and welcoming.

One of the recent Somali immigrants I’ll call Ali, a teenager who is learning English at Boise State University’s language center.  He attends classes three times a week and has two private tutoring sessions with me. In Somali culture, a proficiency at language is considered a sign of extreme respectability, and Somali refugees tend to take advantage of English lessons in larger numbers, and with more persistence, than some other cultures.

Since I’ve recently raised teenagers, the language center asked me to take on Ali, an animated, energetic, always-grinning 19-year-old who seems more like 16.  That’s typical of east African children, apparently; their childhoods go on longer than American kids, and without education, they stay ignorant of adult life. In Somalia, Ali played all day. His parents were working or searching for food, and there was no school.

Teaching Ali to read, write and speak English is made more difficult than usual because he barely knew how to read in his own language. Writing is something entirely new.

But since he is young and eager, he soaks up lessons like a sponge, and remembers almost everything. By now, he knows enough English to go to a store and ask for something; to look for a book in the library; to get by at his night job at a commercial laundry, and to ask me questions about….everything.

“Why does food store cut tops off celery and radish? Where do they put tops part?”
“Why do girls show a lot skin?” (I’d like to know that, too.)
“My little brother’s school wants him bring cupcakes, what is cupcakes?”
“Could boy like me be engineer?”

Some of Ali’s family are in Boise. Left in Somalia are a sister, some brothers and three of his father’s four wives. Those here are all working and receive no government assistance. By sharing bedrooms and pooling their money, they are living better than they ever dreamed was possible. 

Their spotless little apartment is colorful with traditional fabrics on wall hooks. It smells warm and spicy. I have been in Muslim homes before, and there is a color scheme to their belongings that seems consistent to them – barn reds and rusts and greys mixed with navy and soft greens. Ali’s mother, the tiniest woman I’ve ever seen, sews and does tailoring in the living room. I gave her my mother’s old but sturdy sewing machine so she could take up what she did in Somalia. 

The rest of the family members work nights at various janitorial and laundry jobs. They think these are great jobs, especially since Ali’s father has only one hand – he lost the other during a raid on their village, where nobody was killed but many were deliberately tortured and maimed – and they thought he would be rejected by American employers.

It sounds like a cliché – but Ali’s family has found America to be the promised land. Their gratitude at being allowed to immigrate, to live and work here, and to become citizens some day is classic. All of them go to English classes and are beginning to speak English at home, to help each other learn. They are a diligent, cohesive and loving family.

They think taxes are high but are actually proud to pay them. Ali’s mother, through Ali’s hilarious translation, said the equivalent of “but you get so much from the government from paying the taxes” which actually came out, “but government give taxes for roads, nice police guys and many big fire guys” a memorably garbled phrase I’ll never forget because we all laughed so hard.

At Ali’s lessons, we have been practicing what the language program calls “connecting words.” We walk THROUGH the door; we put the box ON the table; the lamp hangs OVER the table, the chairs go UNDER the table. “Here are my feet under table,” says Ali, his feet propped on top the table. “Ha!” I say, crawling under the table to “find” his feet.  He peers underneath. “What you do there?” he laughs. “Try again,” I say. Instead of re-stating the sentence, he simply moves his feet to “under.” Typical teenager.

In fact, a lot of what makes Ali bounce like a Tigger isn’t English or America, it’s late puberty. He has the temporary insanity of a teenager with all its issues, and has to cope with a new language and culture at the same time.

But though these and other things can be confusing, Ali is not to be deterred. He wants a high school diploma, to go to Boise State, to be a computer engineer someday. He keeps notebooks with his lessons and writing – one of his first requests of me was to help him mend some papers which had been torn – and never misses a class. Every homework assignment I give him is always finished.

An American kid would probably find it embarrassing to be seen out with a substitute mother on the streets and in stores, asking questions, bothering people for help in practicing English, being made conspicuous and chatting up pure strangers. But Ali is just the opposite.  He thinks our little adventures into the world are pure gold, and participates with glee.

Next week, we are going to the zoo.  He misses a particular giraffe that hung around near his village in Somalia, and wants to see American animals, too.  And at zoos, there are lots of setups for practice - the tiger is IN the cage; the snake went THROUGH the hole; the meerkats are on TOP the rock.

As a second-generation Lithuanian-American, married to a first-generation Lithuanian-American, my own family is a mob of immigrants. My in-laws still speak with heavy accents; my children grew up with grandparents who speak several languages and still cook things the old-country way.  At our Christmas table, there is singing in Lithuanian and German, as there was when I grew up.

My mother’s mother, who landed in America in 1912 and raised four children by running a little bakery in the slums of St. Louis, never learned English and was ashamed of it.  While I was growing up, my mother and aunt taught immigrants English because they remembered their mother’s shame.  I am teaching Ali because he and his family are no different from my grandmother and her descendents.  Grandmother was given a chance by a nation of immigrants and within two generations her family were all college-educated. 

Ali’s family deserves the same, and if Ali makes it through BSU, I’ll make him a shimmering silk cap and gown, get dressed up, and stand in respect while he walks the line.

I hope that, at Thanksgiving tables this year, we remember that all of us are descendents of people who came to America from other countries – fleeing injustice, famine, violence or poverty – and that we pause to honor our ancestors, and welcome Ali’s family here.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.