Lost in Migration: A Refugee Falls Between the Cracks

June 09, 2009 | Pulitzer Center

Neema John, a Rwandan refugee, lives illegally in a Dar es Salaam slum with her son. Seven years ago, a rape caused her to flee the Tanzanian refugee camp where she'd lived with her family.

Neema’s son, 4-year-old Briton ‘Toni’ Joseph, naps in the room he and his mother rent. In one corner, a week’s supply of water waits in buckets. Over the bed hangs a collection of belts, which, along with the toy at his side, are gifts from their family, who were resettled in the US without them.

In the hallway of the house where they rent their room, Neema and Toni, just up from his nap, cook a pot of ugali, the pulpy starch dish that's the staple of their diet. The building has no electricity, so residents use gas or traditional charcoal stoves.

Neema and a friend prepare a stew of tomato, okra, ‘bitter tomatoes,’ and dagaa, the tiny dried sardines popular in much of Central Africa. With the $50 her parents send her each month, she can afford rent and at least two meals a day for her and her son.

Neema’s neighborhood is inaccessible to cars. Here she ascends the hilly footpath to the central square, where she and Toni buy vegetables and charcoal, and to go to church and school.

As afternoon rains roll in, Neema gathers her laundry – hand-washed in a basin and hung out to dry – to take it inside. In Tanzania, April and May are known as 'the long rain.'

In her room, Neema folds laundry rescued from the sudden downpour. Though she has built a stable life here for her son, she is desperate to be reunited with her mother, stepfather, and brothers, who now live in Atlanta, Ga.

Taking advantage of the rain, Neema heads to a neighbor’s to gather water that runs off the roof. She likes her neighbors, she says, but lives in fear that they’ll discover she’s living here illegally.

Neema gathers water from a neighbor's roof. She and friends strain the rainwater through wire mesh, but typically drink it unboiled. Sanitation is a problem in this neighborhood built on a trash heap.

Neema prepares to hem a kanga, a traditional wrap skirt, in the hallway outside her room. Kangas are printed with a message. This one, a gift for her mother, talks on the lower hem about a mother’s love and suffering.

Neema plays with son Toni in the walkway outside their home. Her parents have petitioned the US for permission to bring the pair to Atlanta. They say they are praying for an answer before she turns 21 in September 2009, and becomes ineligible for reunification.

This month, as Tanzania prepares to forcibly expel some 40,000 Central African refugees from its camps, Rwandan refugee Neema John and her young son are hiding out in an urban slum, living in fear of discovery while their family, resettled in Atlanta, races the clock in a fight to be reunited with them.

Mary Wiltenburg